Another union-busting tactic is “captive-audience meetings,” where workers are forced to listen to anti-union propaganda. Amazon held them daily in Bessemer, where it also posted anti-union messages on the inside of toilet doors.recently released leaked audio from a captive-audience meeting held in the Staten Island warehouse.
“Breaks in this building are a nightmare because by the time it takes to get to the place where you need to be, your break’s already half over, and then by the time the break’s over, you’re already late,” says Josiah Morgan, an ALU organizer who has been working at the warehouse since March. To make things worse, management recently shortened break time from 20 to 15 minutes.
It now has around 2,500 workers signed up and an organizing committee with over 150 members. A group of organizers is on the ground at the Staten Island warehouses every day. They say they have had a largely positive response, projecting that the real issue will be beating the turnover rate. The bottom-up approach, while lacking the financial support of a large union like the RWDSU, has the potential to lead to a stronger core of organized workers, says Ellen Dichner, a labor lawyer and distinguished lecturer at the City University of New York School of Labor and Urban Studies.
For the Teamsters, Amazon’s rapid growth presents both an opportunity and a direct threat to their base of workers in the trucking and warehousing industries. They represent 340,000 UPS workers. The union has initiated a nationwide outreach campaign, featuring Teamster members speaking directly with Amazon workers about the benefits of a union job, which often pays at least twice as much as the $15-17 per hour that is the norm at Amazon.
“We operate like a union already,” he adds, explaining the ALU’s well-developed organizational structure. “We have everything that a union has already… besides the protections and the resources. For any union to support us, they will have to sit down and meet with us. And, you know, we’ll figure out a way where we can work together.”
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