No union
Why did eight workers at a Kentucky candle factory and six workers at an Illinois Amazon warehouse die this week? They were killed when a powerful tornado destroyed their workplaces, but it wasn’t really the storm that killed them, any more than a sailor forced to walk the plank is killed only by the waves. They were not random victims. They were sacrificed. We here in the most advanced nation on earth offered them up to the gods that we actually worship.
Why did they die? They died because they were inside their workplaces in the path of the storm. They died because they did not leave work before disaster struck. And they did not leave work because they were allegedly ordered not to, by their bosses. The factory workers in Kentucky say that managers threatened to fire them if they left. Amazon workers say that they were told not to leave in advance of the storm. They also say that lack of adequate safety procedures is par for the course at Amazon, where the employee handbook notifies workers that they can be fired for leaving without “permission”.
And why is that? Because the workers have no union. The bosses have seen to it.
None of them had a union to empower them to stand up to a boss who demanded that they do something that put them in danger. None of them had a union to give them the collective ability to require their employers to value their lives. Unions are the only – the only – reason industries from construction to coal mining are far safer today than they were a century ago.
And why didn’t the Amazon workers and the candle factory workers have a union?
They didn’t have unions because employers believe that unions will cost them money, and therefore all of corporate America and much of our political structure has conspired for many decades to make it extremely hard for regular working people to form and maintain unions. Amazon, in particular, goes to great lengths to fight unionization everywhere. It spies on workers; it hires expensive anti-union consultants; it violates labor law; it lies to its workers and tries to scare them.
As corporations did with impunity until some new laws and agencies emerged from the New Deal. Reagan and his successors reversed all that.
This is the American system as we like it. As a society, we prefer a world in which a large number of people live paycheck-to-paycheck and will therefore take jobs as “independent contractors” with few rights and little safety and no union and low wages. We want a world in which people are so afraid of losing their jobs that they will quite literally ride out a tornado for less than $20 an hour, because the alternative is poverty. This is the social arrangement that allows us to have lots of cheap stuff, fast.
Maybe the workers should try identifying as bosses.
That too. But first, the liberal-democratically inclined can help each a bit by boycotting Amazon. They have competition. There are alternatives.
My own Amazon boycott starts right now, and I expect my wife’s will also when she wakes up (literally). And as she has a history of activism, all her friends will shortly know all about it too. Expect also a blip in the hits on the B&W site.
Why (literally asking, not just rhetorically) do police unions have so much more power than other unions?
This story makes me doubly appreciate my boss (I know, startling, right?) Yesterday we had predictions of massive windstorms with greater than 70 mph winds. He announced we would close at 12; the wind was supposed to start early afternoon. So when tornado warnings started and the tornado siren blew, I was down in my basement with my husband rather than trapped in a building that is almost all external rooms…and right in the path of a possible tornado.
It didn’t touch ground until it was about 20 miles north of us. We are all right, but could have become tornado food. I must send my boss a thank you card, or just an email letting him know how much it is appreciated when he does the right thing.
Meanwhile, some of us have problems on Amazon boycotts because all the department stores in our town closed in the past ten years. I try to find things from other places, and sometimes can, but all too often everything leads to Amazon. I plan to retire in a place that has reasonable shopping opportunities. Fortunately we have two local grocers in town (though one of them recently bought the other), so I can avoid big box shopping centers.
Omar @1, I’ve been boycotting Amazon now for about three years, and it makes me feel good about myself, but I’m not convinced that it makes any real difference in the world. Amazon is so huge, and so many consumers depend on them, that the only way to really bring them down would be through litigation or legislation, I think. Still, I’m nonetheless glad when I hear that someone starts boycotting Amazon.
@anna #2 –
I think it has to do with the fact that the Police Unions serve to protect cops from complaints by the citizens rather than serve as a protection from greedy bosses. I live close to Minneapolis, MN, and following the Floyd murder, the police union was stronger than the city government.
They complain that unions will cost them money, then they go spend money to fight unions. Okaayyyy
I have to admit, I find individual boycotts of businesses to be a little weird. I mean, the point is that you’re trying to send them a message, or better yet to force them to change their practices by affecting their bottom line–in essence, by using the capitalistic marketplace to drive change. But if the business is really good at what they do–and let’s face it, Amazon is that–your drop-in-the-bucket protest is going to mean nothing in the face of the masses of people who use their services. Capitalism wins.
I’m not saying that this kind of protest has no value. Clearly, one’s conscience is clearer by adopting and promoting a stand based on principle. It just seems like there has to be a better way to effect change in the Amazons of the world than by simply not buying from them. I’m not saying that I know what that is. I suspect it’s complex and takes a lot more effort than just doing nothing.