“After I was terminated, they had a meeting about me - Jeff Bezos, and the general counsel - calling me not smart or articulate”, Smalls told ABC News after the win. “And, ironically, they also said to make me the face of the whole unionization efforts”.
“The ALU is in a strong position because if they win, they’ve harnessed the momentum and they’ve shown that this is really building to something”, Rebecca Givan, an associate professor of labour studies at Rutgers University, told The Washington Post about the LDJ5 vote. “And if they lose, they’ve just shone a light on the brutality of the union busting”.
The ecommerce and Internet services giant founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 has always been ardently anti-union, employing a variety of union-busting practices as wide as the litany of complaints brought against the company by its workers. Amazon is also accused of forcing employees in facilities trying to unionise into watching anti-union presentations, and even of hiring full-time veteran union-busters to spy on and disrupt organising activities.
Many of these have only gotten worse during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first six months of the pandemic, Bezos’ wealth ballooned by $48 billion, and in 2020, Amazon’s profits increased by 84% over the previous year as billions of people stayed home for safety, creating a massive demand for product deliveries. In 2021, the company added another 22% growth, bringing in $469 billion in revenue, according to company earnings reports.
“Amazon’s tactics have gotten very, very intense”, Madeline Wesley, an Amazon warehouse worker at LDJ5 and ALU treasurer who was written up for “soliciting” her co-workers, told Vice in mid-April. “They’re getting away with lots of illegal anti-union activity”.