BAmazon: The morning after…

The months-long union organizing drive at Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama captured the nation’s attention. The image of David and Goliath was frequently invoked to represent the struggling Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (the RWDSU) against the corporate behemoth of Jeff Bezos’s Amazon. Amazon, of course, pulled out all the stops to prevent the Bessemer workers from unionizing, but other factors were also in play.And on Friday, April 9, the National Labor Relations Board announced the result of 738 votes for the union verses an overwhelming 1,798 against. The purpose of this article is to examine what happened at Bessemer and to offer a Marxist approach that challenges both the overly optimistic and negative conclusions being drawn in the immediate aftermath of the election among many labor and left activists.

Where things stand today

The NLRB press release gives us the basic facts.

Approximate number of eligible voters	5,876
Number of void ballots	76
Number of votes cast for the Petitioner (the Union)	738
Number of votes cast against the Petitioner	1,798
Number of challenged ballots	505
Number of valid votes counted plus challenged ballots	3,041

The challenged ballots are now a mute issue. They only would have come into play if their total number was more than the margin of the victor. In this case, they were not. The RWDSU is contesting the results on other grounds and has appealed to the NLRB. The union argues that management intimidation altered the outcome of the election.The central issue is the propriety of the mailbox which Amazon installed on company property for workers to use in casting their ballots. This appeal may take months to work its way through the NLRB’s procedures.

Reasons for the union defeat

While the result of the election won’t be final until the appeal process winds down, we are faced with having to explain the reasons for the apparent union defeat. This is very hard to do from outside of BMH1. However, a number of points can be made.

Amazon’s starting pay of $15.30 per hour was higher than the wages offered by many other local employers—but still nearly $3 per hour less than the median wage in the Birmingham area. Nevertheless, Amazon’s relatively higher wages probably played a role in the union’s defeat.
The plant has a high worker turnover rate of 10% per year. This makes building a stable union base more difficult.
There certainly was management intimidation. Taking photographs of pro-union workers’ ID cards might be the most blatant form it took. There also was a broad campaign of mandatory attendance meetings, publicity pasted all over the workplace, and constant individual anti-union communications with workers.
Momentum and enthusiasm are obviously important in any organizing drive. These are hard to maintain over a long time period. The shorter the time between filing the cards with the NLRB and the election day, the better it is for the union. At Bessemer, the union filed its cards on November 20,2020. The mail-in voting lasted from February 8 until March 29. It’s very hard to maintain a head of steam when the process drags on so long.
The question of who should be in the bargaining unit is more complicated than it seems. Unions wish to create bargaining units, which form the constituency for NLRB elections, based on the sectors of the workplace where they have the most support. Management wants to include workers who are outside of the areas of union support and therefore less likely to vote for the union. Therefore, at Bessemer, the union initially filed for a bargaining unit of 1,500. The company was able to get the NLRB to agree to a bargaining unit of 5,876 . This meant drawing in many seasonal and temporary workers who are obviously less involved and vested in the workplace. It also meant involving transportation workers who are less a part of the mainstream of life and discussions in the workplace. Drawing the unit boundaries this way was a negative factor for the union.
The most important point is the general low level of self-confidence and combativity in the working class today. The working class is still on the retreat, after decades of setback and defeat. The general economic situation and the fear of employer retaliation combine to put a damper on militancy. Readers might ask what about all the pro-union national opinion polls? It’s one thing for large numbers of people to say that they favor labor unions in the privacy of an opinion poll. It’s quite another to confront your employer at the job upon which you and your family depend. This requires a much greater confidence in the ability of the workers movement to protect you and defeat the boss.

An important setback…

There’s no point mincing words: the union suffered an important defeat. It’s wrong to say that whatever happens, “Bessemer – A Big Step Forward,”as long-standing labor activist Frank Emspak titles a recent article on Portside. Sarah Nelson, who as President of the Association of Flight Attendants is a rising star in the labor movement and is rumored to be thinking about throwing her hat into the ring in the AFL-CIO’s next election for president, has tried to put a positive spin on the situation at Amazon. The New York Times quoted her as saying that there has been, “a ton of coverage and discussion, and people all over this country are hearing that unions are the solution. We’ve been able to have a real discussion about what the union actually does.”

There are many other writers saying the same thing, “At least we got a foot in the door. This is only the beginning.”Unfortunately, a defeated organizing drive rarely is a first step toward other organizing drives. A defeat demoralizes workers and organizers and makes the union look less attractive to other workers. This situation does not last forever, but the immediate aftermath of a defeated drive is a very hard time to draw workers into the union movement.

…but not a crushing defeat for the whole labor movement

There’s a symmetrical error to minimizing the defeat and that is exaggerating the scale of the defeat. For example, the New York Times writes of, “a crushing blow to organized labor.” A headline in Esquire magazine makes the same point,“The Bessemer Vote Is a Miserable Defeat for Organized Labor.”

In reality, the scale of events in Bessemer has been greatly exaggerated from the beginning. While a union victory at Bessemer would have injected a much-needed success for the labor movement, those who saw the union drive as an example of an ascending wave of workers’ struggles and of an historic development now are now being forced to speak of a defeat of similar proportion. The union organizing drive at Bessemer was never going to be a new “Labor’s Giant Step.” It simply wasn’t large enough to change the national balance of forces. BMH1 only represented 0.6% of Amazon’s US workforce. Bessemer is only one of 110 fulfillment centers in this country. It would require much larger forces to change the overall situation of the labor movement. As serious as the defeat at Bessemer is, it has not changed the overall balance of class forces.

Why was Bessemer exaggerated?

Anyone following the situation at Bessemer over the past few months would have been struck by two things—the huge amount of coverage and the heady optimism of the left coverage. Different forces exaggerated the situation for different reasons. The mainstream press has become conditioned by the proliferation of news sources and the 24 hour news cycle. A need to catch the reader’s attention leads to most political events being overdramatized. Adjectives like, “historic”, “iconic” and “crisis” are tossed around casually. The RWDSU organizing drive was subject to this type of coverage.

The liberal and social democratic left exaggerated Bessemer for different reasons. For them, it symbolized the new moment of the Biden Presidency. Biden’s first 100 days are seen as “Morning in America.” Hated Trump is banished to Mar a Lago, and COVID vaccinations are being rolled out. The world is seen through rose colored glasses and Bessemer was seen as one component of the rise of Biden and his allies in the labor movement.

For much of the far left, the exaggeration stemmed from yet a different source. American politics is seen to be witnessing the rise of a new left: Bernie, AOC, Red4Ed, the growth of the DSA, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and now Bessemer. There is a tremendous pressure to become part of this advancing political current—and to reject anything that stands in the way of swimming with this current. This doesn’t apply only to old political positions; it also applies to anything seen as minimizing the upward arc of the new situation. Since everything has been staked on the “new moment,” the far left has felt compelled to view the political trajectory as going from strength to strength.

The Marxist approach has two aspects. One is to energetically and fully support every real struggle that arises, from the BLM movement to teachers’ strikes and the Bessemer drive. The second is to evaluate these struggles carefully and soberly in order to make an objective analysis of the material situation. Our perspectives flow through from reality, reality is not changed in order to fit into our perspectives.

The union bureaucracy after Bessemer

There are some real dangers in the way in which the union leadership has been talking since the Bessemer election results were made public. The AFL-CIO’s leadership’s main legislative and campaigning priority is the PRO Act. The PRO, or Protect the Right to Organize, Act is an act which will change important aspects of labor law. It targets pro-employer laws such as the so-called “right to work” and employer interference in union elections. It would be a step forward if it was passed. But it should also be noted that the PRO Act falls short of the reforms proposed in the 2009 Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would have allowed for a simple majority of workers to sign cards authorizing a union to be their representative—and compel their employer to recognize and negotiate with the union that the workers chose. Although Obama had pledged during his presidential campaign to pass EFCA, and Democrats held majorities in both the House and the Senate in 2009, it died quietly and without Democratic Party comment. Even the PRO Act now pending in Congress faces an uphill battle–i.e. is unlikely to see the light of day.

However, labor law is not the main factor holding back the labor movement. Our movement is being held back by the lack of victories against the employer in the workplaces. A focus on Washington and legislation takes away from a focus on fighting management at work. Many union leaders will say that Bessemer shows that no progress can be made within current laws. The priority should now be pressuring the Democratic Party to change those laws. This will lead us more into the inner life of DC and the Democratic party and further away from organizing in the workplace.

The second danger is to give up on the aim of winning NLRB elections and therefore formal collective bargaining altogether. Even Amazonians United, a rank-and-file activist group of Amazon workers, while based on an impressive record of promoting local struggles over specific demands, especially during the pandemic, has nevertheless distanced itself from established labor unions. Others have now said that what is needed is a corporate and community campaign at Amazon. This means giving up on the aim of winning an official NLRB election. Instead, the union would pressure the company by negative public campaigning and occasional staged brief worker walkouts. The Fight for $15 campaign in the fast food industry is an example of this approach. It means that our objective is to shame the company into doing the right thing by the workers, instead of helping the workers to build a strong organization of their own. Furthermore, in this country today, it’s hard to envision workers’ rights being protected without a collective bargaining contract and an organization to enforce it.

Conclusion

We are engaged in an uphill struggle to rebuild the labor movement in difficult conditions. We will have both victories and defeats. The Labor Notes book Secrets of a Successful Organizer has a chapter entitled, “You’re Going to Lose More Often Than You Win.” This persistent approach has inspired labor organizers in the past and will continue to do so. The final goal is certainly worth it.