[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now to the country's labor movement. There's growing tension among labor activists and academics following the widely COVID unionization attempt at that Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Remember the union lost the vote 1,798 to 738. This as the PRO Act a bill that would limit corporate action in union battles has now passed in the House but goes on to an uncertain future. In the Senate many doubt it will wind up on president Biden's desk despite his support.

Following the union's loss in Alabama, labor leaders are debating who to blame. Some say Goliath corporations like Amazon are too powerful and unfair labor law skews union fights in the company's favor, which is where the PRO Act would come in if it was passed. They say companies like Amazon leverage the system on top of engaging in bad faith practices to discourage, yes votes on unionization. Other labor thinkers like my next guest believe while the deck is stacked against workers, the flawed tactics of organizers is partly why Amazon employees in Bessemer voted against the union.

Here to make that case further is Jane McAlevey organizer, Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley's Labor Center, and strike correspondent at The Nation where you can read her now much-discussed piece Blowout in Bessemer: A Postmortem on the Amazon Campaign. She's also the author of the book, A Collective Bargain, union Organizing, and The Fight for Democracy. The paperback version of that book is out today. Hi, Jane, welcome back to WNYC.

Jane McAlevey: Hey Brian. It is great to be here. Can we just start with where Amy Walters began the discussion about the shifts in the census?

Brian: Sure, this goes back to two segments ago for people who weren't strapped into their seats yet, but go ahead.

Jane: Oh, my God. First of all, how are you not strapped into your seat? When she opened up the discussion on your show an hour ago about the census and she literally opened up with labor practices as the reason for the shift in the population of the United States and specifically she articulated governors in those states where growth is happening including citing North Carolina, as apparently a new home for Apple, a big Apple expansion, she cited the promise of "her words." I'm going to change them, but her words were, "A more relaxed set of labor rules." I actually think that gets to the heart of the story and so many things have happened just this week in labor news. I actually think we have a lot to talk about.

Brian: Do you want to expand on that with respect to states in general and then we'll center it on Amazon?

Jane: Yes, sure. And/or we should center it on the new white house task force on worker organizing and empowerment, which itself was shocking. Executive order issued two days ago by the president United States. That's what I mean this week has been a crazy explosion of news. What was shocking to me is the fact that in a story about the census. One of the first things a reporter as sharp as Amy Walters raised was that a primary reason according to her for why we have a shift in population is because there's a shift in jobs happening.

That's linked to employers literally making decisions about where to open up headquarters and production facilities, based on where they can abuse workers, pay them less, treat them badly, deny them a living wage, and by the way, deny them a fair shot at forming a union. There is an extraordinary link between the need for the PRO Act in this country, that's the piece of legislation that you just mentioned pass the House, which would somewhat level the playing field in how unionization elections take place.

I found it astounding that, that was one of the opening lines in a major discussion about the census. That so much motivation of the employer class in the United States is about how do they avoid treating their workers with dignity and respect. That was just a shocking opening to a story on the census. I think frankly both underscore the need for the PRO Act and underscores why companies like Amazon and many others, by the way-- This starts in the-- Even the discussion about the great migration you were having, this is a discussion about continuing a trend of employers moving out of states where unionization rules are, let's just say more fair, to shifting to the states where the unionization rules are less fair.

Brian: How did that affect the attempt to unionize at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, in particular?

Jane: Well, I would say a few things. One is, first of all, there is no question and I say this in the article, the number one reason why the election I think turned out, unfortunately, the way it did is because of how the deck is stacked against workers. There's no question about that. Having myself lived through many campaigns with what we call-- There's a language for this which I described in the book what we call an A-level employer campaign.

That means the employers in this country since 1947, when something called the Taft-Hartley Amendment Act was passed that amended the National Labor Relations Act, if you want to get into geeking, and numbers and facts since 1947 essentially what happens in a state like Alabama. That's what we call a right-to-work state, although I like to call it a right-to-work for less state.

The rules in right-to-work states, which is not the same rules that we have in New York, the rules there are just, in general, make it very, very difficult for workers to form unions, but by the way, had Amazon, just from your lightning round there, had Amazon even come to New York, the truth is what the Amazons of the world are allowed to do in any state right now is, one, campaign aggressively on work time with every single worker, pull them into mandatory meetings which a worker cannot refuse to attend. They must attend to them.

Amazon did this constantly in the campaign in Alabama. They violated all norms and rules that you could never do in most western democracies that are actually fully legal in the United States. I don't think there's any question that Amazon is setting up warehouses in states where the minimum wage is abysmally low and where workers' rights are even worse than what they would even be in New York. What the PRO Act does just to put a point on this, the PRO Act reverses the ability.

One of the things it does, it reverses the ability of the employers to relentlessly campaign and in my own experience occasionally terrorize workers in campaigns when they're trying to form a union. In the southern states, we know by analyzing them, and I call this out frankly in all three of my books, including the current book, there's a direct correlation between how much workers earn in wages, what their benefits packages are, what their standard of living is if they live and work in a right-to-work state versus if they live and work in a slightly more favorable state. Right now, it's 50-50. half the states.

Half the states in the United States, are under even more draconian laws than the other half of the states which tend to track blue states, red states in terms of politics. The correlations are extraordinary and it should not be as hard as it is to form a union in the United States of America. That said, there are approaches to trying to form a union as up against an A-level employer campaign that are essential that workers carry out, and that's some of what I was highlighting in the article.

Brian: Right. So far for listeners who haven't read your article, you're saying things that you and just about everybody in the labor movement agree with each other on where you started to disagree, I think, and where your article became so controversial within the movement is, for example, you argue against the way organizers framed the election. You're right. Experienced organizers never framed the question as, "Do you want the right to vote whether or not to have a union? We asked them to commit to vote yes, and to sign the petition saying so." What's the difference?

Jane: In one case, you are simply asking workers-- I think the difference should be clear, but let me put a point on it. When you ask workers, "Do you want to have the right to vote yes or no?" You're not actually asking them whether or not they're supporting the union. You're just asking them do they believe in the right to have a vote. That's a radically different question than, "Are you prepared with your co-workers to vote yes to build a union to form a union in this corporation?"

That's a radically different question. One is giving you essentially the information that you're trying to understand upfront which is how many of those workers are actually prepared to vote yes for the union, versus voting yes to have the right to have an election.

Brian: Yes. One is really meta. The other is right to the point.

Jane: Yes. It gives you different outcomes in terms of your understanding of whether and how much support you have on the front end. The main thing that I wrote about in the article really had more to do with, again, getting into numbers and your self-described geekiness. It was more about the central question early on of whether or not there was really a path to victory.

When the union filed what's called the petition to hold the election, they filed it on 1,500 workers, meaning they believed that there were 1,500 workers and what we call the bargaining unit, so much of this gets into legalistic vernacular, but they believed that there were 1,500 workers who they were petitioning to have the right to have a vote, to have a union. Essentially, Amazon came back and said there's 5,800. The union had several weeks by which to try and gather.

Okay, now we get into numbers again, under National Labor Relations Act, as it currently exists, the NLRA, you have to have what's called a showing of interest of 30%. 30% of the workers must, that's a minimum, must sign either a petition, the way I described, or an authorization card, saying that they want to hold an election. If you're taking the election route, by the way, we should discuss it. There are other ways that you can form a union that do not include holding an election but let's just stick to the election for a minute.

When that number went from 1,500 to 5,800, veteran organizers, and I would say, this is not controversial among veteran organizers in the United States as the Washington Post pointed out in their story. Veteran organizers basically assumed there wasn't a path to victory at that point because we knew the employer campaign, what we call an A-level employer campaign. What Amazon did, frankly, was not unique. It was the norm. They just did it on steroids because they're a big company.

In some of the elections that I've described in all three of my books, we have faced the exact same kind of tactical warfare, what they call the mandatory captive audience meetings, individual one-on-one meetings. Meetings where if you raise your hand to even question what's being told to you in a mandatory forced meeting where you must listen to anti-union propaganda, if you even raise your hand, your manager is probably standing on the wall and they're going to take a picture of your badge. What do you think that says to the worker who's going to even try and raise a question about what a union-busting law firm is saying to them?

Brian: Yes, very intimidating.

Jane: We shouldn't have to live in a country where to win a union campaign, you have to follow like X number-- A ton of rules to actually stand a chance at winning, but that is the country that we live in right now. Just like Georgia was a very tough double Senate race, and Stacey Abrams, I thought did an amazing job outlining what they had to do to win those two Senate races, by the hair of their chinny chin chin. It's a very similar discussion, I think.

Brian: Listeners, anybody have a question for Jane McAlevey, or an experience or a story from your background as a union organizer, your experience with Amazon, just as an interested person who maybe read her piece in The Nation and read some of the responses or analysis of it that's out there about why structurally the country's laws were biased against the union in the Amazon Alabama fight, but also ways in which the union might have approached it more successfully, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280 or anything from her book, A Collective Bargain: Unions Organizing, & the Fight for Democracy, out today in paperback.

You also took issue with some other union messaging saying slogans like, "The union is on your side," make the union sound like another big unknown entity, as opposed to fellow workers. You would have to pay dues to them no less, but the union is on your side, making them sound like this outside thing. What might've been better language?

Jane: Workers uniting together can make change. I think that's just one of many examples. There's something called semantics, again, worker organizers should not have to become experts in how to have these kinds of conversations to form a union. I just want to keep reiterating that, but if in fact, we're facing an A-level employer, one of the things the employer's going to do early on is try to make the idea of the union, what we call a third party, meaning there's the employer, there's the workers, and then there's something called the union.

A foundational principle of effective organizing against an A-level employer campaign says you never discuss the union as something other than the workers. When I'm working with workers who are going up against, and I think one of the stories in the book that you mentioned in my new book, we were going up against IRI consultants. This is a top union-busting firm in the United States of America. By the way, it is who Google has hired and when four workers were-- What we saw in the headlines, by the way, a couple of years ago, if you remember this was 20,000 Google workers walked off the job.

That was seen as like an incredible moment when 20,000 Google workers shut the company down by walking out for I think it was a multi-hour protest and it got headline news all over the world. Now, what people don't know is that then Google went and hired a consultant firm called IRI consultants. In a campaign in Philadelphia that I describe in a collective bargain, we were going up against that same consulting firm.

When you're having a conversation with the workers, you center it on, when you and your coworkers are strong enough to form the kind of organization capable of winning that which you want, that means you have formed the kind of-- We don't even use the word union. It's about what you and your co-workers are capable of doing to form the kind of an organization that it's going to let you win that what you want and stop the egregious behavior of, for example, Amazon forcing workers to urinate in bottles, which is now well-documented and no longer in dispute because they have not even enough time to get in their big factories to the bathroom. It's an outrageous company.

On the question of "Let's deal with the conditions under which we're living right now, which are deeply unfair, totally outrageous, outside of the norm of any Western democracy in terms of what a worker has to go through," there are a set of principles which veteran organizers I think are steeped in, and which themselves don't always work, but we stand a much better chance of winning.

Brian: Kate in Bayville, New Jersey. You're on WNYC with Jane McAlevey. Hi, Kate?

Kate Hi, thank you for taking my call, Jane. I'm a teacher, I'm a very active member of my association. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to the Janus decision that came down a couple of years ago and whether or not you would consider that union-busting because essentially what it does is it allows people to opt-out of the union, not pay any union dues, but then they reap the benefit of the contract that the union negotiates for its members.

Brian: Yes, and there's an Amazon in Alabama hooked to this too. Jane, you want to answer her question directly first?

Jane: Yes. Absolutely. The Janus decision, just to explain it a little bit. 2018, the Supreme Court makes a ruling that essentially what we were just describing, the rulemaking of a right-to-work state, where workers don't have to be part of the union. Essentially, what the Supreme Court did in a-- Yes, the answer is yes to your call or to Kate. It was a very targeted and very strategic piece of litigation that went before the Supreme Court.

That for the public sector, so for the largest segment of organized workers that remain in unions in the United States, which is in the public sector, it's no longer in the private sector, and particularly since Kate is calling from being a teacher, the fight at the Supreme Court centered over teacher's unions because this is also a fact that matters a lot in the Janus decision.

Teachers specifically are the largest single segment of unionized workers in this country, which I'm going to argue and I do argue with my new book is part of why the attack on teachers, the hateful organized attack by the Koch brothers and the organized right has been so focused on teachers is simply because they're the largest unionized block of workers left in the United States of America. So Janus decision was absolutely anti-union. It's the third in a series of decisions that began in 2012 with Knoxville, Tennessee, and we are rolling right through.

I think people keep forgetting that we are looking at a Supreme Court that when it had less conservative judges made three slamming rulings in a row against workers in this country having the right to form a strong organization themselves. I expect quite frankly, more really hostile rulings coming from an even more hostile court, which takes us back to why the PRO Act is so very important and whether or not it stands a challenge at the Supreme Court will be very, very interesting, but it also takes me back to why it matters that we use the very best practices available when we're trying to help workers form unions.

Brian: The way it relates to the unsuccessful attempt to organize warehouse workers at Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama, is that, correct me if I'm wrong, Amazon put out a website saying union means union dues, even though because of that Janus Supreme Court decision in right-to-work, Alabama, it's not true. Anybody who joined the union would not be forced to pay dues, but Amazon sold that message falsely to the workers.

Jane: Well, they didn't sell it falsely to their workers, the truth is they don't have to pay dues. They put up a website called Do It Without Dues.

Brian: They told the workers that they would have to pay dues. That was the false part and the union failed to counter it. I think that's part of your critique.

Jane: Yes, It's not exactly so. What Amazon did, which again, very typical on the union-busting campaign is they put up an entire website called Do It Without Dues. I outlined in my story that I've had employers put televisions, stereo systems, food, depending on who the worker was on a table called mandatory captive audience meeting and say to those workers, "You could have this instead of paying dues to the union and 'that third party' calling it this other entity."

At the discussion about dues that I was raising in the analysis of the campaign, was when the Do It Without Dues website went up, that Amazon put up, the response was from the leadership of the union to over and over and over explain that the company was lying because it is a right-to-work for less state legally and workers don't have to pay dues. Again, from a veteran organizer's perspective, we just would never talk about dues that way.

What we would say is the reason why you and your coworkers are going to need to pay dues is because to go up against a behemoth like Amazon, you're going to have to form the strongest kind of organization and that's going to take a lot of resources. Again, totally different approach to how you would respond to that question.

Brian: Another listener question from Steven on Twitter, "Why did the union try Alabama as an organizing location versus anywhere else that's at least moderately pro-union like the Northeast since Amazon has warehouses all over the place?"

Jane: I think it's a very good question. I think in fairness the intentions were good here just to be clear. I think that they had what we call a hot shop and a hot shop by definition essentially means something is happening and a ton of workers are suddenly interested in a union that's different than what we might call a strategic campaign. All of this is outlined in my book. In a hot shop I think if you are not a veteran organizer, you can quickly get confused that an initial burst of energy is going to be able to be sustained once the employer union-busting campaign begins. Again, it's part of what I think was an error of judgment in this case.

Alabama added to it, but what was even more interesting is the factory opened under COVID conditions. Amazon opened the factory I think in March of 2020. It was March or April of 2020. By early summer, a number of workers were rightly angry about the kind of conditions that they were facing in that plant. There was amazing testimony delivered by Jennifer Bates, one of the workers to Congress about the conditions that they were facing. What we know from decades of academic literature and very good studies, Kate Bronfenbrenner at Cornell University did the most groundbreaking research on this.

Most workers and that's backed up by the Gallup poll, Brian, the most recent Gallup polls that say 65% of American workers feel very favorably to a union and if given the choice would want one. We know a majority of workers start out wanting a union. That's normal at this point, thank goodness. The sick and unfortunate reality is that that's before the union-busting campaign begins where they begin to terrorize. I've had union busters in campaigns against registered nurses. Most of my life is working with registered nurses trying to form unions, we've had campaigns where union busters with security clothing would follow registered nurses who were nurse leaders, who they knew were leaders in the campaign.

As the nurse was punching out the clock from her shift and walking to a car in the evening, in the dark, follow her, put their hand up on the door to her car, and this is all in legal documents for my first book, put their arms up, blocking her from opening the car door, putting their arm around her, and saying, "We really think you should reconsider whether or not you want to form a union." I'm considering that way over the line in terms of what should be legal behavior in this country, of what union avoidance firms. Amazon is one giant union avoidance firm. That's why they're prioritizing putting their facilities in the south. To Steve's question--

Brian: Are you saying-- Go ahead to Steve's question. I apologize.

Jane: To Steve's question, the truth is it isn't just a question of it was Alabama the place that we should start, a place that's cadmium red, red, red, red. It's also that the workers had no relationships formed yet. Part of overcoming the employer resistance and terror campaign is, can you identify workers who have deep relationships who can help each other get through what we know is going to be a very, very frankly immoral campaign being run by the company? The facility was too new for workers to have those kinds of relationships. It's one of the other things that I've pointed out before. Alabama, not Alabama, there's Amazon. What's interesting about Amazon and why believe workers will win.

Let me just say, I believe workers are going to organize Amazon. I believe that that is going to happen in our near future because of the company's just-in-time production because of a guarantee of one and two-day delivery systems, they have to site plants all over the country. If you look at a map of where their facilities are, their sortation facilities, they have all these different kinds of facilities. When you guarantee someone same-day delivery or one-day delivery or two-day delivery, first of all, you can't have your plant in China. You might produce the junk you're selling there someplace else.

If you're going to deliver it, you have to have an army of workers driving and delivering, and you have to have an army of workers and sadly working next to a bunch of robots packing up those boxes to get it to everyone. By the way, consumers listening to this really need to think twice about spending their life, even in a pandemic taking a short route to products by using a company like Amazon. They have to have facilities all over the United States. I would argue in a strategic approach to that company, yes to Steve's point, we should be looking at places where--

you saw the reaction to Amazon coming to New York, I heard you ask in the quick round you were just doing with one of the candidates running for mayor of the city. In New York, part of what-- By the way, getting into debates, there was invading the labor movement inside of New York about whether or not that Amazon facility should come. What some people said was, "Yes, sure. Let them come if they agree to what we call card check and neutrality," which is a process by which workers by simply forming an authorization card. If a majority of workers sign a petition or a union card saying they want a union, they can demand the right to have a union and the national labor relations board can certify them as a legal union.

In New York, the debate was, "Well, if Amazon comes, let's place that condition on them." The question of whether or not let's say, Governor Cuomo would have even allowed that I think became-- There were so many debates around it. You can see that in a state like New York, community-based organizations and a lot of labor unions were very capable of fighting back against Amazon. In Alabama, that's going to be a hell of a hard thing to do.

Brian: There we leave it with Jane McAlevey, Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley's Labor Center and strike correspondent at The Nation and author of the book, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy, which is how today in it's paperback edition. Jane, we always appreciate when you come on. Thanks so much.

Jane: Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.