Thread by @doctorow

While many Amazon warehouse workers in Europe have unionized, its brutalized, underpaid, routinely maimed US workforce remains tragically unorganized, thanks to the US's weak labor laws that make forming a union far harder than at any time since the Gilded Age.

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But all that may be about to change: 6000 warehouse workers in #BHM1, the massive Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, AL, will vote next month on a push to unionize under the @RWDSU.

npr.org/2021/01/15/948…

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Amazon, like other tech giants, is absolutely reliant on building and maintaining a competitive advantage by exploiting technology to drive wages ever downward while ducking responsibility for harming workers.

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Big Tech is pants-wettingly afraid of unionization, and that goes double for any solidarity between high-paid tech workers and misclassified/outsourced warehouse workers and other "unskilled" laborers.

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Amazon has gone so far as to hire the Pinkertons, renowned as some of history's most violent anti-worker terrorists, to bust unionization drives in its shops:

pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how…

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But while the Pinkertons are engaging in covert surveillance, infiltration, and retaliation, Amazon is also running a soft-power op called #DoItWithoutDues, grounded in the idiotic lie that unions cost workers more than they gain:

doitwithoutdues.com

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The @techworkersco has fired back with a debunking site, #DoItWithRealPower, that copies the layout from Amazon's astroturf site and rebuts it, point by point:

justdue.it

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This would be a super-fun, gnarly copyright/fair use case (law school profs, take note), but the substance is even more fascinating: you won't pay dues until your union gets a contract, which will get you higher pay.

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Not just pay, but also an effective grievance procedure to address Amazon warehouses' manifestly unsafe working conditions.

bamazonunion.org/amazons-workin…

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"On average, unionized workers earn 19% more than non-unionized workers so, if you make the average $31k a year, a union could win you an increase in YOUR PAYCHECK of $5,900 annually. That’s a whole lot more dinners, school supplies, gifts, and dignity."

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The site ends with a link to the @BAmazonUnion drive:

bamazonunion.org

eof/

ETA: if you'd like to read this as a surveillance-free, tracking-free, ad-free blog post, here's a permalink: pluralistic.net/2021/01/19/dea…