NEW YORK, NY – MAY 01: People protest working conditions outside of an Amazon warehouse fulfillment center on May 1, 2020 in the Staten Island borough of New York City. People attending the protest are concerned about Amazon’s handling of the coronavirus and are demanding more safety precautions during the pandemic. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, AL are organizing for union representation with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). This is a historic step towards organizing the first union ever in Amazon, at a time when hundreds of Amazon workers around the globe have gone on strike. While CEO Jeff Bezos’ fortune has surpassed $200 billion, Amazon workers continue to fight for benefits, a living wage, hazard pay, and safe working conditions during a global pandemic. But Amazon is already trying to sabotage workers in Bessemer by delaying the union election and will likely spend millions of dollars on union-busting campaigns. Nevertheless the struggle in Bessemer is a tremendous example to other Amazon workers around the world whose labor reaps huge profits for corporations but almost nothing for the workers themselves. A win for Amazon workers would be a win for us all!
Women in Brazil defend against the invasion of Indigenous territories.
By Nathalie Clarke
Amazonia is the world’s largest tropical rainforest. This 56 million-year-old expanse of forest is home to countless species of life—many of which are still undiscovered. Indigenous Nations have inhabited the land for over 11,000 years and have helped shape the forest as we know it. Capitalist media often depict the Amazon rainforest as a vast, unpopulated expanse of land ripe for the taking. This narrative gives capitalists cover for the rampant deforestation that they’re carrying out to convert the Amazon into farmland, erasing the lives and struggles of its Indigenous People.
Although agribusiness tycoons have been burning the forest for decades, the recent fires in the Amazon dwarf past ones. Since the election of fascist President Jair Bolsonaro, environmental laws have been loosened allowing the big bosses in the mining and farming industries to do what they will. So far in 2019, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) reports an 80 percent increase compared to 2018.
“The [fires are] a direct result of each of Bolsonaro’s incentives to deforestation and his actions to make the environmental code more flexible, allowing the rural capitalists who, incited by the president, make the Amazon burn in flames, increasing their massive estates throughout the region. […] The trail of fire visible from space is a result of the expansion of agribusiness, leaving a trail of the indigenous peoples’ blood, as well as decimating the native fauna and flora” said the Brazilian group Movement of Revolutionary Workers.
These fires occurred just after the Waorani people of Pastaza won a landmark victory: half a million acres of their ancestral lands were to be protected from oil drilling. TWO WEEKS LATER we see a drastic increase in fires set to the Amazon by greedy agri-capitalists, backed by their fascist right-wing government. This is no coincidence; it’s colonization and genocide.
The fascist Bolsonaro told reporters in 1998: “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.”
In Brazil, in Honduras, in Louisiana, and around the world, Indigenous people have led the fight to save the planet—risking their safety and lives. A recent Global Witness report found that 3 environmental activists are killed every week; with Brazil listed as number four on the list of most dangerous places for them. On July 23rd, an Indigenous leader and organizer, Emyra Wajãpi, was found dead in northeastern Brazil. Two men who were members of Brazil’s landless activist group MST were killed in December 2018 in a rural area in the northeast state of Paraíba. The names and stories of Indigenous leaders who have put their lives on the line are innumerable.
But environmental activists don’t just face challenges from logging and mining companies. The capitalist State itself—the police, the government, the law—often criminalizes them because they know that chaining oneself to a pipeline or blocking the path of loggers stops the flow of capital like no protest alone can.
In 2017, 84 members of U.S. Congress suggested that the Department of Justice should be able to prosecute pipeline saboteurs as domestic terrorists according to definitions in the federal criminal code. Bolsonaro’s racist, violent remarks and the criminalization of environmental activists represent a global trend.
We, the global working-class, must understand our role in saving the planet. We, the derrick hands on oil rigs, the foot soldiers in endless imperialist wars, the servers that watch our bosses waste food every single day, the auto-workers and welders, truck drivers and cooks, must see through the lies these fat cat politicians would have us believe. Our neighborhoods and regions are already polluted with toxic chemicals. Our houses get built on toxic soil. Our food sources get depleted. We are demonized for eating meat or for driving a pick-up while the wealthy are allowed to jet off to Europe every other week.
We are condemned for working in oil and gas even though those are the only jobs available in our communities. How have we gotten even the smallest sliver of the pie?
The Guarani people of central-western Brazil said, “We invite everybody to fight alongside indigenous peoples against the genocidal attack which is currently underway, and which has been reactivated by the current government.” Our only answer to the current environmental crisis is ourselves: whether farmers, pharmacists, or food service workers, we are fighters, survivors, hard-workers, and we are infinitely powerful when united.
Amazon workers in over 25 cities and 14 countries walked out their workplaces in solidarity with the global climate strike on September 20. More than 1,800 workers participated in the walkout, protesting the company’s contracts with fossil fuel companies, their shareholders’ funding of climate denying lobbyists and politicians, and the continued contracts with ICE and other agencies responsible for the oppression of refugees.
The group that organized the walk out, the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, recognized the leadership shown by tech workers at Google who last year successfully organized to demand the termination of a company contract with the Pentagon. They also emphasized the global reach of Amazon as well as its multinational workforce of 600,000. They pointed to the enormous potential and responsibility of these workers to become leaders in the movement to fight climate change.
Amazon workers in Shakopee, Minnesota, stop work on March 8. Sign reads: “We are humans, not robots.”
30 Workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minnesota, carried out a three-hour work stoppage on March 8 during the night shift. Most are Somali immigrants who face especially high levels of mistreatment because of their religious and immigrant status.
In December, 100 Somali-American workers and supporters marched on the Shakopee fulfillment center. Employee Khadra Hassan, said, “The head of Amazon [Jeff Bezos] doesn’t know who his workers are or what they’re faced with. We are not getting what we need from Amazon.” Hassan nearly lost miscarried her baby when she passed out while lifting heavy boxes in the extreme heat. She says that she was denied services when she reported to Amazon’s health office, because her benefits had not kicked in yet.
During the work stoppage on March 8, a photo uploaded to Facebook went viral. It showed the workers holding up a sign reading, “We are humans, not robots.” The post also listed their complaints against Amazon, including racist promotion practices, outrageous work intensity, lack of language translation services, lack of health benefits, the need for more bathroom visits, and prayer breaks.
Amazon fulfillment center workers in Poland uploaded a video to the internet expressing solidarity, showing the international scope of the workers’ struggle. Last year on “Black Friday”, an estimated 2,400 Amazon workers went on strike across Europe, in Spain, Italy, Germany, and France.
As workers become increasingly linked up through global markets and digital communications systems, the possibilities of international worker coordination become more and more feasible.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is the richest person in the world, worth an estimated $138 billion. The company’s profits nearly doubled between 2017 and 2018, yet Amazon paid no federal income taxes. All that wealth should go to the working people who actually produce it, and to the betterment of society.. There is no reason that one man should hoard $138 billion dollars, or even a million dollars.
New York workers at Amazon’s Staten Island fulfillment center have publicly launched a campaign to unionize. Employees backing the union have come forward with many concerns about wages and work conditions. These include safety issues, inadequate pay, grueling 12-hour shifts with unreasonable hourly quotas and insufficient breaks, as well as humiliation and abuse.
Warehouse worker, Rashad Long, said, “They talk to you like you’re nothing—all they care about is their numbers. They talk to you like you’re a robot.”
This push comes at a time when Amazon is expected to get more than $1 billion in tax breaks and grants from New York City as part of the Long Island City deal. Tax breaks for corporations come at the expense of the mass of working people. A city’s budget should reflect the pressing needs of the people for affordable housing, childcare, education, health care, and more. Working class New Yorkers (as elsewhere) are struggling to pay rent and put food on the table. Amazon, on the other hand, already enjoys massive profits gained from the sweat of its global workforce (and an army of workers in the U.S. Postal Service, USPS, etc); Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, is the richest man in the world.
As the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) president, Stuart Appelbaum recently said, “If the taxpayers are giving Amazon $3 billion, then taxpayers have the right to demand that Amazon stop being a union-busting company.” The RWDSU is the union that the Staten Island workers are organizing with. The union has also backed the organizing push among workers at Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired last year. As of now, Amazon’s U.S. workforce is not unionized. These initial organizing efforts are, therefore, highly significant.
