Amazon Workers On Staten Island Vote To Form Union In Historic Upset

The world's largest online retailer is no longer union-free in the U.S., following a remarkable election victory by an independent union.

In a historic win for the labour movement, warehouse workers on Staten Island, New York, have voted to form the first union inside an Amazon facility in the U.S.

Employees at the company’s fulfillment centre known as JFK8 will be joining a new independent labour group, the Amazon Labor Union, following an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. The union delivered a stunning upset in the vote count held Thursday and Friday, winning 2,654 to 2,131.

If the labour board certifies the results to make them official, then the world’s largest online retailer will be obligated to bargain with a union representing several thousand of its employees, something it has never had to do except overseas.

Meanwhile, the labour board conducted a separate vote count Thursday for a different Amazon facility considering unionization, in Bessemer, Alabama. Workers voted 875 to 993 against joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, but more than 400 other ballots have been challenged and remain unopened, meaning the union could still win after the board determines those voters’ eligibility.

“[Amazon knows] that people don’t want to be here long, that these jobs break you down physically and mentally.” - Chris Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union

Amazon has put up stiff resistance against union organizing efforts, inundating workers with anti-union messaging and holding frequent meetings with workers to discourage them from signing union cards or voting for union representation. Disclosure filings that Amazon submitted to the Labor Department on Thursday indicate the company spent $4.3 million last year on labour consultants who help employers defeat organizing drives.

Until this week, those strategies had worked.

The labour victory in Staten Island is all the more remarkable because of the union’s unlikely roots. Amazon Labor Union, or ALU, was formed just last year by a group of workers in New York. It is led by Chris Smalls, a former Amazon worker whom the company controversially fired early in the pandemic after he spoke out about safety concerns, and Derrick Palmer, who works at JFK8.

Most unions have a large staff, including professional organizers, who are paid through workers’ dues to carry out the union’s work. But ALU has not been around long enough to have the resources of an established union. Smalls, Palmer and their fellow pro-union workers organized relentlessly outside the Staten Island facility, holding cookouts, speaking with workers about the campaign and urging them to sign union cards.

The group battled the company on TikTok and Twitter and raised money through GoFundMe.

Chris Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union.VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Now, the young union will face an even greater challenge: negotiating a first collective bargaining agreement with one of the most powerful companies in the world. It can take years for a union to secure a first contract, and some never manage to. Amazon would have a strong incentive not to offer the union a decent deal, for fear it would only encourage more unionization elsewhere.

Last year, Smalls told HuffPost that one of the greatest challenges to organizing Amazon is dealing with the company’s high turnover. Many workers, he said, don’t stay around long enough to be turned into union supporters.

“That’s the name of Amazon’s game: Hire and fire,” he said at the time. “They know that people don’t want to be here long, that these jobs break you down physically and mentally.”

ALU has called for a wage of at least $30 per hour to accommodate New York’s high cost of living, as well as greater job security. Amazon workers must meet the company’s well-known production quotas or they can lose their jobs with no recourse, something Smalls has said needs to change.

“We demand to be treated as human beings and not mere replaceable appendages to the robots and algorithms that run the warehouses,” ALU says on its website.

The union originally petitioned the labour board for an election last year, then withdrew it ahead of a vote. After gathering more signatures, the union returned to the board to file its petition with greater support from workers.

Later this month, workers at another, smaller Amazon facility on Staten Island are expected to vote on whether to join the ALU as well.

Source: Huff post

Ukraine-Russia war: Over 6.4M people displaced in Ukraine, 12M stranded or unable to flee

More than 12 million people were stranded in areas affected by Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, while over 6.4 million Ukrainians were displaced, but remain in the country, as of Wednesday, the United Nations-run Global Protection Cluster said Friday.

The staggering statistics were compiled via survey by the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, and shared in Friday’s "Update on IDP Figures in Ukraine." An "IDP" is an internally displaced person, or someone who was displaced from their home but remains in the country.

The IOM found that an estimated 6.48 million IDPs were reported in Ukraine as of Wednesday, according to the Protection Cluster, a coalition of non-governmental, United Nations and humanitarian organizations.

But the coalition notes that IDP figures "are only one side of the humanitarian impact of the military offensive against Ukraine."

More than 12 million people are estimated to remain stranded in areas impacted by Russia’s ongoing invasion. Those 12 million people also include those who are "unable to leave due to heightened security risks, destruction of bridges and roads, as well as lack of resources or information on where to find safety and accommodation," the report states.

Meanwhile, Ukraine still lacks "humanitarian corridors with satisfactory security guarantees for the safe evacuation of civilians" – a need that the coalition called "the most pressing and urgent."

Also on Friday, the UN’S High Commissioner for Human Rights reported 2,149 civilian casualties in Ukraine from Feb. 24 through midnight Friday. Of those 2,149 people, 816 were killed and 1,333 were hurt, the office reported.

Officials have said they believe the actual figures are considerably higher.

The UN Refugee Agency estimates that more than 3.2 million refugees have fled Ukraine since Feb. 24.

Source: Fox News

What is the Holodomor?

🇺🇦🌾At the entrance to the memorial park in Kiev, there is a sculpture of an extremely thin girl with a very sad looking face, holding handful of wheat ears in her hands. Behind her back is the Candle of Remembrance, a monument with details reminiscent of authentic embroidery that can be found on traditional Ukrainian costumes. This is a monument that commemorates a historical event known as the Holodomor.

What is the Holodomor?

☭ After the end of the First World War, Ukraine was an independent state, but in 1919 the Soviet Union "sucked" it into the community of Soviet states. The Ukrainians, who even then considered themselves a Central European people like the Poles and not an Eastern European like the Russians, tried to restore Ukraine's independence.

🥖 In 1932, not wanting to lose control of Europe's main granary, Stalin resorted to one of the most heinous forms of terror against one nation. In the process of nationalization, he took away the grain-producing land from the Ukrainian peasants, but also all its offerings, thus creating an artificial famine. The goal was to "teach Ukrainians to be smart" so that they would no longer oppose official Moscow. Thus the people who produced the most grain in Europe were left without a crumb of bread. The peak of the Holodomor was in the spring of 1933. In Ukraine at that time, 17 people died of hunger every minute, more than 1,000 every hour, and almost 24,500 every day! People were literally starving to death in the streets.

🇷🇺 Stalin settled the Russian population in the emptied Ukrainian villages. During the next census, there was a large shortage of population. Therefore, the Soviet government annulled the census, destroyed the census documents, and the enumerators were shot or sent to the gulag, in order to completely hide the truth. Their poison gas was hunger. Their Hitler was Stalin. Their Holocaust was the Holodomor. For them, fascist Berlin was Soviet Moscow, and their concentration camp was the Soviet Union. Today, 28 countries around the world present the Holodomor as genocide against Ukrainians, which you could not learn about in school, because almost all evidence was destroyed and victims were covered up for decades, survivors were forcibly silenced by not having the right to vote until recently.

The Holodomor at that time broke the Ukrainian resistance, but it made the desire for Ukraine's independence from Russia eternal.