How Union Organizers Will Continue Their Fight With Amazon

"The lopsided vote against a union at Amazon's warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, was a major disappointment to organized labor..." writes the New York Times. "Yet the defeat doesn't mark the end of the campaign against Amazon so much as a shift in strategy." The article notes unions and other labor groups enjoyed more success when opposing Amazon's plans for a New York headquarters by joining with local politicians and nonprofit organizations: In interviews, labor leaders said they would step up their informal efforts to highlight and resist the company's business and labor practices rather than seek elections at individual job sites, as in Bessemer. The approach includes everything from walkouts and protests to public relations campaigns that draw attention to Amazon's leverage over its customers and competitors... The strategy reflects a paradox of the labor movement: While the Gallup Poll has found that roughly two-thirds of Americans approve of unions — up from half in 2009, a low point — it has rarely been more difficult to unionize a large company. One reason is that labor law gives employers sizable advantages. The law typically forces workers to win elections at individual work sites of a company like Amazon, which would mean hundreds of separate campaigns. It allows employers to campaign aggressively against unions and does little to punish employers that threaten or retaliate against workers who try to organize. Lawyers representing management say that union membership has declined — from about one-third of private-sector workers in the 1950s to just over 6 percent today — because employers have gotten better at addressing workers' needs... But labor leaders say wealthy, powerful companies have grown much bolder in pressing the advantages that labor law affords them.... [E]ven as elections have often proven futile, labor has enjoyed some success over the years with an alternative model — what Dr. Ruth Milkman, a sociologist of labor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, called the "air war plus ground war." The idea is to combine workplace actions like walkouts (the ground war) with pressure on company executives through public relations campaigns that highlight labor conditions and enlist the support of public figures (the air war). The Service Employees International Union used the strategy to organize janitors beginning in the 1980s, and to win gains for fast-food workers in the past few years, including wage increases across the industry. "There are almost never any elections," Dr. Milkman said. "It's all about putting pressure on decision makers at the top...." Many labor officials urged Congress to increase its scrutiny of Amazon's labor practices, including its use of mandatory meetings, texts and signs to discourage workers in Alabama from unionizing...But after Bessemer, many labor leaders think Congress should go further, letting workers unionize companywide or industrywide, not just by work site as is typical... Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, agreed that the key to taking on a company as powerful as Amazon was to make it easier for workers to unionize across a company or industry. "It's not going to happen one warehouse at a time," she said. But Ms. Henry said workers and politicians could pressure Amazon to come to the bargaining table long before the law formally requires it.

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