Win for Workers Across America: Amazon Union Victory Inspires Progressives
Hey folks, apparently everything is coming up Milhouse; at least for American workers trying to organize against the corporate giants, that is.
It turns out that the Starbucks Workers United organizational effort isn’t the only good news on the docket last week. As I mentioned in a late update to yesterday's post, roughly eight thousand workers at a Staten Island Amazon Warehouse have united behind organizer Chris Smalls to form the Amazon Labor Union; becoming the first group of workers to defeat Amazon’s infamous union busting tactics. Although the ALU’s model of organizing differs from the Starbucks Workers United model, the principles behind the campaigns, and the people-power they’re conducted with reveal these movements to be brothers from another mother.
To call this a mere upset, doesn't do what Smalls and his compatriots have accomplished here proper justice. These folks just chin checked Jeff Bezos and celebrated by clowning him on the news afterwards. To get a better idea of what this means for labor and some portions of the left, let's look at this April 1st, 2022 summary by Brett Wilkins on Common Dreams. Inside we find a round-up of left-leaning voices and organizations praising the workers, and noting that Amazon's brutal corporate exploitation has rendered the organizing iron hot as hell. Here's an example:
"Varshini Prakash, executive director of the youth-led climate group Sunrise Movement, cheered Friday's "win for workers across America," while hailing "worker victories at giant corporations like Amazon and Starbucks" as "part of a growing wave of activism that is paving the way for a more just economy."
While this certainly is a "watershed moment" for modern American labor, and that is something to celebrate, I personally couldn't help but notice one of the comments Smalls himself made about the union's victory. Namely, "this is the catalyst for the revolution." Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying eight thousand Amazon warehouse workers organizing into a union, means the revolution is on its way automatically; and I doubt that's what Smalls meant either. What I am saying however, is that learning how to organize a union against corporate power, makes it easier to organize against capitalist power.
Furthermore, when you get right down to it, the solution to virtually every pressing problem in the Pig Empire, from imperialism, to the rise of fascism, and especially including climate crisis, is to organize the larger labor class towards the ultimate destruction of capitalism. How are you going to overthrow the ruling class, if you can't even organize a union to check the tyranny of your employer? No, a union isn't a revolution, and neither really, is democratic socialism; but you don't get there, without organized and empowered workers acting as one to protect their class interests against capitalist predation.
Six years ago, I saw the doomed campaign of an independent democratic socialist Senator from Vermont, birth a whole new generation of young people further left than he was, and proud to call themselves socialists. Two summers ago, I saw outrage at murderpig violence against (primarily) Black men, transform into an American uprising that lasted a whole season. At the end of last week, I saw a man that Amazon fired and underestimated, turn the tables on arguably the most powerful corporation on earth. You know, the funny thing about an avalanche is that it always starts as a snowball or two, rolling down a hill.
My advice to the ruling classes in the Pig Empire is to sleep well; while you can.
nina illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst.
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