Bessemer Fails Union Organizing 101

                

The best article I have read about the union election at Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama was by Jane McAlevey in the Nation,  “Blowout in Bessemer: A Postmortem on the Amazon Campaign”.  The article details the steps, missteps the union took in the campaign.  It was hard for me to read about this campaign.  There should never have been an election.  The missteps and utter ineptitude of the union effort in Alabama was torture for me to read about.  More about that in a moment.

Now retired, I was a union organizer here in Oregon for over fifteen years, and pretty successful, with over thirty successful campaigns for AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and several successful campaigns for the ILWU, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the most notable one the Union at Powells Books, Local 5.   My union elections were both in the public sector, Oregon’s law for public employees, and in the private sector under the National Labor Relations Act, the Federal law.

So what went wrong in Bessemer?  First, the union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) grossly miscalculated the size of the potential bargaining unit.  When the union filed for the election in November they thought there were 1,500 employees at the warehouse.  There were close to 6,000 employees.  How could the union be so wrong?  

The first step of an organizer is to assess the size of the bargaining unit.  From the size, the number of potential members, an assessment can be made of how much support is needed to win an election.  This is Union Organizing 101 and the Bessemer effort failed miserably. 

The Labor Board requires a showing of interest, a signed union card of minimally thirty percent in order to hold an election.  The filing of the union in November did not meet this minimum threshold because they had no idea how many people worked for Amazon at the warehouse.

In my experience no reputable union organizer would ever file for an election with less than sixty or seventy percent of the employees signed up and committed to vote yes.  The union in Bessemer after the initial filing collected more union cards but the number was still grossly inadequate.  They filed with two thousand signed cards in mid-December.  This was not even forty percent of the workforce committed to support a union.  No union organizer I knew in my career would call for an election without a majority of employees committed to voting for and forming a union.  Why would they do it at Bessemer?

In addition, when I was collecting union authorization cards I made it clear that signing the card was a commitment to vote yes for the union.  It was not asking for a union vote which according to the reporting is what was done at Bessemer.  My technique was not unique, most other organizers I knew did the same, they wanted a signed card and a commitment to vote for the union. The card was not a petition for a vote.

Finally when Amazon made the typical pitch that members would be paying dues for nothing.  The union said well of course you don’t  have to pay dues.  While this is true, in many states in the U.S including Alabama, so called “Right to Work” states employees are not required to pay union dues, why would the union make such a statement?   The union is there to provide a service, it is not free.  The way to counter Amazon’s argument is to talk about the service the union can provide; a union contract with work rules in writing and enforceable, the respect every employee deserves, a seniority system that rewards hard work and time on the job with more pay.  Of course the union needs the support from employees in order to be a strong advocate.  It is also true that unions are weaker in these “Right to Work” states because some employees get these services and do not pay dues. Without adequate support from members the union simply does not have the funds to provide proactive and competent representation.  

Due to this malfeasance of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) it was particularly galling to me that this election was written about in the mainstream press as a bellwether.  Will the other hundreds of thousands of Amazon workers become the new face of labor?  Even the President of the United States lent his support for the effort in Bessemer.  

Finally, the union will be charging illegal activity by Amazon.  And while this is probably true, there probably were violations of law, the penalties are so weak, most companies just consider them the price of doing business.  So, yes labor law in the U.S is woefully weak, but if the union hasn’t followed the most basic steps, outlined above, Organizing 101, they have no hope of being successful, strong or weak labor laws.  This union should be ostracized by other unions for their sloppy work. I doubt that will happen, but it should.

This malfeasance unfortunately will reverberate beyond this union effort in Alabama.  And this is what is most upsetting to me.  The failure of the union in Alabama will hamper union organizing efforts elsewhere both by Amazon employees and others in need of union representation.  This is the tragedy of Bessemer.