Workers at three Amazon locations have opened drives to form a union in this mammoth corporation that employs over one million workers in the U.S. alone. Workers at two Starbucks cafes in Buffalo, N.Y. have won union representation in a vote.
Amazon and pro-union supporters held protests in the U.S., Western Europe and Bangladesh on Nov. 26 − so-called Black Friday − at Amazon warehouses to demand workers’ rights and union rights. The actions focused on logistics workers in the U.S. and Europe, and textile production workers in Bangladesh.
Other actions are planned for Jan. 12, birthday of the centi-billionaire top boss of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and for the Martin Luther King, Jr holiday. (https://supportamazonworkers.org/jan12/)
Demonstration in Times
Square, Dec. 22. Photo: Workers World/Mundo Obrero
This may seem like a small beginning. Still, it has already raised the hopes of millions of workers in the U.S. and thousands of union activists that something big is underway. It has raised the hopes of worker organizers that of reversing decline in union membership over the past 68 years.
Some voices, among communists and unionists, and among observers in the corporate media, have spoken of the history of the upsurge of the CIO industrial union in the 1930s and are asking if a new wave might be coming.
The New York Times, The Boston Globe, for example − have reported the Starbucks and Amazon organizing drive with big headlines and mentioned the 1930s. The Times normally reports labor news in the business section. Most articles are about strikes that were lost, or splits between rank-and-file workers and union leaders.
In the fall of 2021 unionized workers in the U.S. struck more than they had for decades. In the big strikes at Kellogg’s cereal manufacturers and John Deere tractors and bulldozers, the striking workers forced their unions’ leaders to continue strikes after leaders had reached agreements with the bosses.
