On April 1, more than 2,500 workers at the JFK8 Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, NY voted to unionize with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU). The result was unexpected by most outside observers. Indeed, no other union has yet managed to organize Amazon workers despite multiple attempts. Let’s briefly examine the origins of the ALU to illuminate the reasons for its recent success.

Origins

The story begins two years ago when on March 30, 2020 – in the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic – a small group of JFK8 employees organized a walkout from the warehouse, demanding measures to protect workers from the virus. The company responded by disciplining the organizers. One such organizer – a 32-year-old African American employed at Amazon since 2015 – who later became the head of the ALU, was fired on the false pretense of violating quarantine protocols.

The common experience of repression brought these workers together and forged within them a clear consciousness of the irreconcilable antagonism between the worker and the boss, as well as an iron, righteous will for retribution against the company. The ALU has put forward 16 immediate demands published on the union’s website including:
     - Paid time off for those injured at work.
     - A 7.5% raise for all workers.
     - Reinstatement of 20-minute breaks, which were recently cut by 5 minutes.
     - Free transportation to and from work on a private shuttle.
     - Unpaid time counted in minutes instead of hours, so a delay of a few minutes isn’t rounded up to an hour.
     - An end to union-busting behavior, such as the two instances in which Amazon called the police to forcibly stop organizing activities and arrest organizers; removal of all anti-union propaganda.
     - Closure of the warehouse during extreme weather events.
     - Abolition of the ban on personal phones.

“Amazon has spent millions on millions of dollars trying to stop the ALU. It would take only a fraction of that to pay every JFK8 worker $30 an hour”, said the union’s leader. In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx pointed out that bourgeois economists are perplexed by workers’ willingness to sacrifice their wages in order to defend their trade unions. The same is true for the bosses, who are willing to sacrifice profits in order to crush the unions. Both sides know that the final outcome of the class struggle is not determined by a single battle.

The everyday struggle of workers against capital, exacerbated by the global economic crisis, pushed forward natural leaders from among the masses, ready to fight for their class interests by whatever means and aware of the conditions of the economic struggle.

Witnessing the abortive certification drive by the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, AL, these worker-leaders recognized the limitations of top-down organizing by collaborationist national associations and opted for a strategy based on grassroots organizing of an independent, rank-and-file association instead. One of the original founders personally travelled to Alabama to observe the campaign:

«First of all, you know, they’re an established union with a limited amount of Amazon workers that are actually organizing […] So we felt like there was a lot of missed opportunities – just them, like not really communicating with the workers as much as we thought they should […] So, you know, when we took our organization efforts on, we just decided that, you know, Amazon workers need to organize other Amazon workers».

As the movement grew, organizers also took lessons from the rich history of the American labor movement – in particular, IWW and CIO organizing in the early 20th century – and put their newfound knowledge to use in action. According to an ALU organizing committee member and employee at JFK 8:

«We studied the history of how the first major unions were built […] We read William Z. Foster’s Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry (a must-read, seriously) […] I think this union shows the true possibility of what is before us, as a labor movement – if we just remember how to do it».

The result was the Amazon Labor Union. A great achievement indeed! Now the union has set its sights on organizing other warehouses in New York and obtaining a contract.

Appraisal

Even from the incomplete account presented above, it is clear what is praise-worthy about the ALU:
     - Its passionate proletarian culture, united around ambitious goals and fierce opposition to the bourgeoisie.
     - Its strong spirit of self-reliance, with initiative emanating from the rank-and-file becoming desire for action on a strict class basis.
     - Its humble eagerness for education through the experience of one’s contemporaries and historical forebearers, in addition to one’s own experience.

Amazon’s behavior is certainly reprehensible, but it is not beyond explanation. The owners and managers are ruthless because economic competition is a powerful force encouraging people to treat other people (and themselves) as objects to be exploited for private interests, rather than as human beings. Everyone is a participant in this competition, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the same phenomenon is at work across the nation and the world, as evidenced by the recent struggle of BNSF workers against the “Hi-Viz” attendance policy. Unification of these and all similar struggles is the key to the victory of the workers. In conclusion, therefore, our party offers the following advice to strengthen the ALU and continue to conduct class struggle in the interests of the workers:
     - Work with other unions to organize Amazon – RWDSU and especially Teamsters – despite their shortcomings.
     - Coordinate labor actions with workers at other companies such as employees at BNSF and UPS, dock workers and postal workers – perhaps starting with upcoming contract renewals (e.g., the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Teamsters); strive towards a national logistics strike, which would prove the enormous power of the working class and open all kinds of possibilities.
     - Communicate with trade unions and workers at the international level, including countries where Amazon is already organized; aspire to organize international strikes to fight transnational corporations and overcome competition between workers in different countries.
     - Advance as a political demand the abolition of all limits to the freedoms to strike and organize.
     - Employ the methods of class struggle: generalize strikes as much as possible and establish pickets in front of the company gates; refuse to forfeit those weapons, as for instance through a no-strike clause in a contract.