12/20/2024 - Good news, Racers! The Teamster's Union (yeah, that Teamster's Union) wants to help us take on Amazon at AKC1, which will result in better wages, better working conditions and fair treatment of associates.
Over the past year and a half or so, we have watched our quality of work-life steadily deteriorate at AKC1. We've seen an all-out assault on accommodations. We've seen countless cross-trained associates written up until fired because they had a bad day after not being on that path for months. We've seen essential roles reduced more and more, adding to the already full workload of those leftover, often leading to crucial steps or details being missed. We've seen sexual harassment, abuse of boss-worker social dynamic, reckless disregard for the safety of associates, vindictive behavior, favoritism, and all other manner of blatant unprofessionalism from leadership - with little to nothing, if anything, being done about it. We've been rewarded for consistently being one of the top FCs in North America with no bonuses, while FCs we regularly send teams to so we can retrain them...well, they get bonuses. We get raffle tickets. Hey, maybe you'll win! Have a free hamburger. This list goes on and on and on, so I'm gonna go ahead and stop, here.
We post on MyVoice and go to HR over issues (like accommodations or being written up for labor shared work), and we get the same canned responses again and again. They all amount to the same thing: It's corporate policy, there's nothing we can do about it. The fact is that this is true. Many of the bigger issues we have are corporate policy. Amazon is attacking accommodations all over the continent and writing up labor-shared cross trains has been a "meet the write up quota" tool for a very long time. Site leadership has little more control over these things than we do as associates. Although, they surely have more control over who they write up than they would like us to believe.
Over and over we hear leadership tell us there's nothing they can do, when all along there has been - and still is - something we can do about it: We can organize, unionize and demand to be heard and recognized. And if they still don't come around, we can bring their business to an abrupt halt by withholding the labor they need to make their perpetual money machine work.
Over the coming weeks and months, there will be many meetings (outside of work), many flyers passed out, many questions raised and answered, many connections made and many polls conducted. At some point, however, there will be a petition, then a vote. if half the building plus one votes to unionize, we will join the 1.3 million worker strong Teamsters union - a union that has a longstanding history of getting things done.
As I talked to people over the last couple days, and as I overheard even more talking, I heard many of the same concerns voiced, and I'd like to address them as best I can:
"We can't even talk about this here, we can be fired" - That would be discrimination and absolutely is intimidation, both of which are highly illegal. FACT: If Amazon allows you to discuss anything non-work-related while on the clock, then union talk is okay, too. That's the law
"The Union will just take our money and won't do us any real good" - This is the Teamsters Union, one of the oldest, one of the largest and definitely one of the strongest unions in the nation. 1.3million members strong and still growing. They get results. Consistently.
"Union dues are high and we're already barely making it" - Union dues are 2.5 hours of pay per month and the initial pay renegotiation will likely be upwards of $5 additional per hour - you do the math.
"The Union doesn't care about us, they just want our money" - Union dues are used to pay full time union workers and reps, to pay for litigation on behalf of the members, and to pay striking members. Unions are not for-profit organizations, they're not making any money off of your dues.
"Amazon will close our site if we unionize" - This would be highly illegal and an absolue PR nightmare for Amazon...not to mention the fact that they probably haven't even recovered what they spent building AKC1 yet. They're not going to walk away from that investment, and with many Amazons rapidly unionizing, they can't close them all. The likelihood of Amazon closing AKC1 as a result of unionizing is effectively nonexistant
Part of the process of getting this started is gauging interest. I'm sure most of you saw them as you were entering and leaving through the main gate over the last couple days. The flyers they were handing out contained a QR code that takes you to their site where you can fill out a form and submit it to show your interest. AKC1's zip code is 44320. if you are not interested in being contacted, but want to show your support for the cause, simply tell them as much in the message box (say something like "I just want to show my support. Please only text or email me if you need me to sign a petition or cast a vote"). All communication between you and the Teamsters will be kept confidential, and nobody at Amazon will know or find out about it.
