In Bessemer and the South, Black Workers Hold the Key

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In Bessemer and the South, Black Workers Hold the Key

Does the ongoing campaign to unionize the Amazon warehouse, where 85 percent of the workers are Black, portend a return to large-scale campaigns in the region?

February 18, 2022
Matthew Cunningham-Cook, Marc Bayard

Over 6,000 workers at Amazon’s mammoth Bessemer, Alabama, facility are headed for a revote on whether they want to join the 60,000-member Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), an affiliate of the 1.25 million–member United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

The ballots went out on February 4 and will be counted by March 25. Once again, Amazon is waging an aggressive anti-union campaign, despite the November 2021 ruling from the National Labor Relations Board that ordered a new election due to the company’s violations during the previous election process.

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Read the full article at the American Prospect.

Matthew Cunningham-Cook is a writer and researcher with expertise in health care, retirement policy, and capital markets. He is a regular contributor to The Intercept and has written for The Nation, Al Jazeera, and In These Times. Marc Bayard is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and the director of its Black Worker Initiative.

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