Amazonians United is spanking Amazon with the NLRB

How did our Chicagoland union counter Amazon’s retaliation? And how did we make Amazon change policies to benefit all Amazon workers organizing in the US?

Summary:

Basically, we distributed our newsletters at work to expose managers’ incentive for understaffing us, and the site lead got pissed and tried to intimidate us. He illegally interrogated us regarding our right to spread info so we filed a charge with the NLRB. Covid hit a couple months after, Amazon wasn’t doing anything to keep us safe so we went on safety strike 4 times demanding coronavirus protections. Management retaliated against some participants of our safety strikes with more interrogations and bullshit write-ups so we filed 7 charges to defend our rights and we won them all.

Took a year, but we ended up winning this settlement that made Amazon change their policies and declare they’re going to stop messing with us. What Amazon says and what Amazon does are two very different things, the NLRB doesn’t really have teeth, but our win does make managers think twice before messing with members of Amazonians United.

So how did we make this happen?

Well first, what is the NLRB?

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) enforces federal labor law which protects our rights as workers to do things like confront managers as a group, form our own unions, wear buttons, pass out newsletters, gather signatures for petitions, walk out, go on strike.

But we all know that Amazon and the rich don’t care about the law and they don’t want us getting organized because they need power and control over us to maximize their profits. So what does this mean for us? This means that our primary focus must be building our own worker-controlled union, our own collective worker power. Worker power doesn’t come from the law, it comes from our unity and our ability to disrupt production. Think of the law and the NLRB as a weak shield that we can sometimes use to buy us time and space to grow our union and fight against retaliation, but never solely depend on the NLRB or the law.

What are we talking about when we say our own union?

A union is an organized community of workers united by struggle against bosses. A union exists when there is a dense network of relationships based on trust, respect, and solidarity between workers who support each other, have each others’ backs, and who organize to make things better for all workers. A union of workers identify issues together, discuss strategy, fight to win, and protect each other. You are a union when you and your coworkers are united against management’s bullshit and you demand solutions by taking collective action on issues. Your union will not magically come into existence, you must build and grow it proactively — it takes work!

Amazonians United Chicagoland is a union. We meet and talk about the bullshit we have to deal with at Amazon like work speed ups or management disrespect and incompetence. We crack jokes about them and decide how to set them straight. We unite with coworkers around shared issues using petitions. We confront management as a group and they end up having to change their tone and treat us with respect because our united presence reminds them that despite their higher pay and fancy vests we’re the ones that actually do the work and we outnumber them! We strike and walk out, disrupting their operations and forcing managers to work, and this makes them take us seriously.

We win benefits for all workers like PTO. We have potlucks, cookouts, kickbacks, we share with each other and we check in on each other when we’re facing personal or health or family or other challenges in life.

We build our union by spending time with each other, growing in community, uniting and fighting. We don’t wait for someone else to come save us, or waste our time on “official” elections. Whether we are a union is not decided by the boss or the company or the government. Our union is not “professionals” or lawyers, it is not signed pieces of paper, it is not a grievance hotline or some outside third party. We the workers united through struggle are our union. We decide when we are a union, and we are a union when we unite, organize, and fight.

So how does this all fit together?

We’ve been making & passing out newsletters like this one below since 2019 to inform our coworkers of important updates & things happening in the warehouse, issues with our pay or time, our rights to organize, our activities, our wins. We all know that Amazon & management’s communication is the worst even for the stuff they wanna tell us. When there are issues or changes, coworkers that don’t hear about it just get left out and sometimes lose out. So we make these newsletters to keep everyone in the know, like sharing about how managers get bonuses for getting more workers to take VTOs.

Workers informing each other about why our site lead Domonic Wilkerson was always understaffing and overworking us for management bonuses must’ve scared him. In January 2020, he tried to intimidate one of our coworkers at the warehouse by interrogating him about this newsletter while we were stowing in the cells. As our coworker was working, Domonic came into his cell and asked him “Where did you get the information for your newsletter?” Our coworker replied, “why are you asking me?” Domonic said “another associate told me you were handing these out” and our coworker replied “that’s my right to do, but many people passed out this newsletter, why are you targeting me specifically?” Domonic hesitated and said “you’re spreading lies about the VTO bonuses.” As soon as break time came, our coworker wrote down everything that the manager said in his pocket notebook with the location, date, and time- these notes would come in handy later. We knew this was unlawful interrogation because it’s illegal for managers to ask us about any of our organizing activities or to give the impression of surveillance of our organizing.

So we filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charge for unlawful interrogation and surveillance. This is where you file a ULP with the NLRB, just follow the directions & fill out the form and an NLRB agent will contact you, it’s easy. Email or Facebook us and we can talk you through it. We provided testimony to our NLRB agent using the notes that we took, and they investigated by gathering info from other coworkers and Amazon.

The NLRB decided in our favor, but Amazon’s lawyers argued using some legal loophole that since it was supposedly the first official violation at our site that the case should be dismissed, so the NLRB made it a “merit dismissal” and just gave Amazon a slap on the wrist with no settlement. But after this we noticed managers being nicer, making improvements that we asked for, not bothering us as much- they must’ve gotten yelled at by Amazon corporate to be more careful with us workers who know our rights. Also the NLRB said that if there were further violations within 6 months that this first case would be brought back up. It was barely 2 months until they did it again.

In March 2020 the covid pandemic hit Chicago, and we went on safety strike for coronavirus protections during 4 different shifts to protect each other and all of our coworkers.

Management knew about confirmed cases of covid-19 at our warehouse but weren’t telling our coworkers, so we informed everyone ourselves by Facebook, email, and on the picket line while our coworkers were showing up for their shifts. Many coworkers heard about the covid-19 cases for the first time from us and immediately joined our strike. But management is scared of workers who know their rights and organize to protect themselves. They would rather have us believe that their word is law, and ignorantly go into the warehouse to work and catch covid while they get paid bonuses for the work we do while risking our health.

So management retaliated by writing up workers who went on strike with some bogus violations like badge scanning and social distancing. We knew they were bogus because they never wrote up anyone else for the same violations. Management also threatened us with termination for supposedly violating a company policy that says we can’t be on company property more than 15 minutes before or after our shifts which we also knew was bullshit. Anytime we wanna gather petition signatures on different shifts (in non-work areas like the break room) or strike & rally in the parking lot, we should have the right to be there.

So we filed 7 ULP charges from those of us that were retaliated against and who wanted to file. Here’s one of the charges:

The NLRB investigated by asking Amazon for some basic data and easily proved illegal retaliation when they found that management only wrote up workers who went on strike for these “violations” and not anyone else who broke the same rules (including management themselves) during the same time as our strikes. Many other details didn’t add up, and the NLRB could easily tell that Amazon was lying and trying to cover up their illegal actions against us.

So the NLRB ruled that Amazon violated our rights as workers, and we proposed a settlement that would require Amazon to change their workplace access policy by eliminating their 15 minute rule, and commit in writing to not retaliate, interrogate, surveil, or ask workers about Amazonians United Chicagoland. The NLRB sent our settlement offer to Amazon and they signed it, agreeing to change their policy and email the posting (from above) to all of our site’s workers and also post onto AtoZ/TheHub. The posting was sent out May 2021, and managers already started leaving us alone while we passed out newsletters in the parking lot.

So what’s our point?

Oftentimes when workers get fed up with injustices in the workplace they hope the government, the law, the media or someone other than themselves will fix things for them. But the law and the media are not under our control, they are not where our power comes from, and they are not going to save us or solve all of our problems. In this situation, because we were organized into our own union as Amazonians United, we were able to use the NLRB as a tool to strategically defend ourselves and give ourselves time and space to continue organizing.

Because we were organized, we were able to use the NLRB to counter Amazon’s intimidation & retaliation. This NLRB decision is proof that we as workers can organize ourselves, take collective action, go on strike, and successfully defend ourselves against retaliation. But we were only able to use the law to our advantage because we were organized, planned our actions in meetings, studied our rights, anticipated Amazon’s retaliation, took notes and told each other when managers fucked with us, resisted Amazon’s attempts to isolate and divide us through fear, checked in on each other constantly, and because we didn’t back down and instead stayed united when things got tough.

As always, we need to be strategic with how we fight bullshit from our bosses. You gotta build up a crew of coworkers who will look out for each other before starting a petition or walking out. Use the legal tools we’ve got to defend yourselves and make more room for organizing, but remember that our power will always come from our unity, organization, and solidarity with each other as workers.

If you want to organize your warehouse and management is violating your rights, email us at AUChicagoland@gmail.com, message at https://www.facebook.com/AUChicagoland, Tweet or Instagram @AUChicagoland and we can talk about how to file a ULP charge to defend your rights and build your own union too!

-Amazonians United Chicagoland