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Golden Mead's avatar

"This emerging working class of college graduates is also more likely to transcend the racial and gender boundaries that the ownership class had traditionally used to keep workers divided."

Wow! Not much objectivity here.

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Nathan Ngumi's avatar

This is a great piece.

I am not a man of the Left and look askance at unions generally, but in the case of Amazon I fully support the efforts to unionize the workforce.

I have a passion for occupational safety and health (OSH). When it became clear years ago that the majority of complaints Amazon workers had and still have today are OSH-related, and Jeff Bezos has since the time he was the world's richest man ignored these complaints even if it would not cost him much (relative to his net worth) to improve working conditions across his company's facilities globally, I took an interest in the agitation and hoped it would succeed.

It is worth exploring why the unionization drive in Alabama failed so that going forward mistakes are not repeated. As far as I have observed these drives focus mostly on wages, which I find unfortunate from a strategic point of view because Amazon is careful to pay above state minimum wages so it is a tall order to argue for increase in wages to match rise in inflation, increase in fuel/energy costs, etc. OSH would be a good unionization strategy that legislators would readily support. In addition things like adequate leave, emergency time off, stock options for all workers, etc. can also be fought for.

The rise of AI should also be closely monitored by workers. Robots are going to be doing more and more jobs, so worker training for this eventuality is also paramount.

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