Why Amazon workers in Alabama are trying to unionize

This article was produced by Capital & Main, an award-winning journalism nonprofit. It is co-published here with permission. The union organizing drive at the mammoth Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama located 20 miles south of Birmingham, Alabama, has the feel of both a social and religious movement. There are five days until the mail-in ballots will be counted to determine whether the company’s 5,800 employees will gain union representation. Last week, organizers and workers gathered at the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union’s scruffy office to go over their final push and to talk to reporters from around the world who have descended upon Birmingham. Jennifer Bates, an African American “learning ambassador” at the Amazon facility—she trains new workers—believes that her courage to fight the corporate giant comes from a spiritual source, “the Almighty, the creator of all things.” She also traces her personal strength to the civil rights movement that rocked Birmingham in the early 1960s. “I really believe that in this organizing drive we are following the foot soldiers who came before us,” she says. Josh Brewer, the union’s lead organizer, is an ordained minister from Michigan who found his way into the labor union movement while trying to ensure his life had purpose, and he was immediately given some of the toughest organizing challenges. Brewer sees the Amazon campaign as a “David vs. Goliath” battle, his biggest career challenge so far. On this day Brewer has one eye on the office television to see if a tornado sweeping through Mississippi and Alabama is going to require moving into the basement, as he reflects on the five-month and 24/7 commitment that he has made to the unionization effort

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Why Amazon workers in Alabama are trying to unionize