When, in late summer 2020, Amazon employee Darryl Richardson visited a hotel room in Bessemer, Alabama’s poorest town, to meet in secret with union leaders from the RWDSU trade, he could not imagine the earthquake it was going to cause. “I’m still surprised”, confides this 51-year-old African-American worker.
With three comrades, Mr. Richardson wanted to create a union in the Amazon distribution center inaugurated at the start of the pandemic and thus sparked a major clash against the empire of Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, who does not tolerate any trade union in the United States.
In March 2020, Richardson was delighted to have found a job paying $ 15 (12.50 euros) an hour, double the local minimum wage ($ 7.25): “Before I started, I was very excited”, he recalls. Very quickly, he becomes disillusioned. The $ 2 bonus, introduced by Mr. Bezos at the start of the pandemic, is withdrawn after two months. “I was disappointed because we always had the risk of Covid. “ He does not support cadences and supervision during breaks, when it is necessary to go to the toilet. “This can lead to our dismissal. “ And then he remembers that in his old car factory, “The hourly wage had soared from 12.50 to 23.50 dollars in a few years, when the firm was unionized”. So, with Joshua Brewer, a young white pastor turned local union president, and Michael Foster, a chicken factory worker, he will organize the mother of the battles against Amazon.
On October 20, 2020, the small group began to demonstrate in front of Amazon’s gigantic warehouse, which employs 5,600 employees, to obtain the necessary signatures (30% of employees) for the organization of a referendum on the unionization of the site. . “We stayed for sixty-one days at the warehouse gates, 24 hours a day”Joshua Brewer recalls. Before Christmas, the number of signatures is reached, the referendum must be called according to federal law.
Amazon, which did not respond to World, procrastinating. To better control its employees, the company wants to organize the ballot in person, in the factory, while the Covid-19 epidemic is raging. It will finally be by correspondence, with a consultation which ends in a few days, on March 29.
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