 what do you guys think? Should we get rolling? All right. All right. Let's do it. Well, welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for this great Labor Notes webinar. Huge thank you to Luis and everyone at Labor Notes for putting this on. Huge thank you to everyone who is watching in and saying hello in the chat. This is why we do it, right? This is why we get up in the morning. So it's really an honor for me to be part of this and to be here with this amazing panel and all these amazing guests to kind of talk about something that's really, really important and that we're all obviously very invested in. So I guess for folks watching, I'll give a quick introduction of myself. My name is Maximilian Alvarez. I am the editor-in-chief at the Real News Network here in Baltimore. I started this job in October, this past October. And before that, long before that, I've been hosting my podcast Working People for many years where I interview workers about their lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles. And like the good folks at Labor Notes, like Lauren here, like so many others here, I've been really kind of trying to use media to lift up the voices and struggles of our fellow workers. I'll put my cards out on the table. I am not a labor organizer. I mean, I am always looking to learn from and talk to folks like the ones on our panel and folks like y'all who are tuning in. So I'm trying to kind of navigate what that means for me and my capacities here as moderator, but really the main event is our panel and our Q&A with our amazing guests. So I'm more here to kind of just move the discussion along, try to kind of synthesize points when I can. But we're all here to talk about Amazon, right? And more specifically, our fellow workers at Amazon, both in the United States and around the world, right? For the past few months, all eyes have been on Bessemer, Alabama, where 5,800 workers recently voted in an NLRB election on whether or not to unionize with the retail wholesale and department store union or the RWDSU. We all saw the results, right? We all saw that the campaign was soundly defeated. We saw Amazon pull out all the stops to defeat it from hiring outside union busters, to holding captive audience meetings, to installing a mailbox on their property and surveilling voters, workers who voted in the election, right? And we saw an important wave, I think, of international solidarity expressed with the workers in Bessemer and what their struggle meant. And we are now seeing kind of the fallout, including challenges to the NLRB to hold Amazon accountable for its actions during this union election. We are seeing a lot of debates emerge kind of after the election to talk about what happened, what we saw, what went wrong, what can be improved upon, and what all of this means for all of us moving forward, right? Because really, when it comes down to it, I think we are all here because we understand the importance of this fight, right? Not just for the struggle to honor the humanity of working people and to throw ourselves into the fight for working people to have democracy in the workplace, to live with dignity, and to not constantly be treated like pieces of meat who can be discarded and forgotten at the drop of a hat, right? And we understand on top of that the power that Amazon has, and especially after the pandemic, right? You know, this has catalyzed Amazon's kind of growth and pushed it to a new stratum. And the future, I think, a future in which Amazon is allowed to grow unchecked and determine, you know, like what it's going to be without any sort of accountability to workers or to anyone really is a dark future indeed, right? And so this struggle, you know, we understand who the enemy really is. The question is, how do we defeat him? How do we defeat Jeff Bezos? How did we defeat Amazon? And how do we do that while supporting our fellow workers? So I think that that's really what we're here to do. We're here to take what we saw these past few months, and we're hoping to apply that to the ongoing discussions that we are all a part of, the ongoing campaigns that we are all invested in. So with that in mind, I could not have asked for a better panel of folks to kind of help us navigate this. And like I said, I'm truly honored to kind of be moderating this panel, and I look forward to learning from everyone here. And, you know, again, please drop your questions and comments in the chat, and I'll be reading those in between kind of panelists to kind of keep the conversation going. But now I want to throw things to our first panelist, who is Peter Olney, a retired organizing director for the International Longshore and Warehouses Union, the ILWU. Peter, thank you so much for being here, man. Let's toss it over to you. Great. Thank you, Max. Thanks for the introduction. And thanks to the Labor Notes team for putting this timely discussion together. Despite that disappointing and very predictable result from Bessemer, Alabama, the Bamazon Union Drive conducted by the RWDSU has elevated the organizing discussion around Amazon. And there's some important things to keep in mind going forward as we plot our strategy in organizing. First of all, it's important to size up the challenge we face. Amazon's the second largest employer in this country, second to Walmart. They employ about a million workers now in the United States at hundreds of facilities. We go back in history in 1942 when the United Auto Workers broke through and succeeded in organizing General Motors, Chrysler and Ford in 1942. That resulted in 350,000 members. So we're looking at Amazon as a behemoth and a huge challenge for us. It's an existential challenge. It's a threat to the existence of companies like UPS, United Parcel Service, where the Teamsters Union has a quarter of a million members. It's an existential threat to the giant ocean carriers whose stevedoring subsidiaries employ the members of my union, the ILWU on the West Coast and members of the International Longshore Association on the East Coast. It's an existential threat for retail grocery workers, unionized retail grocery workers. Amazon owns Whole Foods and is looking to expand its retail grocery delivery service and threatens the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Just to quickly illustrate this threat, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago, the chairman and CEO of Maers, the giant Danish ocean carrier company, said that they want to shift their business model from 80% revenues in ocean carrying, 20% in logistics, to 50-50 in a couple of years just because they realized they must compete with Amazon. And their speculation that Amazon's going to buy some ocean carriers from giant ships like the ones we saw plugging up the Suez Canal. They already own 11 airplanes and are building out air sortation centers all over the country. Huge threat. And it's a complicated company. It's an evil company with a brilliant business model that employs algorithms and robots and the uber exploitation of labor to deliver product overnight to customers. Its random chaos business model means that the production system or the logistic supply chain is built out with redundancy to respond quickly to customer orders. And this redundancy can also respond to labor strife and labor challenges. So we got to rise to the challenge. We got to analyze Amazon through the work we're doing. We got to understand where they're most vulnerable. How do we flip their business model in our favor? Our fulfillment centers like the one that the RWDSU tried to organize in Alabama, the place that we need to focus on. Or our last mile delivery stations located in urban areas like the New York metropolitan area. Are they more strategic locations where we can wield power against Amazon? Air sortation centers. How about lab workers? Headquarters workers who write and develop these algorithms. And how about finally the last mile delivery drivers who are classified by the company as independent contractors? We also need to take into account and seriously understand the fact that the workforce at Amazon is a majority people of color workforce. By their own numbers in 2020, 26.4% Latino, 31% Black, 8.7% Asian, 28.5% White and 1.7% Native American. That's the warehouse workforce. It's not the management. This is no surprise. And it's one reason the Bessemer story caught fire because it inspired particularly African American workers throughout the South and resonated particularly with organizations like the Southern Workers Assembly. So Amazon is ubiquitous. They're everywhere. They're in everyone's lives. Not just deliveries, but information services, DNA testing, publishing. So this is a huge challenge for us, but it's a challenge that we can meet. We need to ask a couple of key questions. One is, what are the forces necessary to win? I would argue there's no one union, no one policy initiative that's going to be a silver bullet. There are already multiple forces on the battlefield, several unions, a service employees union in the Twin Cities doing some great organizing at a Shakopee Minnesota fulfillment center. The RWDSU has tossed their resources into the ring. The Teamsters Union is doing some very exciting work in Southern California and the Inland Empire. Native food and commercial work is obviously interested because of the whole foods connection. Athena for Democracy is a giant non-profit coalition of about 40 organizations nationwide principally focused on policy and regulatory issues. And finally the Amazon employees for climate justice, headquarters employees concerned about the environment and Amazon's footprint, but also evolving potentially into a worker organization. And of course the important work of our panelists from Amazonian United. So going forward we got to think seriously about how do we sustain the work of folks organizing at Amazon? This is not easy work. There's turnover, there's burnout, there's alienation. So it's a task of our movement of our labor movement to support these valiant folks who are out there organizing, taking jobs at Amazon and working to bring justice to those workers. Two things are clear. It's going to be a long haul with lots of experimentation. I'm already hearing noises about another union throwing down for a national labor relations board election. And the most important point again is that the implant warehouse space building of Amazonian United and other organizations is crucial and needs to be promoted and supported. No strategies, RC elections, recognition strikes, occupations of warehouses can be successful without this implant organizing, committee building and engagement and winning struggles. This is the kind of work that our panelists are carrying out and they have my utmost respect. So bam, bam, bam is on. The struggle continues. And let's hear from our other panelists, Max. Hell yeah. Well, thank you, Peter. That was awesome. Really, really appreciate it. And yeah, I mean, I think that you hit the nail on the head, right? There is no silver bullet here, right? The struggle is global. And so there's also, as you said, not only one union, one policy, there's also no one country that's going to do this, right? And this is implicit in everything that I think Peter said and everything that he's written about this, you know, in the aftermath of the Amazon election, right? And if folks haven't already, you should go check out Luis's amazing cover story for in these times where he kind of breaks down that international struggle. But I wanted to, before we kind of toss things over to our panelists with Amazonians United, wanted to give some shout outs to the good folks in the group. We got a really, really great collection of folks here, folks from France Union, brothers and sisters in France, from Canada and Oshawa, we're talking about strategically important plants. The auto plant in Oshawa has a really long and important history there. We got Jewel from AFSCME local 2019 over in Oakland, Tara with the Teamsters 117. Leslie, who I believe is with my old union, GEO, so shout out to GEO, the Graduate Employees Union. We got the Raleigh Workers Assembly, the Seattle Transit Union, Riders Union in the house, Tara from the Washington State Nurses Association. We got SEIU local 205 in Nashville. So again, it's really an honor for everyone to be here and for me to be here with y'all. And I'm looking forward to your questions. So please drop those questions in the chat as we go along. And I'll do my best to kind of raise them as the kind of conversation develops. But for now, let's move on over to, we got two folks from Amazonians United, Jonathan Bailey and Ira Pollock, who I think have a really important kind of perspective on alternative strategies that are adjusted to alternative conditions. As Peter said, there are a lot of different nodes in this supply chain, a lot of different circumstances that folks are organizing in. So let's hear about what folks at Amazonians United are up to. Hey, everyone, my name is Ira. Sorry, it's kind of, it's echoing here, moving into a new apartment and having the furniture in yet. Can you hear me okay? Is it too echoing? All right, cool. So the first thing in terms of like alternative strategies, you can already see what an alternative strategy is if you look at the outcome of Bessemer, which we think of as a major failing. But one thing that's super apparent is that in the face of company repression and intimidation, around 750 workers still voted that they wanted a union. And then there was another few hundred that probably voted yes, but were contested by the company. And one thing that we sort of take to heart when we organize is this recognition that you don't actually need the government to give you a stamp of approval to have a union. You don't need the company to give you the stamp of approval to have a union. So in that Bessemer building, you have probably around a thousand workers who want a union. And that's probably, that's probably even higher in most warehouses because they haven't faced an intense company assault yet. And so the model that Amazonians United organizes with is sometimes called minority unionism. It's a form of solidarity unionism where whether the long-term goal is to run a union election or to strike for recognition or whatever it is, you've got to build up the power inside the workplace. You've got to build up your workplace committees. You've got to build up your, your strike muscles, your solidarity and start acting like a union, start behaving like a union before you start talking like a union, before you start asking the government or the company to recognize you as a union. And the key to doing that is building committees. And you can start by doing it underground, you know, talking to co-workers, finding people who are agitated, finding people who are committed and building committees of these folks, bringing them together, talking about issues and then starting to act like a union and starting to build a union by drawing more co-workers in by doing things that start like as petitions where you identify grievances. You put everyone on the same page, let everybody know that like we're in this together, we all care about the same things. And once you have a certain critical amount of support, you start acting like a union. You don't, we don't, we don't go and run an election and ask permission to be a union. We are a union from the start and the union is growing and it's growing bigger and bigger and bigger. And when you have enough power, you can start making those decisions. Do we want to run an election? Do we want to strike to force the company to recognize us? But by the time you get there, you've already won a number of demands. So at Amazonians United, we started in Chicago and shortly after in Sacramento. And it started with very little demands or winnable at the warehouse level in Chicago. It was that they didn't have drinking water, which is a huge demand, but it's something you can win at the shop level. So they put together a crew of six co-workers came to their first meeting. They decided to put together a petition. They got the majority of the warehouse to sign on a petition. And then a few dozen of them marched on the bus to deliver the petition. The next day, they had water. Then it grew from their management was trying to force them to work through a heat wave without air conditioning. So they did more petitions. They did more marches on the bus and they grew and they got more people involved. And they got to the point that management couldn't push productivity because people were too united. So they set them home with pay till the heat wave was over. Then in Sacramento, two co-workers were fired for having a death in the family, leaving work. They got to call that work of a death in the family. They left work and they got fired for that. So their co-workers who had already been organizing, already been talking, already been identifying issues and having meetings, they organized the petition. They did a march on the bus and they got their co-workers rehired. And then they discovered, you know, they started looking into it and they realized that Amazon was promising us paid time off and it wasn't giving us, it wasn't delivering on their promise. And if they had been giving us that paid time off that they'd been promising us, those two workers wouldn't have been fired in the first place. So we started organizing a national PTO campaign. And that's when Amazon and United New York City started joining the campaign. And we started, you know, we heard about the work they were doing in Chicago, in Sacramento. We reached out. We started building crews in Queens Warehouse first. And so we started a coordinated national campaign for PTO. Some folks in Philly reached out to us and so we started doing it in a bunch of warehouses. When COVID came around, that was kind of the, that created a lot of public outcry. And that created an additional component of public pressure and won the PTO campaign for tens of thousands of part-timers across the country. So that was workers, building committees, taking action, marching on the bus, doing walkouts, the Sacramento, they did walkouts in our other warehouses. We did marches on the bus and, you know, management started noticing. Since then, we run newsletters in our warehouse, we do flyers, we recruit, and we're grown. Now we've gone from one warehouse in New York City to several. They've gone from one in Chicago to several. So the key is unions don't organize workers, workers organize unions. And if there's 750 to a thousand workers in that warehouse investor who want a union, they don't need the government's permission to start acting like a union. They need guidance, right? They need to help learn the skills of organizing, which most of us don't intuitively know, right? We think, you know, we've got to run an election, we've got to call people in. That might be something to do down the road, but you've got to have built the solidarity first before you even have, before an election, before a strike, before any of that is even an option. You've got to have built the solidarity. I'm going to see if Jonathan has anything to add. Um, that's, that's pretty good. I mean, it's all, it's all correct. Good job. Oh, go ahead, Jonathan. Sorry. Oh, no, no, no, please go ahead, Max. If you, if you have something that you want to build on, go for it. I was just going to try to give you something to, to, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm happy to hear what you're, what you're thinking. Well, I mean, it goes to, you know, something that Peter was talking about, right? This, this problem of, uh, that we, I think we've all noticed and recognized and some on this call have experienced themselves, right? Is that you have, uh, an extremely high turnover at, at these Amazon facilities, right? And so the, the analogy that I often use to people is like, you know, if you have a bathtub with the faucet on and the drain open, it's like trying to organize that, right? Where, where you are losing, you know, uh, you know, just dozens, if not hundreds of workers a day or a week. Um, and that is really, really difficult to have a sustained kind of campaign when you're losing so many of the people that you're trying to organize with. And so I wanted to ask for Amazonians United how y'all are kind of doing, uh, navigating that, um, trying to combat it and maybe even zooming out what it means, um, for the movement, uh, for the, you know, people who are just watching and supporting and also for the media, what it means to help build that solidarity and to help inoculate kind of, uh, workers and potential workers before they even enter the door at an Amazon facility. Yeah. Um, so a couple of things and I really like that question about inoculation. Um, so I want to first like say, okay, so there, there's something really fascinating, uh, about the opportunity that we have, uh, in relationship to Amazon warehouses that actually, um, I've only seen best reflected in the, uh, the, the Amazon HQ two fights that we had here in Queens as well. Um, uh, that, that fight was really, um, you know, for, for like the, the side of Amazon HQ two, the real power behind it was real estate, uh, uh, real estate capital. And the whole idea was that because the turnover at Amazon, uh, headquarters is actually high as well, um, that it would be pulling in, uh, these highly paid workers from all over the world who would pay a super high amount, uh, for the, you know, pay $4,000 rent for a single bedroom apartment. Uh, and then they'd be, uh, you know, the Amazon headquarters would spit them out and they could weave that into like a little tech bubble, you know? Um, but like what was fascinating to me about that was like recognizing the way that Amazon HQ two could be an engine for gentrification in the same way that Amazon HQ two could do that for real estate developers here in New York. Amazon warehouses can do for the, the socialist movement. Um, like they can be, they can be, uh, like I think better than, than anywhere really, uh, engines for, uh, developing, uh, class awareness, um, and, and solidarity as, as a class, uh, and really just be like pulling people in, uh, and if they do choose to leave six months later, leaving with a much deeper understanding of what it means to, to be a shop floor militant, what it looks like to, to engage in direct action and just kind of operating that way throughout all of, all of your life. Um, so that would be like that, that's super cool. Um, and as far as, uh, something that has been completely polished and figured out, I don't think that we've like totally haven't figured out yet. Um, but, uh, you know, for what art, some of our organizing has looked like, uh, we have like just started with identifying issues, um, that, that a lot of people have. And then, you know, working those into a petition and helping folks, um, edge towards, um, displaying their, their, their sentiment, right? So whether that be wearing buttons or a march on the boss or, um, walkouts and, and you know, we've so far really only had one, um, one strike and a spontaneous strike. So maybe not a totally a real one, but like edging people closer towards, uh, engaging in those, those actions, like that, that really, you know, has, we've seen people go from like no, no real awareness for like, how do we fight to change the conditions of the warehouse to like having a much deeper understanding and being able to, to kind of like plot out what people, um, like plot out things themselves. Um, as far as inoculation goes, I think that it's, it's like a really good question. Um, like how, how can we be communicating to people at large so that, um, you know, when they're not really connected to the labor movement in any way, um, and they land it in an Amazon warehouse, um, right now there's not really any sense for people of how do we fight to, to, to, to win stuff. Um, like people's understanding really right now is kind of like, yeah, we just run a union election and if we win, we can fight, you know, and if we don't win, I guess, I guess we can't fight, you know. Um, there's this like really limited scope of understanding for, for what we do as, as activists within the labor movement. And so it would be really cool if there was a lot more, um, a lot more put out around, hey, how do, how has Amazonians United won what we've won so far? Because right now there's no understanding for that. Like, I mean, honestly, even just knowing Amazonians United, like, you know, a lot less people know about Amazonians United than, uh, a lot of other just Amazon stuff going on around. Um, but we've, we're, we've won stuff, you know. So hopefully, like what can be communicated out more regularly is, hey, these are the folks who have won things in Amazon, and this is how it's been won. Like these are the, these are the things that, that workers have done to actually compel, um, Amazon to change its ways. I think that'd be super great. Because also it'll give people a better understanding of, um, you know, how to tell whether somebody's fighting or not, because Amazon has, uh, has a really complex and kind of brilliant system set up for, um, for, uh, the way that the workplace is divided. Um, you know, if it were just workers and management, things would be very, would be really straightforward and probably pretty, like so much easier. Um, but, uh, in our workplace we have like, uh, white badges who, you know, supposedly can be like, let, like, let go at any time or supposedly seasonal, right? There's this kind of this fear that, of like, you know, being able to be let go at any moment that exists with them. And then there's blue badges, like the real employees, right? Um, and then there's these like blue vests, you know, who like kind of fulfill this role in between management and workers. They'll, they have the same job as us, but they're allowed to do some intellectual labor, right? They're allowed to be on computers and kind of get a little bit more of a sense for how things actually work throughout the warehouse. And then there's shift supervisors and they're still not managers, but they're given a red vest, you know, the same color as, as managers. And then way up there, then there's management. And so like really, like, you know, everybody who's not management should be like, you know, behaving as like, oh, we're workers together. But what you have is like a system where every boss has another like, like every person has another boss. Everybody has somebody above them. And, and at the bottom, even at the bottom, they keep us divided in half through white badges and blue badges. So there's like this constant state of like, who's on what side and who's fighting and supporting what. And, but if people had a like a better, clearer understanding of, okay, who needs to fight to create change, then it would be much easier for people to walk in and just see and recognize it for what it is. Like, you know, this, this, you know, the it's, it's just, it's smoke and mirrors, you know, to confuse people on who are the people who they should be naturally aligned with or not. And it could, it could maybe also prevent people being given a blue vest and deciding that they're going to do all of the work of management for them, right? Which, you know, I see in the question is like a great way to like turn somebody from being friendly to Amazonians United to, to being a mole. In fact, we've even had somebody basically trade like, you know, being a snitch for the the bosses so that they could get our promotion. And during my, during my interrogation, like management started the whole conversation off with just asking me, okay, what do you want? When I mentioned our petition, the manager said, no, what do you want? And I was like, okay. So like the Amazon like gets it Amazon gets it really does have a good understanding of how do we divide up the workplace? And how do we pick off leaders? You know, promotions aren't selected by like, who has the fastest, you know, stow rates who has the best numbers. Like, people are selected based upon their relationships. Like, how do how, how do they cultivate relationships within the warehouse? And are they a person that can get other workers to stay in line and keep the work going? So like, they'll come after, after our leaders, you know, workplace leaders in the same way that, that we try to go after workplace leaders. So getting a good sense for that and having that communicated through media would be beautiful for us. It'd be fantastic. Yeah, hell yeah. No, I mean, that's that's super, super fascinating. And yeah, I mean, that's Amazon's incredibly good at that. They showed this, they showed us this investment, right, the divide and conquer, right? And, you know, I'm even thinking back to when I was a temp at warehouses 10 years ago, you could always tell the Evergreen staff based on the gloves that they had, because management would give them certain gloves, right? And so that was just kind of a constant visual reminder of who was expendable and who wasn't. But you know, I know we got a couple of important kind of topics, follow up questions that that we want to address. Because I think Peter has some important insight about the turnover thing. And I want to kind of follow up on the Amazonians United strategy and talk a bit about kind of expand on that mole question and talk about the pitfalls that you have when you take this approach and how you protect yourself against that. But I wanted to kind of before we toss things over to Lauren, I wanted to quickly kind of throw this question out to the group, which I think is a really important question from Natasha in the chat. Because like you were saying, Jonathan, the question isn't just how we fight, right? But there's also the question of what we fight for, right? And how we come up with those decisions, right? And, you know, Natasha raises a really important point about, you know, how we mentioned earlier the racial and ethnic demographics in Bessemer. And also, you know, that they're the majority of the warehouse workers in Bessemer were black, the majority of them were women. So what challenges have women workers faced in terms of sexual harassment, lack of advancement, maternity leave, child care, and other essential issues of social reproduction, right? And how do we, I guess, from the ground up, how do we kind of build an organizing strategy that communicates these issues as part of the essential struggle that we are all we all should be invested in? So we don't have like a whole lot of time to kind of go around, but I wanted to kind of throw that to the group and see if anyone had some comments on that. Yeah, definitely. I mean, we've seen actually a lot of that. Actually, Ira has been like actually digging into that particularly quite a bit lately. If you want to speak, Ira, or I can, you want to go ahead? Sure. Yeah, we have so our organizing committees are mostly women and mostly women of color. And what we found is that who you who you initially decide to build your committees with, well, there are a lot of ways determine what what sort of issues become most salient, because like there are so many issues. But when you're trying to decide what to put on a petition or something, you know, sometimes you suggest issues and you see you see how much traction they get. But in particular, one thing we've seen is that management does, there's a lot of a lot of harassment at work that it's not necessarily always visible unless you're talking to co-workers and unless you're gaining the trust. And like absent form of grievance procedure, what we've started doing is if if the folks sort of like facing harassment are amenable to this, we've like done wanted flyers with the faces of the harassers on them and like posted them, you know, like harasser and like a brief description of the types of behavioral patterns they'll do and we'll like post that around sort of like public shaming. But it's definitely like being attuned to those issues is really important and who you build with, who you start those initial relationships and how much trust you can gain in the warehouse. That's been like extremely crucial to how how effectively we can identify those issues and act on them. And the thing with a lot of those issues too is it might be harder to lead a strike because like if half the warehouse is men, it might be harder to like motivate them to say go on a strike for sexual harassment, but there are still ways of doing you know actions that have a decent amount of support that you know don't include doing like a full on walkout and things like our flyers to shame particularly the egregious managers. That's that's something that's been pretty effective. Well and Lauren, I mean I think this is like a rather kind of perfect transition to the work that you've been doing. If anyone has not been following Lauren's incredible reporting, Lauren is a senior staff writer for vice's motherboard reporting on a lot of issues at the intersection of tech and labor. I rely on her work constantly and and I know that Lauren like you know over the course of the past year and even beyond that like you know you've been talking to a lot of workers about these sorts of issues right about the ways that they're impacting them in their lives. So I guess could you talk about from your side from the reporting side what things have looked like pre and post Bessemer election. Yeah so I am not a labor organizer but I am in a union I'm in WGA East and I have long admired the work Labor Notes does so I'm happy to to be here today. Like Max said I've been covering what we sort of call blue collar tech worker organizing and workplace issue since August 2019. So I've been covering Amazon warehouse organizing since since back then and I can tell you that things really heated up like in the beginning it was really rare to see workers walking out or organizing petitions and sometime around last March like things really heated up and you were seeing lots of organizing going on all over the place and then again I think when when the Bessemer union drive went public and sort of a lot of momentum built up built up around it you started seeing that again and I think we're at a point where a lot is going on way more than just a year and a half ago when I started covering this stuff. I just wanted to talk briefly about Bessemer and just like I'm sure people know about this but about the issues that I heard from Amazon warehouse workers there and then I'll talk a bit about warehouses more generally what's what I've been hearing from workers and what who are how are they organizing and then talk a bit about the the delivery drivers so I went down to Bessemer in February and I think I think the conditions that that sort of I mean they call it a hot shop so workers approached the union not the other way around the thing the thing that got workers really sort of interested in contacting the union weren't necessarily issues with wages but with issues related to the productivity squeeze that Amazon puts on workers so workers are expected to meet quotas and they have rates that they're supposed to be doing their work at which means that there really isn't a lot of time in these fulfillment centers which are massive cavernous warehouses it's the largest style of Amazon warehouse for bathroom breaks or for breaks really at all like to to go get to your car to you know have a lunch break your you've already wasted half of your break walking to your car the other thing is time off task was a huge thing that that workers complained about time off task is a policy where if a worker leaves their scanner idle for too long Amazon starts tracking time off task and if you rack up enough time off task you could be fired or you can be disciplined a stower at the Bessemer warehouse Catherine Hightower told me that she would just like you know really need to go to the bathroom but she didn't want to rack up enough time off task so she would just be like okay I'm going to wait another hour to go to the bathroom and then they changed the break time then she's waiting another hour so she's waiting hours and hours and hours to go to the bathroom I think another thing that that workers in Bessemer were particularly concerned about was no direct communication with their bosses or management like a lot of people if you ask them they didn't even know who their bosses were or had never interacted with them and we're asked to report problems to a computer so they basically the HR process or you know you have an issue you you type it into a computer and sort of felt like you know screaming into a void for a lot of people um I think all of those issues that were going on in Bessemer are more broadly things that I've heard from you know people at workers in New York City and Staten Island workers in Amazon workers in California in Arizona and Minnesota I think those are sort of what happened there is a you know a reflection of what's going on around the country I usually in most of my stories I put in a tip line so I write about Amazon working conditions all the time and I say you know hey do you work for Amazon please get in touch we'd love if you have a tip or whatever I think one of the most common things I hear from workers is what who reach out to me is either I'm going to quit I want to quit or I just quit so like like we talked about there is a lot of turnover and there are a lot of arbitrary firings that go on and that that is a huge issue for workers I mean there are so many rules that um workers feel like they don't know or like that are sort of made up on the spot where they get fired um you know a few days into the job and um it's unclear where they came from so I think a lot of people are interested in organizing to have um a more streamlined um understanding of you know what are the expectations um this was something that Amazon actually brought up in um their press conference right after they the union drive results came out where they were like well we need to we're glad that that the union didn't get in but we do need to work on this sort of communication and having better sort of more clearer policies so I don't I don't know what's going to happen with that they claim that they're they're going to start changing something related to that um yeah another another thing I think is in the warehouses the fulfillment centers in particular which I said are the largest warehouses um are are the number of injuries you're you're seeing workers are seeing their co-workers being you know wheeled out and wheelchairs they're coming in with knee braces on um this is going back to the productivity squeeze thing right when you're um sort of straining your body in a repetitive motion so many times over the course of six eight ten hours um your your body breaks down and and that's sort of Amazon's business model right it's it's to to have high turnover and to constantly sort of replenish its workforce with fresh bodies um I think one of the other things uh talking about working conditions and organizing is that I think it's a lot and and I don't know if Ira and Jonathan have had different experiences with this but what I've heard from organizers is that it's hardest to get the youngest part of the the workforce interested in organizing like the 18 to 25 year olds people who are straight out of high school or um you know just maybe not thinking of Amazon as like a place they want to stay a long time I mean most people think most young workers who sign up for Amazon are like this is a short stop um you know they don't ever expect to have a voice on the job because they already knew going into it that that these types of jobs um are grueling and not a place they want to spend their careers or build a career and so I think it was especially in Bessemer really hard for the union to get those workers to vote um um yeah I heard that from the lead organizer uh Jonathan Brewer that that attracting these younger workers was was a challenge compared to maybe women in their 40s 50s who um you know want want a sustainable they want to stay here they want to make this job good um and maybe have you know experience with unions um the other type of warehouse that I cover a lot which is the type of warehouse that Jonathan and uh Ira work at is uh delivery stations so fulfillment centers are usually the more uh like they're not they're not located near urban centers whereas these smaller delivery stations um are you know in Queens and and more and sometimes in urban centers in uh south central Los Angeles there are a bunch of them and the concerns impacting those workers are a bit different I would say I mean a lot of them are the same but one thing that has come up a lot recently um is uh this thing called the mega cycle um which is a 10 and a half hour graveyard shift that begins at 1 a.m um and runs for 10 hours ends around 11 a.m um workers in these facilities were used to having you know six eight 10 hours or four six eight hour shifts and all of a sudden um all across the all across the United States over the past year uh workers will receive two weeks notice and they'll be like okay we're we're moving to this mega cycle shift you have if you if you want to keep working for us you have to start working at 1 a.m now for a lot of people this is untenable and going back to the how these issues affect women and social reproduction I mean for for women and for parents um starting at 1 a.m uh and ending at 11 a.m especially during the pandemic is just impossible in terms of childcare um I mean not to mention just like living like a normal regular life of you know ever being able to see daylight or having normal social interactions and the reason why they they they do this they're doing this shift um they're sort of combining shorter shifts into one longer shift is to I mean it seems to make the the same day delivery even more efficient and go smoother um so so I think that is something to pay attention to there was a walkout um at a Chicago warehouse from the south side of Chicago Engage Park um uh I believe in early April about these mega cycle shifts that that are being implemented um and the workers there who are amazonians united chicagoland were demanding accommodations for women for elderly people um lift transportation so free rides to and from work I think another big issue for workers at these delivery stations in urban areas that start at 1 a.m is that there's like no way to get to work that isn't either like especially for women dangerous um at night time um and they also are asking for two dollars in a an hour additional pay I believe and um 20 minute breaks um um yeah uh so I finally um before I wrap up I wanted to talk about delivery drivers so um I cover amazon's delivery drivers who are the people you see who drive like amazon branded delivery vans um these are technically not amazon employees they work for these small delivery companies called dsp's and there are over 600 of them in the united states and they operate out of amazon delivery stations and they are the the drivers who deliver packages to your homes this last mile delivery um in some ways the conditions facing them are you know I don't I don't I don't want to compare things but um things things for delivery drivers are extremely bad and uh this type of work environment is so uh because they're working for different companies um you know there's there's not a lot of organizing that's going on it's very difficult to organize things are super disjointed workers are super alienated um I think the biggest concerns are quotas like peep workers are you know constantly seeing their quotas um go higher and higher and higher you know workers are expected in some instances to deliver 400 packages a day there's rampant turnover um and um most recently two concerns are um surveillance they have these installed these um AI cameras into uh amazon delivery vehicles that um have like four cameras that are tracking um you know whether workers are yawning things about their facial expressions um uses facial recognition technology and workers over the past month and a half have had to sign um forms that amazon put out um agreeing to to release agreeing for amazon to collect their biometric data so if they didn't want to do this they had to um quit their jobs um there was there was really no choice I think a lot of workers at least I've heard from a lot of workers who are quitting actually because of this um and then the other thing is um mega cycles also impacting them so the the overnight shifts that are going on at delivery stations are also having an impact on drivers having crazy quotas um and so uh yeah I think I think the thing I guess I would say about them is that um they are probably the least organized segment of you know the this this chain that I've at least talked to um uh and um even though they're wearing amazon clothes driving amazon fans their working conditions are controlled by by amazon um it is it feels like a very alienating experience um and we just saw a walkout in Henrietta Newark actually which is one of the first amazon delivery driver walkouts that I have ever heard of um a few weeks ago when there was this whole thing going on with amazon workers peeing in bottles and amazon denying that amazon workers peed in bottles um drivers peed in bottles um and and some workers in in upstate newark walked out over that um there is a little bit of organizing going on with the drivers and with the teamsters in Iowa and in southern California um and uh yeah I think I will leave it at that awesome thank you so much Lauren I mean like you know obviously there's a lot here right uh you know like Peter said at the very beginning right I mean even just wrapping our heads around the scope of amazon as an entity uh is is hard enough let alone uh to follow up with what Lauren said kind of thinking about all the kind of people uh who are part of that entity who are ground up by that entity and how we organize them right how we organize ourselves how we kind of build this movement and what sorts of lessons we can take away from Bessemer as we move forward right and so I wanted to kind of uh first say one thing um to our siblings in the chat um you know if you have kind of thoughts ideas uh from your own struggles right or your own past campaigns that you think uh should be kind of part of this discussion please drop them in I won't be able to read all of them but I think it's important to kind of get those out um so that folks having heard what we've been discussing here can say hey we face something similar with uh you know third party contractors that were getting exploited right or hey we had a segment of our workforce that was getting uh more impacted you know on terms of race gender sexuality whether or not they could speak English and here's how we dealt with it right so I wanted to make sure that that was part of kind of this discussion and maybe kind of zooming out in synthesizing from this great panel discussion over the past hour I wanted to kind of maybe return to Bessemer right and I wanted to ask um both in terms of organizing right worker organizing with all the um struggles that we have discussed and all the barriers that we have laid out right what and all the limitations right of the NLRB right of you know trying to unionize through an NLRB election versus as um uh Jonathan and Ira said acting like a union and essentially imposing your ability to um to have democracy in the workplace through kind of collective solidarity and organization among your fellow workers with or without the rubber stamp from the from the bosses or the government so I wanted to kind of yeah like synthesize things a bit uh return us back to Bessemer and ask uh our panel I guess we'll go in the order that everyone kind of first spoke in um you know what valuable kind of organizing and messaging lessons can we take from from Bessemer right when I say organizing I think like you know how do we communicate to people the importance of unionizing Amazon what having a union would mean right and and uh what sorts of issues would be addressed if workers were collectively organized right as Natasha mentioned in the chat workers are impacted differently but if we are able to kind of unite uh the workforce to assert having the need to have democracy in the workplace to assert workers ability to say what they need as whole human beings to work at this place how do we do that how do we message so that's the kind of two things I was curious to hear our panelists comment on is as far as messaging and as far as organizing strategies what are some key lessons that you take away from Bessemer so Peter I'll throw it back to you well as somebody who's led organizing drives and warehouses and won them um it is possible to win these elections even against a giant behemoth like Amazon I think Jonathan and Ira have given us insights into the way forward it's fundamentally a question of building the organization uh among the workers ditching the fear of the employer and uh and that's how you win elections like that you do not win elections by hiding your sympathies for the union from the boss it's kind of counterintuitive but this is the way it works the more workers stand up and expose themselves by wearing buttons t-shirts appearing at rallies marching on the boss doing the things that amazonians united does prior to an election the better chance you have a winning election because as Ira said you're not asking permission you built your organization the vote is simply a formality in the certification process so that's that's really the lesson of the winner lost question in Bessemer but Bessemer has set off all kinds of wonderful discussions and wonderful organizing I met with a group of six young people in Atlanta Georgia a couple weeks ago on zoom and they are renting a house together so they can support each other and work at amazon and organize that's what it's going to take and Bessemer has inspired that so thank you to the RDSU as much as some of that campaign might have been flawed it's wonderful that they did what they did and Jonathan Ira I'll toss things back to y'all kind of pick up on on where peter left off right I mean how is how has the Bessemer campaign impacted you all and your co-workers um and yeah what in terms of messaging and organizing strategies uh have you taken away from what we all witnessed uh in Bessemer Jonathan you do you want to take this one sure um so like for me I had a co-worker early on say like look at it and and say look like you can't you can't beat amazon there's nothing you can do like look what happened they got smashed um but then like in talking to them for a little bit um uh you know we pointed out hey like we've already went one we've already won shit um and like that like it was like very helpful in like grounding people in like oh yeah that's what fighting looks like that's what it that's what it looks like um uh you know for for folks like I mean people have like no sense of like what our rights are as workers right so you know it's really common for people to think um oh yeah but if we fight you know we'll be fired you know um and so like building people's confidence in their ability to take action together uh and demonstrate that the consequence of us taking action together is that we win stuff like building that awareness is is kind of key you know um but also like you know I think it's important to note that um we don't have folks who get fired you know really in amazonians united we don't get fired um you know yeah sure we've been in some battles that were maybe like you know um like we've been targeted you know but we don't get fired because we we work together to change uh the conditions of the warehouse and amazon's not going to want to like go after somebody that's going to trigger some response from the rest of the workers and then it's going to slow down production they just don't want to do that um they don't want to deal with that so as long as we're actually moving together um that that creates a significant amount of safety one thing I'll add really quickly and this this really plays into the social reproduction question um we like mutual aid is an enormous part of our organizing whether it's doing fundraisers for co-workers who are struggling um I mean one of our best actions was to hold a moment of silence for for a co-worker who had who had lost family as we were doing a funder and so we that was connected to our fundraiser for her and like carpools and potlucks and all these things that work and like the pandemic's made it harder but we conceive of our organizing as like building a family at work and I think people feel that and that also answers the turnover question if people feel like they've got family at work they're less likely to quit and for a lot of our worker co-workers who are like most most in the struggle with us the Bessemer didn't really phase them much because they like they recognize that that you know what happened in Alabama happened but we're still going to keep moving we're still going to keep doing what we're doing um so like like the main thing is if you've got trust and family at work people people are a lot more resilient than you would think um that's that's that's that's all I've got for for insight there I would also say that like um we get caught up in thinking like what we can kind of get caught up in our own bullshit like a little bit like we act as if like oh like I see all of these articles zooming by on my like uh Twitter and Facebook feed and so like the whole world is like is is in this like we're all in this this is where everybody's attention is and it's like I mean you know like a few of our co-workers heard about it most most people that was not like a thing to them like it wasn't real um and so understanding what's real on the shop floor is like it's going to be different than what's real in the the activist media space you know um so even if something seems terrible within the activist media space there's still potential for us to build where it actually matters on the shop floor Lauren I don't want to put you on the spot but I mean I guess as as uh you know a fellow kind of media person right who has to juggle that responsibility of communicating uh what's important and why about labor struggles to the broader public but also being faithful to the realities of the shop floor like Jonathan said I guess um did you do you have anything to kind of add on that front yeah I mean I think that after the the landslide loss there were some people who were concerned that the media had overhyped the union drive and you know I even talked to some friends who are maybe more in a leftist labor space but weren't following the union drive very closely who were shocked about the loss and were expecting like a victory that was somehow um sort of what they had gleaned from media coverage of of this union drive um and I guess I mean I've done a lot of reflecting and I don't really regret any the way that we covered things I think we focused a lot on um sort of Amazon's union busting campaign um which I think is something that is important to cover um the tactics they were using um I guess I would throw the question back at the audience like what I'm curious what people um I mean I'm dedicated to covering the stuff and um whether you know people wish there was more in-depth coverage of the organizing strategies that the union was using or you know what what people if if people felt let down in some way you know what they hoped for well I'm like you know I think that so I'm also very interested in that right as someone in the media um as someone who's committed to covering these struggles but does not want to uh give false impressions about the you know the work it's going to take the realities that people are facing right and I think that um you know there there's a great question here in the chat from Naomi that um kind of speaks to a lot of this right kind of speaks to that question of inoculation right that question that uh regardless of how many of us here are more in the know you know about labor struggles about uh you know progressive politics and so on and so forth a lot of people are simply not right and and we live in a country uh where we are so thoroughly drenched right in anti-union anti-worker ideology then and we internalize it so much ourselves because it's the daily reality that we live with right you live long enough in a society that values you so little you start to believe that that's all that you're worth right I know that was the the the case for me I know it's the case for so many people that I talked to you on a weekly basis and that played into you know the struggles in Bessemer as as I think Naomi is rightly linked to in this this um question right is that a lot of the folks um that we've seen kind of being profiled or or um quoted in the media after the amazon election have kind of pointed out it's just like yeah this sounds good this sounds important but when it comes down to it Bessemer has twice the national poverty rate there's not many places beyond amazon where I can get you know the kind of where I could even get a job that can maintain the standard of living that I have now however precarious it is and that kind of speaks to what Ira and Jonathan were saying right is like the reason we attach ourselves to these jobs right is because we we need to we depend on them because living in a society like we do we have so few other options to kind of sustain our lives and our families so there is no there is no social safety net or barely one at that and so your job really is the life raft that you're holding on to and you'll take the abuse that it gives you if there is nothing beneath it to catch you so how do we as a movement on the shop floor in the media in the broader community um actually provide that sort of support um and and remind folks that we'll be there for you um I think that's a big question I don't know how to answer that but I mean I think it's an essential question here um so let's see let me see if we got any other kind of final thoughts in the chat um let's see so workers speaking publicly um you know what is you know what does it mean to kind of have workers speaking publicly uh you know during a campaign like this um you know uh let's see we got as an ex-amazon worker I want people to know that it is extremely easy to get hired at amazon and work there for a period of time that you are able to longer the better to build the deep relationships that you have there um and yeah I mean they're just I would encourage everyone who is who hasn't already checked all these great um kind of comments out in the chat um but let's see I wanted to we we got we're about to wrap up right are we we going over time here curious we had time we're 5 30 okay okay so we got we got we got a little more time um so then you know I wanted to I wanted to kind of circle back um to if we're talking about kind of that that uh mutual aid question right like how do we provide that sort of support for people or how do we create that sort of structure of support within the workplace um Jonathan and I were I was curious if you could talk a little bit more about that and Peter um from your own experience uh I was wondering if you could talk a bit about with the ILWU how the how it offers that um to its members and how it communicates to its members that that is what the union gives you right it gives you that support it gives you it reminds you that someone has your back and that it is not you know either the boss or it's you're not caught between the devil and the deep blue sea right the devil being your boss the deep blue sea being the horrors of American capitalism right how do you communicate to two folks in the union and folks you want to unionize what that means in a society where so few so few people have ever had the experience of it well I think um I would go back a little bit to this challenge of sustainability um this is not a new challenge for labor you know if we go back to 1913 at the uh island park ford assembly plant in michigan the turnover rate there was 300 percent jobs were brutal they were like amazon jobs in a fulfillment center but we succeeded in organizing there so I I think a lot of what we need to be about is uh finding ways to support the work that jonathan and ira do salting houses where people uh socialize the costs of doing this work at very low wages uh we need to hold up this work as as admirable you know this is this is the most noble work you can do in america's go to work at amazon and help organize we need to hold that up uh we need to figure out ways that we take particular jobs in some of these facilities like I've talked to workers in some facilities and they say that the robot mechanics people who repair the robots in some facilities are direct employees of amazon why can't we train up people to do that we are already in contact with lab workers at amazon so these are jobs too that are strategic and important and sustainable we need to be about that and finally I I know ira and jonathan have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how through education and training and politicization can we sustain the involvement of workers who are coming for it to be part of amazon inch united so those are a few thoughts on sustainability again this is the lord's work working at amazon we need people doing this this is the company we have to take down this company and it's not going to happen by paid union staffers like me coming outside and handing out flyers it's going to happen because people go to work there yeah and ira uh i was going to say iran jonathan like to fold in another question from the q and a here how do you do how do you get started like if someone is watching this and they take what peter says to heart and they want to do what y'all are doing where do you even begin um i'll start just a quick response to the like support question number one like when people start taking action together they they they feel what they feel what a union has to offer like we are the union we don't say the union has your back we say we are the union throughout the pandemic we adopted um we do a lot of political work outside especially jonathan for like abolition work we adopted and abolition is saying we we keep us safe and people like they feel right and so people learn the tangible benefits of unity through struggle um so that's that's the first thing and the second thing is like we do need money like like one thing that we've been doing is we do we we do workshops labor notes folks help us with workshops to train up our oc's and learn skills and practice skills for organizing and you know sometimes to make those workshops folks have to take work off so we'll you know we'll we'll cover their lift ride to work or if they're going to be late or or we'll um you know if if there's an event they really want to make and they've got a missed shift for it we'll you know we'll we'll we'll throw a little money there we like workers there's a there's a select few of us who have this like wild we don't have like deep family commitments and we have this wild amount of like impulse to to just organize organize organize but people don't start and having having a little a little slush fund it helps us get people there because we can make it easier for people to make it to a meeting if we've got childcare at the meeting or if we can help them get from the meeting to work so like like literally financial help helps and then and then to peter's point political education when people start in politicizing and learning the history of struggle and feeling this is a political act they start investing more and they feel like they're part of the historic movement there for the long haul and i would say if people want to support and get started if you're unemployed and moving a job get a job at amazon and get in touch or if you don't if you don't do a job you can't get a job at amazon help us run a fundraiser jonathan do you have any other thoughts to add on that before i throw things over to lauren lauren i don't know if you saw but someone may had a really interesting comment there about vice and the importance of vice kind of in people's political education on this stuff let's see sorry yeah no i did uh that thank you yeah um i mean i i guess the other thing i was gonna say that sort of came up um before was that uh i think that um you know there isn't a lot of coverage of this uh the union organ this the type of union organizing that amazon zonians united does um like we saw so much coverage of what was going on in besamer but i think that um you know like the new york times or whatever doesn't sort of treat this sort of non-conventional or i don't know what you want to call it um organizing with with with a union that isn't certified by the nlrb or isn't collective bargaining or collectively bargaining um in the same way and i think you know there's there's a lot of um work that we can do there too i think as journalists um to to sort of uh raise the the platform of of of these groups and not just you know you know other uh like not just the besamer workers which is also important but i didn't know was there another question you wanted me to address or no i mean um i guess like to maybe kind of from the media side of where folks can can get started right i guess like um have you heard much from workers who have contacted you right about the role that they see the media playing in their organizing yeah no actually sorry so i do have that question a lot like we want to reach out we want to get media coverage but we're we're scared because we don't know if you know we could be retaliated against sort of how do you um you know how do you decide when it's the right time to reach out to the media like could it backfire and what ways could it backfire um and you know i mean i think a lot of that i can't directly answer because i'm not an organizer but i think i know that there are you know strategic moments when in an organizing campaign when you have enough support and you you know the the employer is is doing something that you don't like and you want to put on some public pressure and that's a really good time to to sort of reach out to to a reporter um yeah i think that uh just generally um i i talk to a lot of workers who are um who come to the media and say you know i want to organize how do i how do i find people i work for amazon but i don't know anyone who's organizing or i'm a delivery driver and i'm trying to to stage a strike but how do i how do i reach people um that is a very common thing that i hear that i also like i can i mean i connect people to people but um um yeah i think i think that um we definitely hear from a lot of workers who want to organize and don't know any like aren't you know connected to anyone in their workplace who who's sort of on the same page as them and are looking for resources oh yeah and again just again great work um to lauren and everyone advice amazing work uh to everyone here at labor notes i know we've got a long way to go but i'm very proud to be in this struggle with everybody um doing our part on the media side and we will always be open to reflection critical reflection and we always appreciate everyone's input so we've got uh we're wrapping up here we've got a few minutes left and i wanted to end on this note right because it's something i've been thinking about a lot right as we've all discussed here the challenges that we are facing are massive right and the struggle is ongoing right and this is not besamer is not going to be the first or the last time that we fail right to make you know the to accomplish the goals that we want to accomplish so what i wanted to ask all of our panels and kind of a kind of round robin rapid fire rounding out sort of thing is how do we deal with failure without succumbing to defeat so peter i guess i'll throw it to you to start us off again with your give us give us your veteran wisdom how do you how do you deal with uh um failure without succumbing to defeat well i have 50 years doing this so i've seen a lot of failures probably more failures and successful organizing attempts but there's nothing like winning and there's nothing like marching on the boss and saving somebody's job again i'm inspired by what happened in besamer the those valiant workers that did step up and step out and the people had voted for the union and uh i think we have a bright future dealing with amazon i think we need to make it a crusade and and i think we're gonna we're gonna triumph here so i salute the work of particularly the amazonians united i'm a big fan i've recruited many many of my fellow retired union organizers to be mentors to these folks and we sit on phone calls with them and we listen to the work they're doing and i'm i'm very inspired this is this is the most inspired organizing i've seen in my whole life in the labor movement so again if you want to if you want to make a difference in your person who wants to organize get a job at amazon who else wants to hop in on them it took 50 years to organize steel right it's it but but we got there we've got social media things move a little more rapidly these days we're gonna fail a lot but it took 50 years to organize steel that's that's that's the number i keep in mind so jonathan or lauren do either of you want to have a final word on this yeah all right i can add something um i mean i just think that a lot of a lot of the framing of this is you know this the future of work is riding on the best in our union drive for you know like this i think a lot of a lot of the news stories sort of frame this as all or nothing and it and it really isn't and so i mean you know there's organizing going on all over the place in the united states at amazon warehouses way more than i'm i'm aware of and i look at this stuff all the time so so yeah i mean i think just for us it's like we're gonna keep covering this and i think a lot of people are now um and and so that's a great thing um that you know there's there's interest um and you know hopefully that translates into victories jonathan any final words before we wrap up not that you have to yeah i mean i think i i think that's all uh 100 right and i'm i'm feeling very energized by this i'm i'm so appreciative and grateful uh to everyone on this panel to all of our uh great attendees i apologize if i was not able to get to your questions or comments um as much as i wanted to uh i tried the the computer's kind of far away um but we really really appreciate uh everything that that y'all had to offer to this conversation um and thank you so much to labor notes for for hosting this and i guess just by by way of rounding out i would say you know for me um on my side the way that i kind of keep going is i just constantly remind myself of who and what i'm fighting for right and i do that by just um talking to folks right the more that i talk to people the more that they remind me that as human beings on this earth we deserve better than this and as long as that fact remains the struggle continues right as long as the dignity of humanity is not being respected by the system by the bosses then our fight continues right and and we do it so that people can live the lives that they deserve uh on this planet um and that's it that's how i kind of approach it it sucks to to face that defeat but if we are all committed to one another um then i think we'll get where we need to go um so thank you all so much for attending this labor notes uh panel uh look forward to more look forward to everything uh watching and supporting everything that amazonians united uh are doing and we send nothing but love and solidarity uh to jonathan to ira and to everyone at amazon and beyond who is standing up for what they deserve uh standing up for the rights and dignity of themselves and their co-workers we see you we're with you and we love you thanks everybody