Class Enemy of the Week: Dave Clark and the Amazon Union Busters
By Alex S.
This is the sixth installment of Austin DSA’s “Class Enemy of the Week” series. You can find the fifth, on Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, here.
To a casual observer, the union drive at Amazon’s facility in Bessemer, Alabama, may seem like a minor blip in the ever-churning news cycle, even if a positive one. It’s clear from Amazon’s response that this vote, which ended last week and is being counted right now, is much bigger than a blip. As countless articles have shown, Amazon is going to great lengths, at times allegedly illegal lengths, to stop a union victory. We’re used to these sorts of corporate responses to workers banding together against the boss, but Amazon’s response has a particular political bent that is larger and more malicious than just stopping a single union vote.
On March 24, five days before union ballots were due, Amazon executive Dave Clark decided it would be wise to take to Twitter to push his company’s anti-union rhetoric while also attempting to co-opt Senator Bernie Sanders’ recent work of pressing for worker power and increased compensation. Clark tweeted:
I welcome @SenSanders to Birmingham and appreciate his push for a progressive workplace. I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that’s not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace for our constituents: a $15 minimum wage, health care from day one, career progression, and a safe and inclusive work environment. So if you want to hear about $15 an hour and health care, Senator Sanders will be speaking downtown. But if you would like to make at least $15 an hour and have good health care, Amazon is hiring.
Clark and the Amazon PR machine make it sound so simple: Amazon already has good jobs, why would anyone want to make a fuss instead of being grateful?
It is, of course, not that simple. The following day the corporate Amazon News Twitter account insisted that Amazon supports a $15 minimum wage and that, since they pay $15 an hour to their workers, they are doing more for workers than Sanders himself. Amazon began their strategy of framing themselves as the benevolent employer in 2018 when they gave into popular and legislative pressure and raised their minimum wage to $15, saying, “We’re excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us.” At that point the pressures of capitalism made it an imperative for Amazon to ensure that their competition would have to likewise pay the higher rates. Amazon executives understand that in the short term they can afford the increased labor costs in order to maintain positive public relations and an image of caring for their workers. In fact, they absolutely have to keep this reputation because of their enormous expansion that has occurred throughout the last five years as they expand their reach into shipping, logistics, and technology on top of the retail business that began as their bread and butter. Their ambitions of global dominance in multiple areas of business require a constant flow of labor.
However, in the long term, Amazon also understands that their sheer scale will allow them to capitalize on increased minimum wage laws. They know that their ability to shoulder a greater labor cost is not an attribute shared by all similar firms. If the federal minimum wage were to be raised there would be a greater impact to their smaller competitors that do not have the overhead available to keep up with Amazon. This is not to say that Amazon wants to pay higher wages, but instead that if they are compelled to “voluntarily” raise wages then they want to make sure they are not the only ones.
To be clear, raising the federal minimum wage is something to be celebrated. Real wages have stagnated while productivity continues to increase, a sign that the exploitation of American workers is growing worse. Workers deserve the fruits of their labor, we deserve control over the profits we generate. However, Amazon is not a supporter of workers, they are a corporation that must relentlessly seek growth and an increase in revenue and profits. Their insistence of goodwill is nothing but cynical PR and a move to squash the beginnings of the worker power building against them.
Unions present a threat to Amazon’s ability to plow ahead, living wages be damned. Amazon’s aggressive response to this campaign is evidence that they are willing to take short term losses to their bottom line in order to stave off a successful vote. They know that it would be far more difficult for them to bargain with a union than to simply pay $15 now, force the market into equal competition, and then continue to exploit workers at will. Executives like Dave Clark and Jeff Bezos dictate how millions of people spend their working lives, and they know that a unified fighting workforce would mean an end to their unchallenged rule.
