Technet: Daily Crunch - Amazon makes PR push ahead of union vote

Friday, March 26, 2021

Daily Crunch - Amazon makes PR push ahead of union vote

The big story: Amazon makes PR push ahead of union vote

Workers at Amazon’s fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama (a suburb of Birmingham) will vote next week on whether to unionize. In the meantime, Amazon is waging an aggressive PR campaign against the effort and the politicians who support it.

For example, in a response to news that Senator Bernie Sanders would be visiting Amazon workers, executive Dave 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.” Meanwhile, the Amazon News account scoffed at Representative Mark Pocan for repeating accounts of Amazon workers peeing in water bottles: “If that were true, nobody would work for us.”

In response, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (which the Amazon workers would be joining if the unionization effort succeeds) put out a statement asking, “How arrogant and tone deaf can Amazon be?”

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