(Source)
‘Twas the Strike before Christmas, when all through the land,
the workers were stirring, on strike to take a stand…
Madeleine Freeman
The optimism was palpable. Just days before Christmas workers at both Amazon and Starbucks went on strike, along with activist rumblings from students at CUNY. The working class was stirred. The game was afoot. Jeff Bezos would get his comeuppance after all. Left Voice author Madeleine Freeman expressed her high hopes in an article entitled Generation U Raises Its Head with a Roar. Her lede paragraphs (links omitted):
The working class is making history.
In the middle of the holiday rush and massive profits for big business, Starbucks workers have just joined Amazon workers and gone on strike against one of the largest corporations in the country. Hundreds of workers are rising up against these union-busting companies who refuse to negotiate contracts that would guarantee real wage increases, job protections, and other much-need improvements to working conditions. Amazon and Starbucks workers, who have been at the forefront of a new wave of labor organizing amongst precarious sectors of workers in recent years, have had enough.
The enthusiasm was echoed by three authors (Pola Posen, Jimena Vergara and James Dennis Hoff) in an article entitled Essential Workers at Amazon Are Rising Up for the Whole Working Class. Professor Hoff, in particular, is a leading spokesman for what I call the Shutdown Caucus--which believes that all workplaces should be shut down immediately, and stay shut down until the bourgeoisie coughs up it's (hypothetical and largely imaginary) trillions in gold coins.
He and his co-authors write:
On Thursday, December 19, Amazon drivers and warehouse workers at several distribution centers across the country began walking off the job in the middle of the holiday rush to protest low wages, awful working conditions, and the corporate giant’s ongoing refusal to recognize or to negotiate with the more than 10,000 workers who have formed local Amazon unions since 2022. ...
This strike is by far the most important labor action by the ALU since the workers at JFK8 formed their independent union in 2021. That first victory against Amazon was a shot heard ‘round the world, and these strikes show that the fighting spirit of that struggle lives on. These workers — many of whom are some of the most exploited and oppressed in the country, including people of color and immigrants often living on the edge of poverty — are facing off against one of the most powerful and ruthless corporations on the planet.
The inaccuracies abound. First, Amazon claims a US workforce of about 1.1 million, so even at face value the number of strikers is trivial--less than 1%. And worse, Amazon doesn't count the drivers as employees, but rather as employees of contractors. The contractors collectively employ about 400,000 drivers, of which only 10,000 are Teamsters. Since the drivers do not work for Amazon (claims the company), the company disputes any necessity to negotiate with their union.
So the strike did not primarily involve the ALU (newly formed Amazon Labor Union). According to Alex Findijs, participation by the ALU in the walkout was minimus. He writes
The Teamsters claims 5,500 members at JFK8 but did not report on how many workers had joined the picket lines. A reporting team from the WSWS last Saturday found the warehouse operating normally, with a small picket outside dominated by union officials.
(WSWS refers to the World Socialist Web Site, published by yet another Trotskyist grouplet whose history I have not followed. But the article by Mr. Findijs seems reasonably factual.)
Speaking from my own personal experience, the packages I ordered from Amazon all arrived as scheduled. The strike was a dud.
Professor Hoff, et al, claim that "...founder, Jeff Bezos, made $48 billion off of Amazon workers in the first three months of the pandemic..." I have been unable to reproduce this figure. The closest I can come is this article from CNBC, where author Annie Palmer, writing in 2021, reports that
The company forecast operating income of $3 billion to $6.5 billion in the fiscal first quarter, assuming the roughly $2 billion of costs related to Covid-19.
Amazon said sales in the first quarter will be between $100 billion and $106 billion, a slowdown from the fourth quarter of 2020, but an increase of between 33% and 40% from a year earlier. Analysts were expecting revenue of $95.8 billion.
"Operating income" is a proxy for profit, while net sales is the quarter's total revenue. In other words, Amazon's profit margin (before taxes) is about 5%. That means, of total revenue, 95% went to employees of Amazon, its drivers and its suppliers--in other words, to the workers. And that's the problem my friends in the Shutdown Caucus have--if the workers go on strike, they hurt themselves much more than management. They collectively lose 20x more money than the share holders.
That's why strikes usually don't work. Most often it's just the workers shooting themselves in the foot.
But let's not forget Starbucks--where approximately 500 stores were closed by strikers, out of the 10,000 company-owned stores in the US. The employees sacrificed 100% of their paychecks for the lost cause of getting a union contract from Starbucks. Starbucks, like Amazon, operates on thin margins and can't afford to pay a premium to the union. That's why the strikers will never, ever get a contract that is more generous than what Starbucks pays its non-union employees. They'll just close the stores before they do that.
Ms. Freeman puts it this way:
Starbucks has now stated publicly that it will offer a serious contract proposal before the end of the year, but workers say the company is not making good on any of their demands. Further, the company is trying to go around the union by offering concessions on its own terms to head off future organizing efforts at its other stores. One of workers’ central demands is for wage increases, but the company refuses to include immediate raises in the contract — in a slap to the face, the company offered a measly 1.5 percent wage increase for future years.
In any case it all fell apart. The "history making" working class just caved. As Mr. Findijs reports,
Thousands of Amazon and Starbucks workers returned to work this week after launching nationwide strikes. Thousands of Amazon drivers ended their week-long strike on Thursday, while an estimated 5,000 Starbucks workers ended a five-day strike on Christmas Day.
But let's not forget the silliness over at CUNY, as described by this article.
CUNY is the university of the working class of New York and that gives us organic and natural connections to workers including those at Amazon. Our solidarity with these workers is instrumental in furthering class struggle at this moment. Amazon is the largest employer in the United States, only behind Walmart which has no physical presence in New York City. This makes it all the more necessary for us CUNY students to stand in solidarity with Amazon workers as they create history in our very own city.
If the "working class" is conveniently defined as adults without a college degree, then I'll venture that none of our Left Voice authors are members of the working class. They're all at least as petty bourgeois as I am (me being a retired college professor). Their supposed solidarity with Amazon and Starbucks workers is just empty virtue-signaling.
More, I doubt any students are attending CUNY so that they can work in an Amazon warehouse. If they end up being Starbucks baristas, that won't be by choice. Instead they all aspire to professional/managerial jobs. Like their professors, they, too, want to join the petty bourgeoisie. I can't say as I blame them.
Workers don't need more "solidarity." What they need is more money, and that means more revenue from growing, thriving and successful businesses. Going on strike is hopelessly counterproductive.
Further Reading:
