Sen. Bernie Sanders targeted Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos during a hearing on wealth inequality and called up one of his employees who is trying to unionize to testify.
During the Wednesday hearing before the Senate Budget Committee, which Sanders chairs, he made a point of stressing that Bezos did not show up to the event despite being invited. The Vermont socialist highlighted one of the billionaire’s employees at the company’s Bessemer, Alabama, fulfillment center who is working with her co-workers for unionization.
“Today, we’re going to be talking about what it means morally and economically when one person in this country, the wealthiest person in the world, Jeff Bezos, has become $77 billion richer during this horrific pandemic while denying hundreds of thousands of workers who work at Amazon paid sick leave and hazard pay,” Sanders told the committee.
Sanders said it was “too bad” that Bezos, who is worth $182 billion, didn’t make an appearance because he planned to ask him why he is “doing everything in [his] power” to prevent Amazon workers from joining unions.
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Jennifer Bates, an employee at the Alabama facility, decried the company’s work environment and work culture and testified that despite Amazon already paying its employees at least $15 per hour, there needed to be more input from warehouse workers about their conditions.
“Amazon brags it pays workers above the minimum wage; what they don’t tell you is what those jobs are really like,” she told lawmakers during the hearing. “And they certainly don’t tell you that they can afford to do much better for the workers. Working at Amazon [warehouses] is no easy thing. The shifts are long, the pace is super-fast, you’re constantly being watched and monitored. They seem to think you are another machine.”
Bates brought up the number and duration of breaks that workers in the warehouse receive and said that, given the enormous size of the facilities, even walking to the restroom facilities eats into precious break time.
“My workday feels like a nine-hour intense workout, every day,” Bates said. “We are not robots.”
Nearly 9,000 employees at the Bessemer facility are in the midst of a seven-week mail-in vote about whether they want to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union. Amazon opposes the effort and likely worries that if the Bessemer facility votes to unionize, it could portend increased interest from its employees at other facilities across the country.
And the move is already getting attention. More than 1,000 Amazon workers in the United States have contacted the RWDSU in response to the vote, according to the union.
Bates said the company has fought tooth and nail to encourage Bessemer employees to oppose the union push. She testified that Amazon has worked to discourage unionization by sending messages to workers’ phones and by posting anti-union fliers around warehouse facilities, including inside the bathrooms. “No place was off limits, no place seemed safe,” she told lawmakers.
Bates also spoke to the larger implications of unionization at the Bessemer facility and the impact it could have at Amazon and at other large companies that oppose the unionization of their employees.
“It would open the eyes, not just in Bessemer, Alabama, but all over that the corporations should pay attention to the working-class people,” she said.
The Washington Examiner asked Amazon about Bezos not appearing at Wednesday’s hearing. A spokesperson for the company said he was “unable to attend” but did not elaborate on the reasons.
The spokesperson said that Amazon takes employee feedback, including that of Bates, seriously but said that the company doesn’t think her remarks “represent the more than 90% of her fulfillment center colleagues who say they’d recommend Amazon as a great place to work to friends and family.”
“We encourage people to speak with the hundreds of thousands of Amazon employees who love their jobs, earn at least $15 an hour, receive comprehensive healthcare and paid leave benefits, prefer direct dialogue with their managers, and voted Amazon #2 on the Forbes best employers list in 2020,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
But Sanders is not the only one hitting back at Amazon over the unionization drive. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican, recently wrote an opinion piece in USA Today in which he sided with the Bessemer workers.
Rubio’s gripe was not only with the labor conditions but more broadly with Amazon itself, which he accused of being “allies of the left in the culture war” and only turning to conservatives when its “bottom line is threatened.”
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“Here’s my standard: When the conflict is between working Americans and a company whose leadership has decided to wage culture war against working-class values, the choice is easy — I support the workers,” Rubio wrote. “And that’s why I stand with those at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse today.”
