Committed revolutionaries: get a job at Amazon and help us build working-class power!
A global crisis is unfolding and the left must seize the moment. The coronavirus pandemic — showing no sign of slowing –has triggered an overdue recession. And as capitalists shed jobs, Amazon is hiring en masse. The company has just announced that it is immediately hiring 100,000 logistics workers to provide itself a more flexible labor force to exploit during the pandemic. This is an opportunity to join us in fighting from within the belly of the beast.
Even in times of relative stability, Amazon epitomizes capitalism’s many ills. The company runs on the exploitation of dispossessed wage workers, specifically targeting those from refugee, immigrant, and Black communities. It profits from modernizing the police state, the war machine, and foreign genocidal regimes. It fuels gentrification and helps streamline modern gestapos and concentration camps. It is rapidly replacing living-wage union jobs in the logistics sector with minimum-wage gig work. However, it also presents an unprecedented opportunity for us to build a mass base in the working class and exercise immense structural power.
Amazon currently has a near-monopoly on e-commerce, constituting about half of the sector. It is also rapidly taking over large portions of logistics circuits, building vast networks of fixed capital radiating from every major city out beyond national borders. This network depends on labor that cannot be easily outsourced, as it must remain near major population centers and consumer markets. Amazon Web Services constructs and maintains the cyberinfrastructure for countless public and private enterprises, including courts, militaries, oil companies, and stock markets. By content, it hosts over half the internet. In both logistics and tech, Amazon employs nearly 700,000 workers internationally and is increasingly crucial to global circuits of capital accumulation. In other words, the company has opened new opportunities for workers to exercise true international class power.
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed Amazon’s infrastructure and workforce to their limits. As people self-quarantine and flock to the e-commerce giant to home-deliver their stockpiles of food, water, and sanitation supplies, logistics workers at Amazon and elsewhere strain under the increased burden. As the virus spreads and schools close, leaving working-class children with no caretakers, workers are forced to make impossible decisions between earning a wage and caring for their family. The current crisis is rapidly accelerating class conflict within these dynamics. Workers in Italy are going on strike, and unrest is developing here in the United States. The left should see this as an opportunity to expand the efforts of workers already organizing on the ground, pushing forward demands that will not only help drive a humane working-class centered response to the crisis, but further the groundwork for stronger working-class organization moving forward.
We have been working in Amazon warehouses and organizing our coworkers into protracted struggle for years. We are forging ties with other Amazon logistics and tech workers throughout North America and Europe. As the current crisis unfolds, we can foment class struggle on this crucial terrain. However, we need many more comrades willing to be on the front lines and take advantage of Amazon’s current hiring binge. We are calling on socialists from the base-building and revolutionary left to get in touch with us, to get a job, and to help us seize the moment. Even if you yourself can not get a job at Amazon, you can contribute. We also need comrades with organizing experience to serve as external organizers and help us expand our reach to facilities where we have no on-the-ground presence. Get in touch with us and we will guide you through the process and help place you where you can best contribute to the struggle.
To get in touch and join the fight at Amazon, please fill out this form and we will reach out shortly.
