At some point before the holidays, it was announced that Amazon was going out on strike. To say I was excited would be an understatement. It was the perfect time of year for Amazon workers to strike. I was thirsty for every detail. I alerted everyone I knew to avoid Amazon at all costs. I was ready to amplify worker voices, and to find a way to physically represent by joining a picket line.
But then email after email rolled in from different grassroots organizations—none of which really outlined what was happening, yet all of them asking for money.
More emails. More money requests. Again, no detailed information about what was happening and where.
OMG, more emails. More donation buttons. Yet no solid information about the strike. I checked my regular labor heads in journalism. I checked the commercial press. Nothing. Was Amazon even on strike?
If I—someone who cares deeply about unions and the labor movement—wasn’t sure what was happening, there was a problem.
Then came the announcement that the strike was over. To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement. Did the Teamsters just run a “virtual strike,” or rather, a social media campaign they called a strike?
This question led to another disappointing question. Are unions failing to take advantage of this moment in US history where polling statistics tell us that more people support unions than have supported them in the last forty years?
Unions didn’t create this moment. COVID did. The commercial press’ narrative of the “essential worker” set against the backdrop of the downtime given to “un-essential workers” gave rise to a mass contemplation on all of our working lives. COVID pointed out the breathtakingly harsh American climate we were living and working under, and the moment was born.
Americans are depressed. They are shooting people… driving their cars into crowds… leaving behind strange, garbled notes with their sad and confused thoughts. Perhaps this confusion is why we are so divided. We aren’t sure who to blame, and we aren’t sure who can fix it. But unions do know who to blame. And they sure as heck know how to fix it! The strike.
And not the virtual kind that has me questioning if the Teamsters know what they’re doing. But the very real scary kind that if run correctly at the right moment has the ability to change working class lives.
Unions have always been the antidote. They possess the ability to produce the opposite of harsh—solidarity, and the promotion of community, sharing, and cooperation. But are they doing it?
Don’t ask me… I don’t even know if Amazon went on strike!
-Jennifer Albert Mann, author of Shift Happens: The History of Labor in the United States
