" You really want to get a core group of organizers that are completely dedicated to the cause...You have to study labor law. You have to go on the National Labor Relations Board website...Study what you can and cannot do as far as your campaign goes. You want to find yourself a labor lawyer." - Derrick Palmer on how to start your own union. Unlock this full interview to read the transcript and watch the video in full.
FEATURING DERRICK PALMER - The retail giant Amazon announced more than $200 billion in quarterly sales in its latest figures to investors. The company has become a massive monopoly, employing more people worldwide than any other company with the exception of Walmart. For years, workers attempted to unionize Amazon. Today, Amazon Labor Union, whose co-founder has written a manifesto for modern-day union organizing, explains how he and his fellow workers bested Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Derrick Palmer is the vice president and cofounder of the Amazon Labor Union, which, in 2021, successfully unionized an Amazon warehouse for the first time in the company’s history. He lives in Staten Island, New York, and continues to work as an employee at the Amazon JFK8 warehouse there. His new book is called Handbook for the Revolution: Building a Union for the Twenty First Century. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about his new book.
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:
Sonali Kolhatkar: Now, you say in your book that you never started out thinking that you would be a labor leader and an organizer. What was your breaking point? What led you from anger into activation after you'd already been working at Amazon for a number of years?
Derrick Palmer: Oh, that's a good question. I feel like honestly, it was built up for a while. Just my experience being at Amazon, because first off, I started off at a New Jersey warehouse before I transferred to Staten Island, and it was like mirror image. The same crazy working conditions. The rates system was very harsh, and it allowed workers to create their own little culture there, if that makes sense. Everyone was against what Amazon was doing, and I was one of them. But it was really at that point where I was just complaining and not really doing anything about it.
And I think gradually, as I started working at Amazon, I became more of a leader because people gravitated towards me because I started to speak out, and I started to speak out against management and the way the system is built. And what really set the tone for organizing was really in the pandemic. The pandemic when New York was the epicenter. We had the most cases in the United States, and a lot of people were getting sick, and we didn't even have the proper equipment in the facility, and there was no social distancing implemented. There was no type of policies or anything in regards to COVID.
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