Black Lives Matter helped inspire Amazon workers’ push to unionize in Alabama, union president says

• The president of the union that Amazon’s Bessemer plant would be joining told Bloomberg that BLM inspired some of the unionization efforts.
• If the employees vote to join the union, it would go against persistent anti-organizing tactics from the tech giant.
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A union president says the push to organize at Amazon’s warehouse in Alabama can be traced in part back to the Black Lives Matter protests.

Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, told Bloomberg that this summer’s nationwide racial reckoning and Black Lives Matter protests spurred unionization efforts in Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, a majority-Black town. 

Bloomberg reported Monday about the unionization attempt, which it noted is unusual for an Amazon workplace, considering the relatively high wages and benefits. The push to unionize at the warehouse, where an estimated 85% of its workers are Black, was also influenced by “the growing acceptance that systemic racism has hurt the economic prospects of people of color,” according to Bloomberg.

An Associated Press report adds that Amazon’s union push is happening in an area that historically has not been hospitable to organized labor: the right-to-work state of Alabama.

However, Appelbaum’s comments put the unionization effort in the context of a reckoning with racial equality around the county. 

If the unionization vote - which lasts for seven weeks and closes on March 29 - passes, it will be Amazon's first warehouse union in the United States. This effort marks a sea change for the tech and retail giant, which has historically participated in anti-union tactics.

Last week, Twitch removed a series of anti-union ads run by Amazon. The Washington Post reported that the company hung up anti-union signage in the Bessemer facility's bathrooms.

On Monday, Insider reported that Joe Biden came out in oblique support of the unionization efforts at Amazon, saying that union pushes should include "no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda."