The Online Newspaper of Lakewood High School

Lakewood Times

Lakewood Times

Lakewood Times

    Unionization at Amazon

    Unionization at Amazon

    For decades, Amazon has monopolized the market, buying out small businesses, favoring certain sellers, and eliminating the authenticity of cultural items. While it is has not been labeled as a monopoly by the Federal Trade Commission, you can argue that Amazon has an unconscionable amount of power over our society, economy, and government.

    In Birmingham, Alabama, nearly 6,000 Amazon warehouse workers voted on whether to form the first union at an Amazon operation. Employees say that $15 an hour is not enough to match the constant pressures put on workers to produce.

    The company has been resisting employees from unionizing for years; if the vote to unionize passes, it would change hourly wages, break times, and other policies involving working conditions. While Amazon has helped low-wage workers by increasing the initial pay to $15 an hour, the workers rebelling say that change is still needed in the work environment.

    Employees have been determined to change company policies such as the rate at which packages must be prepared and break times through protests, petitions, and talk of a potential strike.

    Ultimately, a unionization wouldn’t change much of the company’s production; you could argue that with a change in rate at which packages need to be produced, shipping time would increase, but workers are joining together to promote a change in the Amazon work environment to make it a more humane, pleasant place to work.

    View Comments (1)
    More to Discover

    Comments (1)

    All Lakewood Times Picks Reader Picks Sort: Newest

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    • M

      maddycummingsApr 13, 2021 at 8:24 am

      Wow I had no idea this was all so current.

      Reply