The workers at a Whole Foods location in Center City, Philadelphia, voted to form the grocery chain’s first-ever union on Monday, marking an incredible victory for workers who have been organizing at the store for over a year.
Whole Foods was bought by Amazon in 2017, and since then benefits, staffing levels, and working conditions have gotten worse. 130 workers voted in favor of unionizing with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), while 100 voted against. Through the union, workers are demanding a living wage (the starting salary is currently only $16/hour), better benefits, and more protections.
A closer look at workers’ complaints reveals eerie similarities between Whole Foods stores and Amazon warehouses. Like the grocery workers, other Amazon workers are also subject to technology that monitors and regiments their work. Workers are judged based on their rates, while injuries are systemically downplayed by management. “Squeezing the most out of one person, until you can’t squeeze no more, and then you do it to the next person” — this is how one Whole Foods worker described their experience, and is a sentiment familiar to Amazon workers across the company’s different sectors.
Closures in Quebec
The win for Amazon workers at Whole Foods comes on the heels of Amazon’s sudden closure of all of its warehouses in Quebec in Canada. When 230 warehouse workers in Quebec unionized last May, Amazon was forced to begin bargaining because of first agreement arbitration, a facet of the province’s labor laws. In October, a labor tribunal defended the unionization. In a thinly disguised act of retaliation, Amazon announced last week that it will be closing every warehouse in the province. The closure of seven warehouses will result in the layoff of 1,700 workers, a major assault on Quebec’s working class. The brazenness of Amazon’s retribution shows the threat that the workers’ efforts symbolize for the company.
Elections in North Carolina
Amazon workers are looking ahead to the upcoming union election at Amazon Fulfillment Center RDU1 in Garner, North Carolina, where voting is set to begin on February 10. Workers with the independent union Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE) filed for the election in December during the momentum of the Christmas strike.
These struggles, all facing serious pushback from Amazon, show the determination of Amazon workers in their fight for dignity in their workplaces. As the Whole Foods workers wrote in a social media post, “We aim to be a beacon of hope for every Whole Foods and Amazon worker, all around the world.”
Amazon workers must unite across sectors — this unification is especially pressing given the coming onslaught against the working class by the Trump administration. Amazon’s attacks on workers in Quebec show that working-class solidarity across borders and industries is a strategic necessity. Jonathan Rosenblum and Benjamin Fong write in Jacobin that the Quebec closures should be a “wake-up call” for Amazon organizers to focus less on “individual nodes of distribution” and instead target “the overall flow of goods through its network.” In other words, for workers to effectively fight Amazon, they will have to organize internationally, along global logistics chains.
But what does this look like in practice? As the Recording Secretary of the Amazon Labor Union IBT Local 1, Sultana Hossain, said, “In some way or another, Amazon affects you. It affects every single one of us.” Amazon workers must think creatively about how to build worker organization across every place that the company reaches — from Whole Foods aisles to the airplanes that are flown between Amazon warehouses. The struggle must go further to engage neighbors, community organizations, and students.
From Whole Foods workers, to drivers, to warehouse workers, Amazon workers must draw inspiration from each others’ wins, and fight against chauvinistic divisions that the capitalist system uses to try to divide our ranks.