BY JONATHAN REES
Back in December, I was listening to Adam Conover’s podcast, and his guests were the directors of Union: A Documentary Film, which is about the successful organizing effort by the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island. In the discussion, I learned that the film has been unable to be shown at regular cinemas or even find a streaming channel because nobody who is even remotely connected to Hollywood wants to make Jeff Bezos angry. Instead, the film has been hosted in small screening at educational institutions and union meetings. “Wait a second,” I said to myself. “I’m in a union at an educational institution!” So I went to the website, put in a bid to host a screening for fifty people, and finally saw it last Wednesday night.
I think my original motivation for arranging this was so that the activists in my organization would be inspired and that everyone else who came would realize that nothing is impossible. Really, the movie had a much deeper effect upon me than that. I was genuinely shocked at how much Amazon warehouse workers and college professors have in common. Please don’t get me wrong: I am not saying that our jobs are in any way equivalent. Every last person who works at a university has an easier job than the folks who work at that warehouse do. What I am saying is that we all face many similar circumstances because we are all workers.
Let me run you through some examples:
“This could take years,” one organizer notes near the beginning of the film. At CSU–Pueblo we’re in our fourth year of organizing. While we’ve gained a few tangible victories, it will probably require years to get the state law changed that will force our administration to recognize our union. “Amazon makes mistakes” was a sentiment I heard in the movie as well, the point being that they may seem powerful, but their poor decision-making made them vulnerable. Every university makes mistakes, particularly ours. I don’t root for them to happen, but I do think they have served as organizing opportunities. One of the key obstacles that the ALU faced (and still faces) is the high turnover at every Amazon facility. I just got through explaining twice last week that we aren’t losing members because we’re not representing them. We lose members because the professors most likely to join us are also the professors most likely to leave the university entirely. We lost two tenure-track members last December, in the middle of the academic year!
Later on in the film, a different organizer says, “I wanna work in a place where I know my job is secure and I know everything is alright.” How many of us can say that about our jobs? Certainly your contingent colleagues can’t do so. Another really striking part of the movie is when they filmed inside the warehouse during the run-up to the election. There are rows and rows of antiunion signs that Amazon put up at eye level that looked so brazen I wish I could have stopped the film and examined them more closely. I am not sure if I will ever see the same thing on the walls of my workplace, but I do know that the then-president of our university felt the need to give a five-minute antiunion speech to a roomful of AAUP members last October. I took that as the greatest sign of our success during the entire campaign. Finally, towards the end of the election campaign, the ALU flashed the phrase, “You are not disposable” in lights under the Amazon emblem atop their warehouse building. Seriously, don’t we all need that reminder these days?
If you’d like to screen Union: A Documentary Film, either at one of your meetings or in your home over the Internet, go here to see the details.
Contributing editor Jonathan Rees is professor of history at Colorado State University Pueblo.
I’m glad you didn’t call all work the same. Unfortunately, you went on to identify only one difference that is questionable, ignoring important distinctions that speak against ALU, AAUP, AUW Starbuck-style representation, service and stewardship from academics. To stop ignoring, what on Earth makes you think working in a warehouse is more difficult than academic work or that the work of a faculty employee is easier than that of a warehouse employee?
In a sentence, you note this from the film: All workers share some common challenges on the job like fallible employers that undermine a worker’s sense of self-worth in conditions of insufficient employment (and earning) security, but that joining a labour union can make things better, as it has for warehouse and autoworkers, and will for faculty once their employer is forced by law to recognize their self-representation. Does none of this strike you as absurd?
Do you think it would take four years to get a law passed enabling you and some other academics – maybe those dreamy T-Ts you miss – a law that enables all qualified academics to hang a shingle offering expert service and stewardship to higher education, maybe in offices over by Rosemount Museum or up by Planet Fitness in the mall?
Higher education does not need a Bezo or a Berkeley facilitator. It needs a profession. Everything you note in the film is a footnote in the monopolistic employment model for academics that is assumed without challenge. I offer challenge in the form of a different model (https://bit.ly/PSAvsHEIOversight02 ).
Academics do not work in a warehouse or for a capitalist. The model we inherited places our work in a universitas that takes the form of a university or college employer that stands as the only way people can earn and learn in higher education. Do not complain to me about the president with whom you are jointly and severally responsible for “shared governance” of an institutional employer you assume and then campaign against. Please, it makes me dizzy.