What the Teamsters endorsement debate doesn't mention

Footage from inside the fight

Welcome to a Friday edition of Progress Report.

It’s been quite a news cycle, largely dominated by horrible scandals that would be career-enders in any other chapter in American history. In just the past 24 hours:

• Donald Trump said that Jews will be to blame if he loses the election (which would be a point of pride if it weren’t for all his Nazi followers).

• A CNN report detailed North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s seedy internet past, including his habit of posting graphic sexual narratives and embrace of Nazis. None of it was worse than his usual insanity, but with Robinson down in the polls, Republicans tried to use it as pretense to force his withdrawal.

• Far-right creep and hatchet man Chris Rufo’s email was found in the Ashley Madison hack. His righteous morality is as authentic as his Harvard degree.

• Matt Gaetz is a pedophile, confirmed.

• Georgia’s MAGA-hacked election board ordered that all ballots be hand-counted on election night, setting the stage for errors that would allow them to invalidate the entire thing if Trump loses. The state’s Attorney General said that many of the proposed changes are unconstitutional.

Oh, and in-person voting for the November election began today in Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia.

With all that out of the way, let’s get to today’s main story, about union power, elections, and what we miss about the movement, with some exclusive footage from a recent Amazon action.

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The Teamsters national leadership’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate dominated national political headlines for much of yesterday, supplanted only by the latest revelations about self-declared Black Nazi, threesome enthusiast, and North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson.

The president of the Teamsters, Sean O’Brien, has been hit with criticism from both within the union and observers from outside the IBT. Regional coalitions representing around half of the Teamsters’ 1.2 million American members have endorsed VP Kamala Harris over the past 48 hours, as well.

Unions make up an important part of the Democratic coalition, even with diminished clout, so their political decisions make for an important storyline every four years.

But while the personality clashes and horse trading at the executive board level are compelling, they also tend to overshadow what actual rank and file members — the people who actually make up the unions — are doing to reconfigure the American power structure.

The Teamsters provide a perfect example: while the union’s national leadership wrestles with political considerations, hundreds of workers across several workers were on the picket lines today to protest unfair labor practices.

In Michigan, nearly 300 workers for Marathon Oil have been on strike since September 4th. They are frustrated by Marathon’s increasing tendency to use subcontracted labor and refusal to agree to curb the practice in their next contract, as well as the company’s unwillingness to adjust to the state’s repeal of its anti-union “right to work” law in 2023. The company is also lowballing them on cost of living raises and won’t budge on the exhausting schedules that they have imposed on workers.

A number of local unions have provided public and material support for the striking refineries, including the UAW, which is lending its union hall, and IBEW, whose members refuse to cross the picket line.

A ULP strike is meant to draw the federal government into mediating and ideally brokering a fair contract, and if not, holding the employer accountable. The Biden administration’s NLRB has been infinitely more aggressive and worker-friendly on this front, enabling workers to take the initiative during disputes.

The protections that the NLRB has regularly provided workers has also kept unions intact and active even in the most hostile environments, including Amazon warehouses across the country. The Teamsters just scored a major legal victory when the NLRB ruled that Amazon is a joint employer of its delivery drivers, opening the door to the potential organizing of up to 280K workers who suddenly have more rights in the workplace (at least for now).

While the Teamsters begin to seek out nascent organizing opportunities and hot shops among the delivery centers, the unionized Amazon workers in Staten Island, who just affiliated with the Teamsters, held a march on the boss on Wednesday.

Several dozen workers at the JFK8 warehouse gathered and proceeded to demand time with management, citing its open door policy. After being threatened with potential discipline connected to the company’s new on-premise policy, which violates a prior NLRB order, the workers read a letter outlining their demand for better transportation to the facility.

I obtained footage of the march and meeting, and the experiences that the workers outline are harrowing:

The Amazon complex is in the most remote and inconvenient part of New York City, difficult to reach by car and public transportation alike. Most of its NYC-based employees can’t afford to own a car, much less pay the tolls to get over the bridge to Staten Island, so they’re stuck using a shuttle that runs from a ferry terminal.

Coming from the Bronx and some parts of Brooklyn, commutes can take hours, in large part due to the unreliability of the shuttle bus, which was designed specifically for Amazon. It’s not just about being inconvenient; this has a real material impact on people’s lives.

The MTA added additional bus trips to the shuttle line in 2021, but today, like much of NYC’s public transportation system, they are overcrowded and underdeliver, with frequent delays and problems.

The MTA’s current budget disaster (thanks to Kathy Hochul) means that using state funds for further upgrades is something of a pipe dream, a problem that workers tell me that Amazon likes to cite when people complain about the shuttle. Specifically, Amazon management will mention fare evasion as an excuse for the shoddy service and dearth of upgrades.

Yet, as workers have pointed out, Amazon has invested in creating and improving shuttle busses to their facilities elsewhere in the country, and the Staten Island complex is one of the company’s most important hubs. Investing in more shuttles would prove beneficial to Amazon, too, because people would actually get to work on time and be able to put in full shifts without being dysfunctionally exhausted.

There’s a lot more video, but I think you get the picture. Amazon is especially difficult to push, but changes do happen — workers got a $1.50 base raise this week, which is larger than anything they’ve received in years. The larger point is that while politics get most of the attention, this is the real work of unions, and the kind of thing they are doing every single day. Some are more effective than others, but especially as the regulatory state is gutted, they nonetheless represent the only organized countervailing force to corporate power’s dominance of our everyday lives.

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