How did the Amazon workers win — and what's next?

Episode 68 Sneak Peek

This week, Krystal Kyle & Friends is taking a close look at the work of labor organizing — the lessons we can learn from Amazon workers’ stunning victory, what its reverberations will be in American labor organizing and beyond, and what tools labor organizers currently have at their disposal — with the help of guest Daisy Pitkin. Daisy has decades of experience organizing, both internationally and in the United States, with garment and laundry workers. And she’s literally written the book on it: she authored On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women's Epic Fight to Build a Union, which tells the story of unionizing industrial laundry factories in Phoenix, Arizona, emphasizing the essential role of women in the labor movement.

Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein

Amazon to ban the word "union" on its new worker chat app, per internal company documents leaked to me. Other banned terms include "living wage," "slave labor," "harassment" and "restrooms"

theintercept.comLeaked: New Amazon Worker Chat App Would Ban Words Like “Union,” “Restrooms,” “Pay Raise,” and “Plantation”Also: “Grievance,” “slave labor,” “This is dumb,” “living wage,” “diversity,” “vaccine,” and others.

In response to the union vote at the Staten Island Amazon warehouse last week, Amazon is — no surprise — stepping up its efforts to quell further unionization efforts, heavily censoring communication channels between workers. In the linked piece above, Ken Klippenstein reports for the Intercept on leaked documents that show how Amazon management is preventing critical discussion of working conditions on its central messaging app. It’s fully damning that Amazon needs to prevent its workers from using phrases like “slave labor” and “harassment” in discussions of their experiences on the job. And as we know, these discussions lead to meetings and plans to build worker power and improve conditions in the workplace. We’ll be talking to Daisy about Amazon management’s backlash, and also how Amazon workers across their country — as well as allies in the labor movement — can fight back.

Episode 68 of KK&F will be available on Friday to paying subscribers through Substack, and to everyone in podcast format when it’s released on Saturday through Pandora, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more.