Where Are the Amazon Workers?
Photo Credits: Evan Stone Photography
On Saturday, May 16, a group of activists from The People’s Lobby gathered outside an Amazon facility in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, chanting slogans and carrying signs demanding “Pay Your Fair Share, Fund Our Schools,” “Pay What You Owe,” and a “Digital Ad Tax.” The demonstrators blocked the facility’s entrances, halting deliveries and leading to several arrests by police.
Local blog “Guerilla Press” filmed Amazon drivers standing and watching the protest, noting that organizers “wished [the workers] would join them” but “he gets it” as to why they did not. One former Amazon driver spoke to the crowd about horrific workplace conditions but left immediately after her speech. When asked if workers were involved, a lead organizer appeared confused and stated plainly that they do not actively organize Amazon workers, nor did they want to jeopardize anyone’s employment for a single-day action. The glaring absence at the demonstration of Amazon workers inside the facility casts a spotlight on the divide between "progressive activism" and the political struggles essential to building real working class power. On one side, workers labor under tight quotas, constant surveillance, and low pay, their voices are excluded from The People’s Lobby’s action. On the other side stands a political organization, disconnected from those workers, making demands that will ultimately leave the same oppressive boot on the workers - the one that keeps them working long hours on a Saturday struggling to keep up with rising gas, housing, and food prices.
Yet The People’s Lobby’s demands conceal a glaring contradiction: these demands to “tax the rich” do nothing to end the exploitation of workers. Rather, it hopes to provide more resources for public services through the maintenance of workers' exploitation via a tax on wealth accumulation, rather than seeking to liberate the working class from the exploitation that creates profit altogether. The demands that TPL makes will not alleviate the immediate and pressing needs of Amazon's workers, namely working long hours for low wages and unsafe working conditions that have been well documented.
There was no intention of building workers’ power to challenge the exploitative system that generates Amazon's vast wealth that The People’s Lobby wants taxed. Instead, this single-day publicity event aimed to pressure the Illinois legislature into passing a “billionaire tax,” in the hope of better-funded public services through a reformed capitalism that is still built on the continued exploitation of the very workers excluded from the action.
The People’s Lobby describes itself as a group “of leaders and organizers who decided that we needed an organization that combines traditional grassroots organizing with progressive electoral work in order to win transformative campaigns for racial, economic, and environmental justice and corporate accountability.” The People’s Lobby’s strategy, centered on “progressive” legislative and electoral wins, is bankrupt. It abandons workers and ultimately supports the very system that keeps them exploited. By demanding corporate “accountability” and higher taxes in the total absence of building workers’ power as a class, this strategy leaves workers exposed to further crackdowns by bosses and further alienated from political struggle. It is not a matter of corporations “paying what they owe” when workers make everything. They owe us workers everything, and we understand they will not hand it over simply because we ask or send paid organizers for a few photo ops.
In stark contrast, the CWPUSA seeks to build working-class power. Amazon workers must lead such demonstrations, armed with the political and ideological understanding that we will never be free under this system, no matter how high the taxes or how “accountable” the corporations become. Our responsibility now is to bridge the gap between the movement and the working class by building a revolutionary organization within the working class itself, not apart from it. This is the aim of the CWPUSA.