The massive warehouse sits on a hill in Bessemer, a largely African American city with one of the highest poverty rates in Alabama. Bessemer is a former steel town with a rich union history. Six thousand jobs that pay in the $15-an-hour range with some benefits were considered by local boosters to be a boon for the area.
Union organizer Michael “Big Mike” Foster argues that Jeff Bezos, the multibillionaire owner of Amazon, set up in Bessemer to leverage the promise of job creation in return for complete control over a desperate workforce. “Do the math,” Foster says. “Fifteen dollars an hour after taxes is roughly 20 grand. There is no place that I know of where $15 an hour for a family is enough.”
Big Mike can be found every morning at 3 a.m. with signs outside the facility’s gates urging workers leaving their overnight shift to vote yes for the union. Even though most of the ballots have already been mailed in, he wants to make sure the workers and the company know…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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