[ Despite the high turnover, at Amazon, in charter schools, in
restaurants, and among student workers, unions are developing
strategies to organize high-turnover workplaces.]
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ORGANIZING DESPITE THE CHURN  
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Jenny Brown
May 22, 2023
Labor Notes [[link removed]]

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_ Despite the high turnover, at Amazon, in charter schools, in
restaurants, and among student workers, unions are developing
strategies to organize high-turnover workplaces. _

Amazonians United builds bonds among delivery station workers by
holding lots of get-togethers outside work. Because of high turnover,
they emphasize drawing new members in and building a spirit of
solidarity as well as skills and bonds., Photo: Amazonians United.

 

When the Amazon Labor Union first submitted union authorization cards,
“we had to withdraw and file again,” recalled organizing committee
member Justine Medina, “because Amazon challenged over 1,000 of our
signatures saying they no longer worked there.”

The sky-high turnover at the 8,000-worker fulfillment center on New
York's Staten Island, made collecting cards “a race against Amazon
firing everyone,” she said.

Amazon has annual turnover of 150 percent. “They design the
productivity quota, the rates system, to be a constant speedup
situation, and that makes it hard to keep the job,” said Medina, who
still works at the warehouse. Several ALU leaders have been fired.

Still, ALU, an independent union now with affiliates in Kentucky and
California, was able to collect enough valid cards and win its
election in 2022. “The faster the turnover is, the harder it is to
organize,” said Medina. “You can still do it, but it’s obviously
a challenge.”

Despite the churn, at Amazon, in charter schools, in restaurants, and
among student workers, unions are developing strategies to organize
high-turnover workplaces.

BUILT-IN TURNOVER

The 150 percent turnover figure at Amazon can be misleading: some
people stay for years while a lot more stay briefly. But at Grinnell
College in Iowa, where student dining workers organized a union in
2016, the workforce of undergraduates turns over completely every four
years.

In light of this, the Grinnell Union of Student Dining Workers won in
its first contract the right to do a union orientation with new
workers.

The union deliberately kept contracts short—just two years long—so
at least some members remember the details of the last negotiation,
said union member Isaiah Gutman: “Outside the nuts and bolts, the
negotiation experience helps members and leaders understand who we are
up against, what [management] thinks of us.”

Resident advisors at Columbia University in New York City faced even
more intense turnover when they started to organize last year. Only
sophomores and above are eligible, and nearly half the workforce of
153 turns over every year.

Amazon Turnover: Fired, Broken Down, Forced Out

When an Amazon warehouse moves into a county, the turnover in that
sector jumps dramatically, the National Employment Law Project
[[link removed]] has
found. Overall annual warehouse turnover is 64 percent, but it doubles
when Amazon moves in.

This is because Amazon fires and drives away workers at a rate that
made insiders worry the company would run out of workers by
2024, leaked internal memos showed
[[link removed]].

Amazon’s model is to hire lots of people for peak season (November
and December) and fire them in the new year. But in any season, there
are so many ways to break Amazon’s rules that managers can always
find reasons to fire people, said Amazon Labor Union member Justine
Medina, who works at a New York City warehouse.

Workers quit because of the grueling conditions and scant paid time
off: full-time workers get 50 hours a year. Even unpaid time off is
strictly limited.

Injured workers are forced back to regular duties. In April, OSHA
fined [[link removed]] the
Castleton, New York, Amazon fulfillment center for forcing workers to
do their jobs injured—often making the injury worse.

It’s particularly challenging to stick it out in the larger Amazon
fulfillment centers, where in some jobs people barely interact during
a 10-hour shift, said Ted Miin of Amazonians United: “That kind of
isolation harms the mind.”

To cope, they went public with the union earlier than would be
recommended in a normal union drive, circulating a campus-wide
petition on wages and worker input. They needed to cast a wide net to
reach incoming RAs, said organizing committee member Leena Yumeen.

Columbia RAs attend a 60-hour training before the semester starts, so
the union, the Columbia University Resident Advisor Collective, used
that opportunity to talk to new RAs about workplace problems and got
100 to sign up for a group chat that was explicitly union. In May the
RAs won their union election with 95 percent of the vote.

‘CO-WORKER CULTURE’

Ted Miin works at an Amazon delivery station in Chicago where, despite
high turnover, workers have won drinking water and paid sick time, and
conducted safety strikes after Covid hit. The independent worker-led
collective Amazonians United coordinated walkouts at two stations and
won a $2 raise that was extended to all delivery stations in Chicago.

Though workers don't have a union that's recognized by the company,
new hires quickly learn about Amazonians United, because co-workers
talk to them on break, and might invite them to a nearby potluck lunch
after work (shifts are 1:00 a.m. to noon).

Their conversations with new workers emphasize a “co-worker
culture,” Miin said, “bringing attention to what the managers are
doing, how they’re treating us, and building a culture where
co-workers will look out for each other, don’t snitch on each
other… That kind of culture picks up pretty quick.” They
petitioned to make their break room worker-only, and managers no
longer sit there.

As a result, the facility has had a hard time finding workers willing
to move up to management, Miin said. Two even stepped down after
promotions.

Amazonians United also builds cohesion through a group chat, getaways,
and get-togethers at restaurants, parks, ice-cream shops, or a
neighborhood organization near the workplace. They also conduct a
Union School political education program and hold annual citywide
barbeques.

Recognizing that even committed organizers may leave or get fired,
Amazonians United works to keep them in the union. “We have to
develop our consciousness as a shared class that should be continuing
to work and build together,” Miin said.

Even after they leave Amazon, some people continue to participate in
the Union School and social events. One person used techniques learned
fighting Amazon to stop wage theft at a new job administering Covid
tests in prisons.

UNION OUTSIDE WORKPLACE

The same spirit animates the Union of Southern Service Workers, a new
group started in Durham, North Carolina. Its structure is designed for
workers who often switch low-wage jobs, like Iesha Franceis. She has
worked in fast food and retail, and now works at a long-term care
facility, but the whole time she has been a USSW member.

When Covid hit, she was working at Freddy’s Frozen Custard &
Steakburgers in Durham. Franceis and her co-workers conducted a
four-day safety strike in October 2020, winning Covid protocols and
paid quarantine time not just for her store but also for the 32 others
owned by the same franchisee.

When they struck a year later because safety had backslid, the
workforce was entirely new except for Franceis and one co-worker,
Jamila Allen, and included lots of high school students.

“They were so amazed at what they did, at the fact that they walked
out of the store, and the store shut down,” Franceis said. She knew
that feeling from her first strike. “It was a whole new world for
them.”

Like Amazonians United, USSW hosts a lot of social events and
meetings. The union asks everybody to bring two new people each time.
USSW members also will walk into stores where they don’t know
anyone, introduce themselves, and strike up a conversation about
working conditions.

“We know this industry. Everybody’s going through the same
problems—not enough work time or not enough money, harassment.
It’s universal,” said Franceis.

STRIKES HELP

At charter schools in Chicago, annual turnover ranges from 15 to 30
percent. Turnover hampered but did not prevent charter organizing,
said Chris Baehrend, former president of the charter teachers union.
Sometimes losing important leaders meant organizing committees
didn’t have the strength to go public with an organizing drive by
the end of the year, he said, which was a “huge disappointment.”

Still, they were able to organize 35 schools under 13 different
employers, and in 2018 became a division of the Chicago Teachers
Union. Baehrend is now a CTU organizer.

In 2018, teachers and paraprofessionals struck 15 schools in the Acero
chain, the first charter strike in the country. That made it easier to
strike up a conversation about the union.

Answering High Turnover

GET IT IN THE CONTRACT

* The right to contact information for new hires
* Orientation time with new workers, without management
* Shorter contracts may help

STRONG ORIENTATION GAME

* Approach and welcome new hires right away
* Map your workplace to keep track of who is new
* Make a good orientation program and use it
* Stake out places the employer orients new workers

BUILD A UNION CULTURE

* Nothing beats a strong, vocal union presence
* Let new people know you’re in it together against management
* Create opportunities for new people to meet members outside work
* Defend worker-only space like break rooms

“New members come in and say, ‘I hear you strike here, that’s
scary,’” Baehrend said. “But it starts a conversation about what
is the union’s power.”

The union also maps schools to identify new people and “pushes
delegates to meet new people who come in,” he said. (Delegates are
like stewards.)

STRONG BASICS

The more visible, vocal, effective, and participatory the union is,
the easier it is to incorporate new people, said veteran union
organizer Gene Bruskin, who has organized in food production, nursing,
hotels, and more.

In new organizing, “you can’t avoid the fundamental organizing
premises of a strong, representative, active committee and a visible
campaign,” Bruskin said. “Without that, the turnover hurts you
much more.”

Bruskin worked on organizing Smithfield, the 5,000-worker pork
processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, an open shop (“right
to work”) state. The workers faced massive retaliation—at one
point the company fired a third of the workforce, claiming that many
Latino immigrant workers didn’t have proper documentation. The union
had to completely rebuild its committee after that, but eventually won
their union election in 2008.

Meanwhile, Bruskin noted, a neighboring poultry plant that already had
a union had “30 percent membership, a weak contract, and they
didn’t service it. Nobody’s going to join that union because you
walk in there and people will tell you, the union’s for sh*t.”

At Smithfield, the union won an hour to orient any new hires. “An
hour with 10 people, and you have a good program, chances are you’re
going to sign up eight of them,” said Bruskin. But he said many
unions don’t take orientations seriously.

Jenn Gott, a pre-loader and Teamster steward at a UPS warehouse in
Davenport, Iowa, said it’s important to reach new people right away
and tell them about the union. “If you don’t feel like you were
invited to be part of it from the jump, then why now?”

Iowa is open shop, so new hires don’t have to join the union, but
Local 710’s contract says the union can get contact information for
any new hires. And every month they get 10 minutes to talk with the
new people.

Getting management to allow this is sometimes a battle, said Gott, but
it’s worth it. She tells new workers, “I’ve been here 28 years.
I was fired once, and I’m here because of the union.”

UNION REDUCES CHURN

Union gains—and the fact that workers are organizing together—can
make jobs worth keeping.

Winning strikes teach you that you can make changes where you are,
said the USSW’s Franceis: “That just lets you know you don’t
have to quit and go to another job only to experience the same
problems on the same level or at a higher level.” USSW’s goal, she
said, is to make low-wage jobs into respectable high-paying union
jobs.

A strong union presence keeps people from getting picked on by
managers. “People get in trouble, somebody stands up for them,
‘Oh, don’t let them do that, come on, we’ll talk to your shop
steward,’” said Bruskin. “That, and having a strong contract,
keeps a lot of people from leaving.”

And day-to-day solidarity with your co-workers directly challenges
high turnover, said Miin at the Amazon delivery station: “Many
co-workers said, ‘I would have quit long ago if it wasn’t for this
group. I never worked anywhere that has a group like this.’”

_A version of this article appeared in Labor Notes Issue #531, June
2023 [[link removed]]. Don't
miss an issue, subscribe today.
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_Jenny Brown [[link removed]] is an
assistant editor at Labor Notes._

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