Since its founding, Amazon has been accused of exploiting its workforce. Reports reveal that Amazon workers are injured on the job at a much higher rate than the average US worker. Amazon is notorious for imposing inhuman time schedules on their workers such that they aren't given time for bathroom breaks. Amazon also has a record of wrongfully terminating employees and incorrectly distributing benefits.
Amazon has aggressively
prevented its warehouse workers across the United States from unionizing.
Last year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that Amazon had
violated labor laws in preventing its warehouse workers from unionizing
in Bessemer, Alabama.
Recently, the Amazon labor union held a successful union vote
at an Amazon facility in New York City to join the Amazon Labor Union that
advocates for higher wages and job security.
Christian Smalls, who heads the Amazon Labor Union,
recently met with Biden shortly after Smalls harshly criticized Amazon’s labor
practices during
the Senate hearing.
https://twitter.com/Shut_downAmazon/status/1522296192406802437
Last month, Biden drew
applauses at a labor event when said that the “choice to join a union
belongs to workers alone" and called out Amazon by name proclaiming
that "Amazon here we come. Watch. Watch,” Biden said.
During his campaign, Biden had promised to “ensure federal contracts only go to
employers who sign neutrality agreements committing not to run anti-union
campaigns.”
So how do Biden’s utterances measure against his actions?
Nextgov reported
that Biden’s National Security Agency (NSA) signed a $10 billion contract with
Amazon. The federal contract is in addition to another massive Pentagon contract on
which Amazon is also currently bidding.
Days after Amazon signed the NSA contract, the Amazon
Labor Union lost its second union election bid by a two to one margin at
another Staten Island warehouse. The Observer reported that Amazon had funded a
prolonged and aggressive campaign to
block organizing efforts on the part of workers.
Meanwhile, Lever News reported that Congress is moving legislation to
give Amazon new tax breaks and give $10 billion to Amazon founder Jeff
Bezos’s space company. Democrat senators recently also voted to reject a
measure from Sanders demanding that tech companies that receive government
subsidies remain neutral in union elections.
Amazon has evaded federal
income taxes for years. In 2020, Amazon federal income taxes for the first
time since 2016. The amount paid by Amazon was $162 million last year, a relatively
small fraction of its $13.9 billion pre-tax reported income in 2019. Tax filings show that Jeff Bezos didn't pay any
income taxes for at least two years between 2006 and 2018.
So why does Amazon continues to get a pass, despite such a
poor record on taxes and labor human rights?
The answer is that Amazon
donated $13.1 million to Democrats from 2020 to 21 and $13.1 million
from 2018 to 2019. Amazon has been donating to the Democrats since 1998. Their
donations to the GOP have been comparatively lesser. This was
reported by Open
Secrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in U.S.
politics, reported
Amazon’s top recipient in donations was Joe Biden, who received $1.7 million for his Presidential Campaign. Amazon also hired the brother of Biden’s top aide as a lobbyist mere days after the 2020 presidential election. Amazon also donated $800,000 to Bernie Sanders and $13,216 to AOC.
In addition to campaign contributions, there are myriad other
ways for Amazon to buy influence without being detected. There could be paid
speaking assignments or rewarding book deals or lucrative employment for
relatives or cronies or post-retirement employment for the politician himself.
There could also be favorable coverage from the Washington Post which Amazon
founder Jeff Bezos owns or a content deal on Amazon’s streaming services.
The Democrats once claimed to be the party of the working
class, but those days are over.
In recent times, Democrats have passed legislation that is against the interests of organized labor. The Democrats have also signed trade
deals that send American jobs offshore, which cut costs for big corporations
such as Amazon.
This isn't a recent phenomenon, Democrat abandonment of
the labor movement began in the late 70s under President Carter, and it continued
under President Clinton and President Obama.
Biden and the current group of Democrats are merely continuing that ignominious tradition.
Biden's open borders have caused an influx of poor migrants who
work for less than minimum wage and without any benefits. Consequently, the
citizen laborer is either rendered unemployed or witnesses a sharp decline in
wages. The 40-year high inflation under Biden has hit the working class, as they
see their savings deplete. All of this contributes to income
inequality, an issue that the Democrats claim to care about dearly.
They order lockdowns that hurt the working class. They order vaccine mandates, which causes working-class people such as truckers and firefighters, who are unsure of the merits of the vaccine, to quit their jobs. Their call to defund the police causes lawlessness in poor neighborhoods. Their focus is on issues such as climate change and gender pronouns that are irrelevant to the working class. Regular people who stand against them politically are called extremists and domestic terrorists.
The Democrat mentality has the unmistakable stench of snobbery and elitism. They attend events where the working class who serve them suffocate under masks while they pose before cameras in designer outfits.
Their focus and loyalty are solely towards their very wealthy
donors. Hence while Amazon engaged in
union-busting and subjected its workers to sub-human conditions, Democrats
awarded them massive contracts.
The modern Democrat only has empty words during campaign rallies for the working class and nothing more.
They may express compassion for workers, support unions, and
attack big corporations. They may even invite union leaders to events and shake
hands with them before cameras. They may slam capitalism. They may
excoriate Republicans for being the party of the rich. But after they received
their accolades and favorable press, they return back to their offices and act
solely in favor of the big corporations who exploit workers.
In reality corporations, big and small have a vital role to
play in a nation’s economy. Wealth creators and employment generators must be
encouraged by governments. But that cannot happen at the cost of the worker to
toil for the corporation.
For this issue and several others, the Democrats are like
actors who say their lines from a prepared script with all the right emotions
before the cameras. However, once cameras are turned off they return back to
reality i.e. focusing solely on their self-interests.
It's time for the workers to now focus on their self-interest
and vote the Democrats out during the mid-terms and in 2024.
Also appears on American Thinker
Comments
Post a Comment