Mark Mahaney, senior managing director of Evercore ISI, argues that Amazon stock fundamentals are getting better and are still rising.
Workers at an Amazon department store on Staten Island last week voted to organize, securing a significant victory for the labor movement against the retail giant, which has successfully repelled all previous organizing efforts since its inception in 1994.
Amazon labor organizers and supporters celebrate in front of the offices of the National Labor Relations Board in the borough of Brooklyn on Friday, April 1, 2022 in New York, United States. (Photographer: Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
So what made the difference that helped the Amazon Labor Union achieve their win at the New York City facility known as JFK8?
According to Burt Flickinger, chief executive of retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group, which helped provide training for the organization’s effort, there were a number of factors that helped push the ALU over the edge – but the nascent union followed a playbook that deployed successfully was in the past.
AMAZON CEO ANDY JASSY’S COMPENSATION WAS VALUED AT $213 MILLION IN 2021
SRG has held day-long organizing seminars at the request of unions and is training on the strategy that got former President Barack Obama into the White House.
Flickinger told FOX Business his firm teaches the methods former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe used in the 2008 Democratic primary that helped Obama beat Hillary Clinton.
Senior White House Advisor David Plouffe (L) shakes hands with United States President Barack Obama during a DNC meeting March 16, 2011 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images/Getty Images)
“It’s really about using this successful strategy where President Obama had less than 2% national awareness, but building that block by block through social, connecting digital media, friends and family, reaching out to neighbors, that missionary or student-like base and from there from groups of 4 to 24 then ultimately hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions,” said Flickinger.
“It’s the same strategy that the Staten Island union, along with its sister union, is employing or employing the Teamsters, or the retail, wholesale and department store union [United Food & Commercial Workers International],” he noticed.
STAFF AT THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER PROTEST THE POLICY OF RETURN TO WORK AND REAFFIRM RACE DIFFERENCES
Flickinger says that inflation has already set the stage for workers to demand more from employers when they feel their disposable income is tight, giving the labor movement further impetus.
“Even with Amazon’s very significant hourly wage increases over the past 12 to 30 months, workers still had lost 3% to 5% of their purchasing power,” Flickinger said. “So 70% live paycheck to paycheck and have substandard benefits compared to the unionized employers we work with and they don’t have a pension plan and really don’t have a living wage and regular hours that are worked out through collective bargaining.”
A supporter holds a sign before the announcement of the vote count to unionize Amazon workers Friday, April 1, 2022 outside the offices of the National Labor Relations Board in the borough of Brooklyn in New York, United States. (Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Flickinger predicts that more Amazon warehouses will soon be unionizing beyond New York and across the country, as will the retail giant’s truck drivers and workers at Whole Foods.
GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE
“When more strikes are around the corner and consumers are really aggressive in supporting workers and unions, you’re going to see a transformation-organizing effect on Amazon, which I myself, as a very fortunate Amazon shareholder for years, encourage,” he said.