Black Lives Matter To Lead Caravan To Support Amazon Unionization

BESSEMER, AL — As the voting deadlines approaches for workers at the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer nears, the Black Lives Matter movement has organized a caravan in support of unionization efforts. The event takes place March 13.

The caravan begins at 4:30 p.m. at 994 Academy Dr. in Bessemer.

More than 5,000 workers at the Amazon fulfillment warehouse in Bessemer were sent ballots Feb. 6 asking if they want to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The election runs through March 29. Employees notified federal labor authorities in November of their plans to hold a unionization vote.

BLM has been a strong supporter of the "BAmazon" union workers throughout their fight to bring the first union to an Amazon warehouse. About 85 percent of the workforce at the BHM1 facility in Bessemer is Black, according to the RWDSU.

"BLM has been working with RWDSU organizers on the ground since the election began," the RWDSU said in a statement Tuesday. "At the kick off of the caravan, BLM leaders will speak to what we’ve long known to be true, Amazon’s majority Black workforce has been treated as disposable and not been given the dignity and respect they deserve. This will also include a digital solidary caravan, building on BLM’s outreach to workers during this campaign."

BLM Birmingham will kick off the caravan alongside Movement Elders including representation from: NAACP, SCLC, Civil Rights Foot Soldiers, Poor People’s Campaign, Concerned Clergy, and other Black led organizations that share a common truth of uplifting Black Lives. Community groups and unions from the surrounding area will also join RWDSU organizers for the caravan.

"Amazon workers deserve to be treated with dignity and respect and especially the 85 percent of Black lives that go to that fulfillment center daily to work, but whose work is grossly undervalued, BLM Birmingham co-founder Eric Hall said. "It’s our fight as a community of Black workers, it’s about us, and let us be clear, Black Lives Matter in Alabama."

If the Bessemer employees approve unionizing, this would be the first Amazon facility to join a union. The Bessemer vote is the first warehouse union vote since a group of technicians in Delaware voted against unionizing in 2014.

"This is as much a fight about civil rights as it is about the fight to organize a union," RWDSU president Stuart Appelbuam said. "The goals of the Black Lives Matter movement represent what it is the workers are trying to achieve at the Bessemer facility. We are thrilled to have the support of the Black Lives Matter movement during this critical and historic union campaign."