Tom walked into an under construction Amazon warehouse in eastern Washington looking for a job. He wondered if BZI Construction needed any more help after seeing the steel frame for the warehouse going up. He was hired by BZI very quickly.
The relationship didn't last long. He quit the next day.
He was also an employee. The Ironworkers' union is made up of workers who build steel framed structures. One of the most powerful companies in the world, Amazon, was the target of an attempt by a former employee of BZI to expose them.
The campaigns to organize Amazon warehouse workers have grabbed the nation's attention. Labor is attacking Amazon in different ways. Unions are fighting Amazon with regulatory complaints, digging through federal data to attack Amazon's safety record, and even using undercover spies and drones.
Unions have more chances to win if they pursue a multipronged strategy against Amazon. Those victories show that unions should be taken seriously by Amazon and its workers.
Amazon uses high-powered labor attorneys to fight union victories. In the past, the company has fought organizing activity in its warehouses, quashed union votes in New York and Alabama, and aggressively appealed labor's only successful union election at Amazon's JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island.
The National Labor Relations Board oversees union elections that take place on a regulatory playing field tilted heavily towards employers.
The current rules of the National Labor Relations Board make it hard to win an election at Amazon. Amazon has "virtually unlimited resources with which to fight the union" because of the high turnover rates in their warehouses.
In the face of Amazon's overwhelming power and ubiquity, organizers are looking for things that will keep workers hopeful, that are going to keep them moving forward and getting somewhere.
Fine said that having campaigns along the way gave allies and volunteers a sense of their own power.
For months, Ironworkers in western states gathered intel linking BZI Construction to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamist cult that has racked up allegations of wage theft and child labor law violations.
The Ironworkers released footage, business records, and other information in order to argue that Amazon didn't adequately supervise who its developers and contractors hired to build its warehouses.
The president of the Ironworkers Northwest District Council said that if the warehouses were built by union labor, Amazon wouldn't have to worry about being associated with a cult.
He said that they were trying to get Amazon to do the right thing
Jeffson told Insider that he used to be one of the teenage workers employed by BZI Construction.
BZI told Insider that Jeffson had lied about his employment at the company. An Amazon representative told Insider that the company does not tolerate any illegal labor practices and expects its contractors and suppliers to treat their workers with respect and dignity
He didn't find much during his time working for BZI. He took a picture of the sign-in sheet at the job site. He left empty-handed.
He returned to the under-construction warehouse more than a dozen times over the next three months to take pictures and videos of alleged labor violations.
"You need to get your hands dirty to be an organized person," he said. Washington state's workplace regulators were urged to investigate by the Ironworkers.
BZI had left the state by that time. The Ironworkers decided to go to another Amazon job site in Woodburn, Oregon. As BZI erected the steel frame for what is set to be one of the largest Amazon warehouses in the country, another Ironworkers organizers took to the sky. The Ironworkers believe that BZI was underpaying workers and that the man who flew a camera over the job site for weeks had a license to fly drones. The allegations have been denied byBZI.
Amazon told Insider that it was in regular contact with developers and contractors to oversee construction projects, even though BZI was hired by general contractors to build Amazon warehouses.
The Ironworkers launched a website detailing BZI's ties to the polygamist cult. Readers are asked to sign a petition to demand that Amazon hire safe and reliable contractors who treat workers with dignity and respect.
GrimDelivery.com is a website operated by another Ironworkers council. The website asked if Amazon did any due diligence on the companies it brought into our communities.
Oregon's labor bureau is investigating whether BZI committed wage theft at the Woodburn job site.
The existence of the investigation is a victory for unions. Each blow against Amazon deepens support for organized labor according to a labor professor.
Everyone wants to be involved in a victory.
There are other battles that are more mundane.
Local boards are being weaponized by unions to derail new Amazon facilities. The Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of national labor unions, has been at the forefront of analyzing federal workplace safety data indicating that Amazon's logistics operations cause workers to be injured at a disproportionately high rate.
An Amazon representative said the company is making "measurable improvements" in reducing injuries and disputed the labor coalition's methodology.
The goal of the campaign is to stop the construction of Amazon warehouses and air hubs that could take jobs from drivers and slash tax breaks offered to the company. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union is a union that represents warehouse workers.
We aren't doing the traditional organizing method. Sean O'Brien told Insider that they are making sure that Amazon is held accountable. If they don't do the right thing in those communities, we'll stop them from moving in.
In New Jersey, Colorado, and Indiana, labor succeeded in upsetting Amazon's plans. In California, labor groups succeeded in getting a moratorium on new warehouse construction. Amazon's pace of work may lead to high rates of worker injuries. An Amazon representative said the company will cooperate with investigators and that the concerns are not true.
Even though only one election victory has been achieved by union organizers so far, the momentum for more votes is growing. Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Albany, New York are voting on whether to join a union, while workers at a facility in California filed for a union vote.
It's not inevitable that you're going to lose even if you rack up victories outside of union votes, according to Fine.
Are you employed by Amazon? Someone has a tip. You can contact the reporter by phone or email.
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