Journal of Haiti and the Americas
United States: “Covid has been essential in union renewal”
Audio 7:30 p.m.
Christian Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union, speaks during a rally outside an Amazon facility on Staten Island in New York, Sunday, April 24, 2022. © AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File
By: Mikaël Ponge Follow |
Mikael Ponge Follow
3 mins
After a week of voting, this May 2 begins the counting of the ballots on the LDJ5 site of Amazon in Staten Island in New York.
The approximately 1,800 employees of the warehouse were called upon to decide for or against the establishment of a union.
On the decline for several decades, would unionization regain vigor in the United States?
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After the Starbucks coffee chain
, it's up to the giant Amazon, one of the largest employers in the United States, to face a unionization movement.
Barely a month after the positive vote of their colleagues at the JFK8 site in Staten Island in New York (April 1, 2022), their colleagues at the LDJ5 warehouse, located just opposite, also had to vote for or against rallying at ALU, the Amazon Labor Union, last week.
The counting begins on May 2, 2022. “
An absolutely key second vote
”, according to our guest Donna Kesselman, professor at the University of Paris-Est Créteil, labor sociologist and specialist in social rights in the United States, for “
affirm this momentum of unionization which takes place in certain companies, because the contagion effect is essential to hold in the campaigns of unionization which are arduous in the United States
”.
Indeed, Amazon spends millions of dollars using union-avoidance companies to dissuade employees from voting for unionization.
Despite everything, we are witnessing a union revival.
How to explain it?
"
The Covid was the fundamental trigger,
" explains Donna Kesselman.
“
The deterioration of working conditions, the inflationary surge and a very tight labor market
” have played in favor of this new craze supported by President Biden.
May Day in Latin America
May 1, International Workers' Day.
In Venezuela, it was hospital staff in particular who took to the streets to demand “
fair and dignified salaries
”.
In Honduras, in an unprecedented way, President Xiomara Castro, in power for almost 100 days, took part in a march of several thousand workers in San Pedro Sula, 180 kilometers north of the capital Tegucigalpa.
Five months before the presidential election in Brazil,
May 1 was the occasion for a remote confrontation
between the favorite, the former trade unionist Lula who mobilized his troops in front of a football stadium in Sao Paulo, and the outgoing, Jair Bolsonaro.
While in Chile, three people were injured by bullets during violent clashes in Santiago on the sidelines of the trade union demonstration.
Dominican diplomat kidnapped in Haiti
The government of the Dominican Republic confirmed it, Sunday, May 1, 2022: Carlos Guillen, agricultural adviser to the Dominican legation in Port-au-Prince, was kidnapped Friday at midday in Croix-des-Bouquets, in the suburbs of the capital.
The Dominican government demands from the Haitian authorities "
an immediate investigation for his 'safe and sound' release
".
The abduction was perpetrated by the 400 Mawozo gang, which controls Croix-des-Bouquets, and which last October sequestered 17 American missionaries and their parents.
According to the Dominican press, the gang demanded a ransom of $500,000 for the diplomat to be freed.
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United States
Unions
Employment and Labor
Haiti
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