Lessons from a union drive

A couple of summers ago, I caught wind of a fascinating group of workers trying to organize an Amazon facility in North Carolina.

Reaching out to folks in the midst of union campaigns was a routine part of my work as a labor and tech reporter at NBC News at the time, but something about this group stood out. They were an incredibly varied and diverse bunch; everyone had a compelling backstory.

There was a former Manhattan finance guy disillusioned with capitalism, a Peruvian-American law student who was passionate about labor rights, a recent Gen Z grad who had been mentored by a famed local Black activist, and a Venezuelan surgeon who had fled his home country after violence and was deeply skeptical of the effort. There was even a Duke sociology professor who had gotten a job at the facility as part of an undercover field study.

It was clear that the effort — CAUSE, the workers called themselves — had a magnetic pull, drawing in people from different sectors and backgrounds, many of whom got jobs at the facility specifically to help organize.

I thought it was an important story about how the pandemic had galvanized workers and turbocharged a hunger for organizing. And there was a larger frame to explore, too — about what the future of work in the US would look like, as tech companies grew ever more powerful. Add that to a prompt to explore labor rights in a dynamic and complex part of the country — the facility was in Garner, on the outskirts of the state’s Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle — and I was hooked.

I pitched the story to the bosses at NBC, advocating for a series that would allow us to dig deep into the mechanics of the campaign, as well as the people behind it. I thought it would be a good vehicle to educate readers about the basics and history of the U.S. labor laws, knowing that their fundamental weaknesses would likely be on display during an aggressive anti-union blitz run by Amazon.

Reports that have come out of the facility indicate that Amazon did deploy a suite of anti-union tactics, including novel uses of its in-house technology to discourage or warn workers away from the union. Rev. Ryan Brown, the leader and co-founder of the union effort, was fired in December in a move organizers say they believe was retaliatory.

And when the union drive finally came up for a vote a couple of weeks ago, the effort was routed. Workers at the facility voted 3-1 against it. It would have been a good setting to explore the country’s antiquated labor laws — and how the odds are so stacked against workers. Maybe we would have learned that some of the momentum labor organizers felt after the pandemic had dissipated. But we wouldn’t be able to find out without reporting on it.

I didn’t get a hard no on my series, but I was never able to get the buy-in I needed to go forward. I took the pitch to other outlets after I left NBC, and got a similar result. In one instance, top decision makers at a prominent news org, whose lower level editors loved the idea, shot it down in a meeting because they “couldn’t relate to the story,” I was told — which coming from a fancy East Coast newsroom, sounded unintentionally confessional.

But that’s where this newsletter comes in. There is no one looking over our shoulders here; I hope to use this space to shine a light on these types of issues and more. Please feel free to reach out with ideas, tips, feedback — or just to chat.

Here is what I’ve been reading this week:

AI DRUMBEAT: A Pew study showed that some 80 percent of people don’t use AI at work — and the ones who do are unimpressed. More than 50 percent of respondents reported being “worried,” about AI, a significantly larger share than those who said they were “hopeful,” or “excited.”

VELVET HANDCUFFS: The Financial Times has a nice look at something many of us have noticed: how the once robust scene of internal dissent and activism at tech companies has gone underground. This one features a snippet from my Hard Reset counterpart Ariella Steinhorn. Is this activism dormant, quiet or just waiting for the right moment to break out again?

DORMANT OR DONE? I’m certainly not the first to point out how quiet it has been, activism-wise, during Trump II. But that energy is starting to pick up: among federal workers and science advocates, and in cities, small and large across the country, and at Tesla. Pussy hats have even made a return cameo ;)

• Andrew Hawkins at The Verge has a nice piece about the Tesla blowback. And Hamilton Nolan has a smart take about why the company may be particularly vulnerable to public protest. Even before the proverbial ink could dry on this letter this week, the company’s stock dropped precipitously. “Tesla’s Elon Musk problem,” Politico called it.

  • Reporter Jonah Owen Lamb noticed that the DOL is seeking to cut the agency that is currently reviewing Tesla’s operations in the Bay Area by 90 percent.

• I’m curious to see what kind of impact tomorrow’s economic boycott will have. Need some inspo? Check out “underconsumption” TikTok, where anti-consumerism is stylized and glamorized. Target will never be able to beat your sand dollar collection, it’s true.

• This story about a 32-year-old pilates instructor in San Francisco, who got sick of rage-scrolling one day and planned her own protest, is a great example of how easy it can be to organize.

The MELTDOWN at the Washington Post continues. During my time there, four and a half years spanning most of Trump’s first term and a bit of Biden’s, this kind of interference would have been unthinkable. There was a strong feeling that Bezos supported the paper, believed in its mission, and knew that at the end of the day, the optics of getting involved would be self-defeating and devalue his asset. But capriciousness seems to be the big risk with billionaire owners and WaPo is finding out what happens when your owner changes his mind on a dime. Marty Baron doesn’t use this kind of language haphazardly.

DOWNTURN FEARS are growing. The WSJ explores whether the federal workforce cuts, if they are steep enough — and that is a big if, despite the noise — could hamper the economy. Consumer confidence fell by the biggest drop since August 2021, as people weigh concerns over tariffs, renewed inflation, and a general sense of chaos and uncertainty. Tomorrow’s inflation report will be closely scrutinized.

Cutting Medicaid and other government programs to finance a tax break for billionaires would seem to be one of the least popular policies out there. Yet here we are. How Democrats have let things get to this point, without being able to take advantage of these moments politically, boggles the mind. At least Bill Burr gets it.

Thanks for reading and see you next week.