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The Katie Halper Show

Amazon Workers Have Already Changed History W/ Chris Smalls & Alex Press

The Katie Halper Show

Katie Halper

News

4.61.5K Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Chris Smalls, who was fired by Amazon for protesting their abusive practices, & labor reporter Alex Press talk about the historic vote to unionize the amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Chris Small was fired by Amazon for organizing a walkout to protest the way they were subjecting their worker to COVID-19. He is the founder of The Congress Of Essential Workers (https://twitter.com/TCOEW. Alex Press (https://twitter.com/alexnpress)Alex Press is a staff writer at Jacobin (https://twitter.com@jacobinmag), whose writing has appeared in the Washington Post , The New Republic, The Nation and more.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to the Katie Halper Show, I'm your host Katie Halper.

0:06.1

Monday, March 29 is the deadline for mail-in ballots for almost 6,000 Amazon workers in

0:11.6

Bessamer, Alabama, who are voting on whether to form the company's first union.

0:16.4

The workers there make an average of $15.30 an hour over 80% of them are black and the

0:23.0

majority of them are women.

0:24.9

And just a reminder that Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the

0:30.2

world during the pandemic, his fortune rose by $75 billion.

0:36.0

So to talk about this unionization effort, I speak to Chris Smalls, a former Amazon

0:41.2

worker, and Alex Press, a labor reporter.

0:45.2

Chris Smalls worked for Amazon for five years, but was fired shortly after he helped organize

0:49.5

a work stoppage at the company's warehouse on Staten Island, New York.

0:54.2

In protest over a lack of protective gear and hazard pay for employees, he's since become

0:59.5

an organizer and founded the Coalition of Essential Workers.

1:04.1

Alex Press is a staff writer at Jacobin, and her writing has appeared in places like Washington

1:09.4

Post, New Republic, the Nation, N-plus-1, and more.

1:12.6

My co-host on this episode is Jamie Peck, who is the co-host herself of the Antifada podcast.

1:19.0

Please rate and review the show on iTunes and also please subscribe to our Patreon at

1:22.8

patreon.com slash the Katie Helper Show again.

1:24.8

That's patreon.com slash the Katie Helper Show for five dollars a month.

1:28.1

You get bonus episodes, extended interviews.

1:31.4

This week you'll be getting an interview that I did with Karina Moreno about Biden's immigration

1:36.8

policies and some less serious chats like debates about cheese that I have with Karina

...

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