Inside The Unionization Effort At Amazon
What A Day
What A Day
4.6 • 12.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 February 2022
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
The White House released a report yesterday detailing how it wants to increase union participation and collective bargaining in the workforce amid historic lows in union membership across the U.S. This is happening while workers at an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama are in the midst of a union election process after last year’s election result was overturned. Reyn McGuire, an employee at the warehouse who is actively organizing her coworkers, joins us to discuss how this vote is and isn’t different from last time.
And in headlines: Protests over Covid mandates in Ottawa prompted the city to declare a state of emergency, school mask mandates repealed in three states in the Northeast, and Frontier and Spirit Airlines announced plans to merge.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's Tuesday, February 8th. I'm Gideon Rezik. |
| 0:08.4 | And I'm Chessi Defi Rice, and this is What a Day. |
| 0:11.0 | The podcast that, like Jack asks, should only be attempted by professionals or under the |
| 0:15.7 | supervision of professionals. |
| 0:17.5 | Do not try to produce a daily news show at home, kids. |
| 0:20.0 | Unless you're Johnny Knoxville in which case you're allowed to do literally anything |
| 0:23.1 | you want. |
| 0:24.1 | Coming onto a daily news show that we produce, we love you Johnny. |
| 0:31.4 | On today's show to Jersey, announced a plan to remove a mask mandate in schools plus |
| 0:35.5 | spirit and frontier merge to create a budget airline mega-sword. |
| 0:40.6 | But first, the White House released a report yesterday detailing how it wants to increase |
| 0:44.4 | union participation in collective bargaining in the workforce, particularly in the absence |
| 0:49.1 | of pro-worker legislation. |
| 0:51.2 | The report comes from a task force at the White House created in 2021, and it comes almost |
| 0:55.4 | a year after the House passed the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or Pro Act, though |
| 1:00.5 | that bill doesn't stand much of a chance in the Senate. |
| 1:03.6 | The report contains recommendations for helping union growth within the federal government, |
| 1:07.5 | including having employers, in this case the government, give new hires more information |
| 1:11.2 | about unions, and giving unions better access to employees via work emails, and in-person |
| 1:15.8 | meetings on federal property in some cases. |
| 1:18.4 | And it even says that the federal government should encourage federal workers who are |
| 1:21.6 | eligible to unionize but haven't to seek it out. |
... |
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