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Jacobin Radio

Primer: The Amazonification of Fiction?

Jacobin Radio

Jacobin

Socialism, History, News, Left, Jacobin, Alternative, Socialist, Politics

4.71.5K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2021

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, we speak with Mark McGurl, professor of literature at Stanford and the author of Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon.


You can listen to Primer by searching for Jacobin Radio on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the show, subscribe at patreon.com/primerpodcast. To keep up with us elsewhere, follow @primerpod on Twitter.



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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome back to Primer, a podcast about all things Amazon.

0:05.1

I'm Alex Press, joined as ever by my producer Sarah Hurd.

0:09.2

Before we get into the conversation with Mark McGurll, this week's guest, there's some

0:12.6

news related to one of our prior guests.

0:15.0

Chris Smalls, who you'll remember, was fired by Amazon in the early days of the pandemic,

0:19.7

not long after he began speaking up about inadequate precautions in his warehouse, JFK8, which

0:24.6

is in Staten Island, he's been part of an effort to organize an independent union at

0:29.2

that warehouse and other nearby smaller facilities.

0:32.3

That union is called the Amazon Labor Union.

0:35.1

A few days ago, Chris and his fellow organizers filed with the National Labor Relations Board

0:39.3

to hold a union election.

0:41.2

As he talked about when he was on the show, he and his fellow Amazon workers have spent

0:44.7

months outside of that warehouse speaking with workers and getting them interested in

0:48.3

unionizing.

0:49.3

Now, they have enough union cards signed by those workers to file for an election.

0:53.6

The NLRB requires 30% of workplaces employees sign cards.

0:57.8

ALU has met that threshold.

1:00.0

Where this goes from here is unclear at the moment.

1:02.7

Amazon, as we've talked about again and again on the show, has a mentally high turnover.

1:07.6

Also, the company massively inflated the bargaining unit in Bessemer, Alabama, when the RWDSU

1:13.7

filed for an election there.

1:15.6

They added a lot of workers to the numbers that would need to vote in that election and

...

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