Welcome back to Primer, the podcast about all things Amazon. I'm your host, Alex

Press, and this week I spoke with Haika Geisler, the author of seasonal

associate, a book that I've mentioned on the show before, which is a fictionalized

account of Haika's time working in an Amazon warehouse in Germany. But first the

usual housekeeping. I keep all the episodes of this show free, but to compensate me

for the project, I have a Patreon. It's patreon.com forward slash primer podcast.

If you sign up, the episodes are all up there, but you'll also get show notes,

which are brief annotated bibliographies of key sources I use for the week's

episode, as well as video of some of our interviews. And of course, you'll get my

gratitude. To the 73 people who've subscribed, thank you. Again, that's patreon.com

forward slash primer podcast. Now, before we get to my conversation with Haika, we

need to discuss the big Amazon news of the week, which is that the NLRB

hearing officer who has been overseeing the hearings over the Union election in

Bessam or Alabama has issued a recommendation on the case. The Union, RWDSU, had

filed several objections over Amazon's behavior during the election. And again,

though you've heard about it, I'm sure many times at this point, if you're

listening to this episode, that election period took place during February and

March, and the votes were tallied and announced in April. The Union lost two to

one in that initial tally with some 500 contested votes. RWDSU then filed a set

of objections to Amazon's behavior during that mail-in ballot period, leading to

hearings for that last few weeks in May, and now this recommendation. In short,

the recommendation says that the agency should throw out the results and hold a

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