Who Wins and Loses in Amazon's America

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In his new book, “Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America,” journalist Alec MacGillis tracks how the labor and business practices of Amazon, the nation’s second-largest private employer, can damage communities and workers. MacGillis utilizes Amazon as an example of much broader problems in American society including income inequality, geographic wealth concentrations and consumer expectations for low prices. The book’s release comes ahead of a closely watched effort in Alabama to establish the first union at an Amazon warehouse in the United States. We talk with MacGillis about how Amazon reshapes — and exemplifies — America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for KQWED Podcasts comes from Landmark College, holding their annual summer
0:04.9	Institute for educators from June 24 through 26th. More information at landmark.edu slash LCSI.
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0:26.8	Xfinity, Internet required.
0:27.9	Actual speeds vary.
0:30.1	From KQBD Public Radio in San Francisco, I'm Mina Kim.
0:47.2	Coming up on forum, Amazon has managed to thwart the most serious effort by organized labor to date
0:53.0	to establish a union at one of its
0:55.2	warehouses. Workers in Bessemer, Alabama, rejected unionization by about a two-to-one margin,
1:02.0	though appeals are possible. We get the latest on the vote, and then talk with writer Alec McGillis,
1:07.7	whose latest book, Fulfillment, takes a deep dive into Amazon's business practices
1:12.1	and how they both shape and reflect
1:15.1	America.
1:16.7	Join us. This is Forum. I'm Mina Kim.
1:35.6	With the final vote tally in for the effort to organize the first Amazon warehouse in the U.S., Bessemer, Alabama workers will not be unionizing.
1:43.7	The result is a victory for Amazon, which has seen its profits sore during the pandemic and a defeat of organized labor's most serious effort to date to unionized workers that even drew support in February from President Biden.
1:57.0	You should all remember, the National Labor Relations Act didn't just say that unions are allowed to exist.
2:03.4	It said that we should encourage unions.
2:06.6	So let me be really clear.
	...

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