The revolutionary congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told Amazon’s first unionized workers in Contemporary York on Sunday that their victory used to be “the main domino to fall” in what she anticipated to be a wave of connected votes for illustration across the country.
The leftwing Democrat joined Vermont senator Bernie Sanders on stage in Staten Island to possess a wonderful time the ancient success and to call for workers in additional Amazon companies in the US to have a examine their instance.
“What came about out right here … what you guys did in Staten Island used to be apt the starting. It used to be the main domino to fall,” she said, noting that workers at a 2d Amazon sorting facility in the Contemporary York borough were vote casting on Monday.
“We possess now every other election the following day, and we’re going to augment them in that. And the day after that, and the day after that, the entire draw. However what we want Amazon to realize at the initiating is to acknowledge the union that received their election.”
Amazon has to this point refused to acknowledge the vote at its Staten Island success center, after it used to be accused of intimidating and hounding workers in every single place in the campaign with anti-union messages, and spending millions of bucks to strive to earn certain the vote failed.
At present after the raze consequence, Amazon, owned by the world’s 2d richest man Jeff Bezos, whose personal wealth is estimated by Forbes at $170bn, went to court docket to strive to earn the raze consequence overturned.
“First and major, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, all people, we got to acknowledge the truth that they did this train, they in most cases received a union election magnificent and square,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“To acquire to manage with our of us correct. That you just would be able to give our workers a bathroom spoil, that you would be able to make sure you’re treating of us smartly and giving them solid smartly being care advantages, and that they don’t possess a 3-hour lope back and forth to and from work, that they’ll possess ample money a dwelling they’ll dwell in, that people are no longer going to be snoozing in their vehicles in repeat to work for Amazon.
“All of right here’s an indignity and an injustice and it has no put aside in Contemporary York metropolis and we’re going to alternate that, and proper right here our workers out right here are going to alternate that.”
Sanders used to be equally scathing of Amazon’s medication of workers. “Even as you happen to got an organization that is making expansive profits, what, you are going to pay your workers apt wages, present apt advantages, and that you would be able to possess decent working stipulations, no longer what you got correct now,” he said.
Addressing Chris Smalls, the union organizer at the again of the a success Contemporary York vote, and fellow activists in attendance, Sanders added: “You will no longer know this, nonetheless you were an inspiration for millions of workers all across this country, who possess checked out you and said, ‘these guys in Staten Island stood up to an awfully noteworthy company. In the event that they’ll attain it in Staten Island, we’re going to have the choice to understand it all over this country’.”
Sanders additionally took a shot at centrist Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, whom he said were “sabotaging” The US’s working class with their opposition to Joe Biden’s social reform agenda.
Though he did no longer point out them by name, it used to be clear he used to be attacking the 2 Democrats whose opposition to Biden’s Make Support Higher bundle of social spending, welfare assistance and climate measures blocked its passage thru Congress.
“To earn it passed we want at the least 50 Democrats who are going to face up with the working class of this country, we don’t possess it,” he said.
“We possess now a few of us that are busy sabotaging the working-class agenda.”