Our Perspective
Amazon Workers
Demand
Historic Change
By Stuart Appelbaum, President
Retail, Wholesale and Department
Store Union, UFCW
Twitter: @sappelbaum
Caribbean L 10 ife, MARCH 5-11, 2021
Dr. Blackman reacts
to Medgar Evers’
Prez resignation
By Tangerine Clarke
Swift reaction came
from Guyanese-born Terrence
Blackman, PhD, after
Dr. Rudy Crew, president
of Medgar Evers College,
announced his departure
eight years after he was
appointed by the CUNY
board.
“We, faculty, staff, and
students are very thankful
that CUNY has acted to
remove President Crew and
assign a team to manage
the college until the new
president can assume leadership,”
said Dr. Blackman,
associate professor, Department
of Mathematics
School of Science, Health
& Technology.
“Our founders established
a college that would
Dr. Terrence Backman, associate professor, Department
of Mathematics School of Science,
Health & Technology, Medgar Evers College.
Photo by Tangerine Clarke
be a beacon of hope for
our students and the community. The
need for reestablishing this legacy is even
more critical now as we face COVID-19,
impending budget cuts, and economic
challenges,” argues Dr. Blackman, in an
interview with Caribbean Life.
“As a predominantly Black institution
committed to social justice, we are
responsible for fostering an environment
that positions our students to be transformative
leaders.”
“We will realize this responsibility
through the visionary, caring, compassionate
and competent leadership of a new
president, in reaction to Crew’s departure
to take up an unpaid senior fellow position
at CUNY’s Institute for State and Local
Government.”
He said the faculty expects that the
new president will foster an intellectual
and student-centered environment that
respects and values shared governance,
transparency, academic integrity, and the
free exchange of ideas.
“Our new president will be responsible
for unifying the college’s stakeholders
in improving enrollment, retention, and
graduation rates, revitalizing and expanding
our degree programs and curriculum,
raising funds, and increasing faculty, staff,
and student morale,” he expressed.
“This hard-won community-based
institution, which ought to have been an
incubator for Black excellence in Central
Brooklyn, was, during the tenure of Dr.
Crew, run, most cynically, in a manner
akin to a personal fiefdom of insiders, and
allies.”
“At the root of Medgar’s downward
slide and the college’s current precarious
position was the “tribal” quality of
the Crew-Okereke leadership team. Dr.
Crew entrenched an administrative leadership
group which, exploited ethnic and
other divisions among faculty and staff to
advance individual agendas and parochial
interests,” said the professor.
“The resulting patronage, nepotism,
and cronyism to the detriment of our students,
staff and faculty, stunted the growth
of the College as an institution birthed to
connect our young folk to opportunity.
Our academic and social justice imperatives
were stifled or dismissed in favor of
the unfocused and unsustainable whims
of favored insiders,” said Dr. Blackman.
The time was long past for an end to
Dr. Crew’s presidency and the uncaring,
inept and incompetent administration,
which accompanied it, stated the professor,
quoting Dr. Myrlie Evers Williams,
widow of Medgar Evers and her family
happily agreed for College #7, to be named
after her late husband, with the understanding
that the university and community
would honor not only his name, but
also his legacy.
“She reiterated that the Evers family
believes deeply in historically Black colleges
and the missions they represent. Dr.
Crew’s presidency did not, unfortunately,
live up to or honor this legacy. Myrlie
Evers Williams was right in her recent
assessments when she noted that, “There
comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
(Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 1963).
“Faculty, students, staff, and community
leaders issued a call for a change in
the leadership of Medgar Evers College.
They could not continue to be silent,” said
Dr. Blackman.
In Bessemer, Alabama, a historic, worker-driven
grassroots union organizing campaign is underway at
the Amazon warehouse there. The votes are being cast
and will be counted, and the campaign could drastically
change the lives of over 5,800 workers at the facility, who are demanding better
treatment and a voice on the job.
The Amazon campaign is so important because it represents the story of
working men and women in the pandemic era. Americans depend now more than
ever on working people: workers at supermarkets, pharmacies, food processing
and health care facilities – many of them RWDSU members – and of course, at
Amazon. From daily necessities to luxury items, Americans depend every day on
the work done by these Amazon employees.
This sprawling facility opened in March of last year, just as the world was
coming to grips with COVID-19. And workers there had the same health and safety
concerns of all frontline workers, which were exacerbated by Amazon’s workplace
conditions and grueling productivity quotas. Workers perform their jobs close
together, and short and infrequent breaks often don’t allow for adequate
handwashing and sanitizing. Workers say Amazon monitors their productivity so
closely that they are afraid to take bathroom breaks.
The concerns of workers in Bessemer reflect those of Amazon workers across
the world. Thousands of Amazon workers have signed a petition calling for better
health and safety policies. Amazon workers at facilities in Germany, Spain, Italy,
Poland, and the United Kingdom have held strikes or other worker actions to
demand safer workplaces. Here in New York, the Attorney General’s office has filed
a lawsuit against Amazon for failing to provide adequate health and safety
measures and for firing and disciplining employees that objected to Amazon’s
unsafe work conditions. Even amidst the Alabama workers’ organizing drive,
Amazon continues to disregard safety, having insisted upon an in-person union
election despite the COVID-19 pandemic. That move was shot down by the NLRB,
which instead called for a mail-in vote. With at least 13 deaths at Amazon facilities
– even before the pandemic – Amazon made the National Council for Occupational
Safety and Health’s “Dirty Dozen” list of dangerous employers two years running.
The Alabama Amazon workers approached the RWDSU because they saw the
difference the union was making in Alabama. The RWDSU was at the forefront
fighting for frontline workers in the early days of the pandemic, bringing swift
attention to the unsafe working conditions at poultry plants. In the wake of the
RWDSU’s efforts, poultry plants improved their social distancing policies, erected
barriers between workers, provided PPE and sanitizer for workers, implemented
COVID testing, and increased pay for workers who were risking their lives to feed
America while also providing pay for workers who were under quarantine.
Bessemer Amazon workers took notice, and by December of last year, thousands
of them had signed union cards.
The Amazon organizing drive is more than just about one campaign; it’s a
moment working people are seizing to demand change, and to be treated as
human beings. Regardless of the outcome of their campaign, the Amazon workers
in Bessemer, Alabama, have already made history. They’ve brought renewed
attention to the labor practices of the world’s largest retailer, and
shown that when workers stand together, they can stand up
against any employer in the world. Their inspiring
campaign has already changed the landscape, and is
resonating with working people everywhere who now
know they can demand safer workplaces and the
dignity and respect of union membership.
www.rwdsu.org
/www.rwdsu.org
/www.rwdsu.org
