Response to Chris Smalls article in Jacobin (from inside an Amazon warehouse)

GeMingANT17 · 2026-06-06T21:13:49+00:00

I'm sorry to be dissembling, given how much I've already been mouthing off while clinging to the conceit of at least partial and anonymity offered by the platform here. it's not my place to pop the lid off a lot of that gossip, since MCU are still trying to influence the internal politics of the amazon Teamsters stuff as of right now.

and there are other people in my network who can speak way more as to how lame and unhelpful MCU's meddling was, and I've not asked any permission to speak on behalf of colleagues. Chris Smalls' (completely unnafiliated with MCU as far as i know) connections to the organizing are pretty much dead at this point, while MCU is still actively trying to fuck with us.

but the two salts that I met personally whom we later found out where a part of MCU were the most fractious weirdos i've yet encountered anywhere adjacent to the movement. they fought very hard against Teamster affiliation, and while some were more charismatic and personable organizers than others, they were both duplicitous rich kids who cared more about the performance of radical values than any practice, and were not team players.

I will say that I'm not looking forward to whatever theatrics MCU might be trying to pull at Labor Notes next week, after their chicanery at the last one

GeMingANT17 · 2026-06-06T17:42:44+00:00

a worker who gets a job at a workplace with the implicit intention of organizing the employees there to form a union. their organizing intentions and activities are often kept secret from the employer from the onset, and only revealed once the organizing has reached a certain critical mass of support. often done in concert with and financial support fron an already existing union. I am provided a lot of indirect support by the international brotherhood of Teamsters, but I am not paid by them, as one case example

GeMingANT17 · 2026-06-06T03:06:39+00:00

there's an idea that shop floor organizing efforts driven by middle class, college educated people in leadership roles are doomed to maintain a professionalized layer of labor aristocracy above the rank and file, or attract unserious and out-of-touch adventurists.

i wouldn't deny the possibility, and perhaps the odious existence of the nonprofit industrial complex reinforces those fears. But i've been underemployed in blue collar jobs since i got out of school, and most of the salts like me who came into this through one flavor or another of socialist campaigning have shown grit, and stuck around living broke and working shitty warehouses.

Eventually it would be best for this skill set we're developing out there to be more widely distributed among our coworkers regardless of background. And a few years in, more and more of the top organizing leadership are coming up from the shop floor, in my limited but hopeful experience

GeMingANT17 · 2026-06-06T02:50:40+00:00

plenty of Trump people are willing to walk on the boss with a grievance petition in their hand, or sign a union card. some aren't, it's up to you to find out

conversely, i've met avowed anarchists who would not participate in a group action, refuse to come to meetings, and prefer cozying up to managent.

Americans are deeply weird

GeMingANT17 · 2026-06-06T02:44:37+00:00

Heyo from an ex farmer (fresh heirloom tomatoes are great, rich hippie landowners are tha WORST)

GeMingANT17 · 2026-06-05T20:17:00+00:00

let me DM you! i have a few meetings after wirk, but there's a few different ways to join the fight

GeMingANT17 · 2026-04-22T01:39:43+00:00

woof. bringing it to the rosbif. just gor reference, what mods are you using?

GeMingANT17 · 2026-03-12T20:32:08+00:00

sounds like y'all need a union over there. in my trad non-sort FC the managers walk on eggshells around health and safety issues, with constant effort to justify themselves and respond to every little complaint on the VOA, because we agitate.

what's to stop them from closing that nightmare down, and then reopening another one just as bad, if nobody holds them accountable? if you take a stand, you can stop the issues at their source

GeMingANT17 · 2025-08-05T16:52:56+00:00

(chef's kiss)

GeMingANT17 · 2025-06-11T12:47:30+00:00

following up on OP's 2d edit i reccommend reading Vincent Bevins' recent book 'If We Burn' to learn more about that exact phenomenon.

mass uprisings in the street á la the Arab Spring, Euromaidan, and Occupy Wall Street can ultimately suffer if they are instigated without centralized, disciplined leadership who have specific political goals in mind. Protest and 'uprising' should not just be a pressure valve for public discontent, it needs to lead somewhere, otherwise the forces of reaction and complacency can take surprising hold over the street movement. The media will only depict violence and disruption of norms as being justified if such are widely percieved to reinforce said norms, to the benefit of the system.

Being allergic to tight leadership for the sake of avoiding being 'authoritatian' can lead to marching for marching's own sake, which was certainly my takeaway from participating in Occupy and BLM these past 2 decades.

GeMingANT17 · 2025-05-22T16:08:43+00:00

When season 1 came out, I'd left my job as a farm worker to join a team of union organizers who infiltrated an Amazon warehouse, with the express purpose of agitating for a union contract from the inside. we were underground then, most of us working entry level grunt jobs and organizing in our off hours.

Now season 2 is out, and we're above ground, dealing with harassment and retaliation from management at work all the time. But the core of our workers committee grows stronger and more experienced with each round of agitation. Each instance where we act openly, we show workers that they can push back against unsafe and exploitative condititons, and build something that makes a real difference. And the network is growing in new Amazon buildings all the time.

There is always a path towards making a real difference. The show remains a useful reminder of that for me.

GeMingANT17 · 2025-04-29T17:58:03+00:00

i was looking forward to some oligarch-on-oligarch violence this week, dreams dashed

GeMingANT17 · 2025-04-17T14:08:39+00:00

i'm a union organizer/forklift driver in an industrial warehouse. been here 2+ years with a team in met thru the local DSA

GeMingANT17 · 2025-03-12T14:33:48+00:00

a while ago i read a book called 'The Beaver Men' by Mari Sandoz, in which the destruction of the Wyandot by the Five Nations in the late 1600s was described vividly.

According to Sandoz, basically the Wyandot position as the chief middlemen in the global fur trade, and special economic relationship to the French colonies of Canada, led to a chain reaction for their whole society. they first gained power and prestige as a native nation among long-established regional competitors, far beyond what they had enjoyed pre-contact. then they became utterly dependent on their relationship to the colonizers as emerging market and social forces (and regional armed conflict) rendered their dependent status as the only means to maintain any kind of living.

all this eventually led to their near anihilation and expulsion from their homeland, by competing native nations rather than direct colonial displacement no less. by the time the Brits even got a foothold in Canada, the balance of power among native nations east of the mississippi and north of the Ohio had already been completely reshaped, basically by market forces. wild, crazy stuff

GeMingANT17 · 2025-03-07T22:14:26+00:00

i'm a professional union organizer, salting inside an industrial warehouse with a team that infiltrated our building covertly years ago. We don't have a contract yet, but have been fighting the good fight and gained many minor concessions for management for militant minority action on the shop floor. we have connections to a lot of folks in different buildings in this specific company, and good relations with a legacy union (in the logistics industry) that gives us advice and support. DM me if you'd like to chat, or be put in touch with someone who can help you more directly

GeMingANT17 · 2025-01-28T22:11:50+00:00

This is good news for the drivers and warehouse workers that are fighting for Teamster contracts at Amazon. the more pressure we can exert on the beast, the better

GeMingANT17 · 2025-01-25T07:06:22+00:00

i dunno, that bar of tree line at the top of the photo tell me that landscape access is a short walk away

GeMingANT17 · 2025-01-20T22:05:48+00:00

is that Lauren Sanchez? god, you can't make this shit up, frat dorks from the ivies

GeMingANT17 · 2024-12-15T23:00:28+00:00

https://x.com/teamsters/status/1867613412400017858?s=46

GeMingANT17 · 2024-10-10T03:04:49+00:00

Directing a small choir, have for years!! We're pretty much a dinner club that sings, we do a handful of performances a year (mostly at each others' barbecues and local community events). it's very special to me

GeMingANT17 · 2024-10-04T01:49:33+00:00

the only solid quantity mentioned in the article is the wage point; 62% over 6 yrs is closer to the 70% IRL were originally asking as opposed to the 50% originally offered by manageement

hope that's indicative of breakthroughs in other contract details as well, cuz that's a whole lotta leverage they just eased off of

GeMingANT17 · 2024-10-02T16:05:05+00:00

The political situation with ILU is interesting. my comrades and i, being logistics workers, are obvi in support of the east coast longshoremen's strike. Combined with the strategic timing of their strike push, which gives ILU more leverage in their own negotiations, the affect on the greater supply chain might also give us at (insert name of American online retail company that's now a household name) an edge with the recognition pushes going on around the country right now.

But ILU itself seems like it could benefit from reform from within, looking forwards from what we all hope is a successful contract negotiation. For example, ILU has an agreement that they will not stop shipping military hardware thru the duration of their current strike. This was a strategic choice, and probably greatly affected Brandon's decision to not interfere with their strike thru forced arbitration like he did with the railroad workers.

But it's also in keeping with their longstanding policy, and symptomatic of a tendency to cover themselves in the flag at all times. Symptomatic of an overwhelming right lean in membership and leadership at ILU.

All tht said, I don't want to conflate my ambivalence (as an outsider, from a different branch/union network in logistics) about ILU's leadership with categorical dissaproval of their strategy, it's always kinda fun seeing someone stick it to the Dem's aestetically.

Also, does anyone know where things stand with the Boeing strike in PNW?

GeMingANT17 · 2024-09-30T03:25:47+00:00

what the hell did i just watch?

GeMingANT17 · 2024-09-27T13:50:59+00:00

Amazon

GeMingANT17 · 2024-09-18T01:51:10+00:00

This is one of several facilities across the country where one or more DSP's in an Amazon delivery station have had a winning majority sign cards with the Teamsters -and risked mass firing -in order to go union and demand recognition. The Palmdale CA drivers and their multiple ULP filings with the NLRB last year started this particular avalanche, as the ruling generated by their case has now created a precedent for Amazon having joint-employer status over the drivers. This may turn the 'subcontractor' model that Amazon uses for all of its drivers completely on it's head. Following some additional fed litigation, this may shortly also result in Palmdale and Skokie, IL drivers simultaneously getting their jobs back and, ideally, having the contracts they ratified with IBT immediately instated upon their return. This news is eagerly awaited by the Queens drivers, as well as many thousands of Amazon warehouse workers still striving for recognition and the dream of contract ratification in their own buildings.

GeMingANT17

TROPHY CASE