the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Feb 3, 2025
In 2017, Amazon bought the Whole Foods grocery chain. Amazon is a viciously anti-union company, owned by multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos. In fact, last month, Amazon closed all four of its warehouses in Quebec because at only one, workers had beat Bezos and won a union.
But now, on January 27, workers at a Philadelphia Whole Foods market won their fight to unionize, with a vote of 130 to 100.
The president of their local, UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) Local 1776, said, “The fight is far from over,” and he is so right. Owner Bezos, with all his billions, is determined not to give a dime to the workers who generate those billions.
One Amazon warehouse on New York’s Staten Island managed to win a union election three years ago. But Amazon has used the wide assortment of union-blocking tools in U.S. labor law to prevent workers from getting to an actual contract. For three years!
The workers’ complaints at Whole Foods are the same as workers’ complaints everywhere. The pay is low. The short-staffing tires workers out. Doing the work of two, or three, under the threat of arbitrary discipline, puts workers in high-stress mode all day and leads to many unsafe practices. Management makes arbitrary decisions. Workers either get too few hours—or too many. The endless list we all know!
The Whole Foods workers had to be tough, smart, and dedicated to each other, in order to win this first big battle against Amazon’s anti-union ways. They hope that even though they are first, they won’t be the last. There is strength in numbers and the numbers need to grow quickly.