Sydney, Australia Paper of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Network 50c Vol.37 No.2 (225) Aug -Sept. 2019 WHY NOT A 2 HOUR STOPPAGE TO SUPPORT THE GLOBAL CLIMATE ACTION STRIKE 20TH SEPT? WORKERS & UNIONISTS MUST SUPPORT EFFORTS TO SAVE THE PLANET! THERE WILL BE NO JOBS ON A DEAD PLANET! AMAZON WORKERS’ INTERNATIONAL STRIKE P2; NSW RAILWAY NEWS P3; FAIR GAME PART (1) P5; THE 6 EMOTIONS THE BOSS USE AGAINST YOU P6; PERCEPTIONS OF WORKERS’ RIGHTS P6; SYNDEY BUSES NEWS P7; VICTORIAN RAILWAY NEWS P9; BRITAIN TODAY P10; FRANCE: YELLOW VESTS P12; USA: UBER & THE GIG ECONOMY P14; BOOK REVIEW P15; EDGARD LEUENROTH 1881-1968 P18 BULGARIA P18; USA: BURGER WORKERS’ STRIKE P20; 2 Rebel Worker line database that ICE agents use to track Items arrive already packaged from fa- Rebel Worker is the bi-monthly immigrants they are trying to deport. The cilities further up the supply chain, in- Paper of the A.S.N. for the propa- New York City rally was held at CEO Jeff cluding fulfilment centres like the one in gation of anarcho-syndicalism in Bezos’s $80 million mega-penthouse. Minnesota. Workers in delivery centres Australia. Minneapolis to Chicago sort the packages and load them into The fulfilment centre in Shakopee, a vans for delivery. These facilities have Unless otherwise stated, signed proliferated in major urban centres as Articles do not necessarily represent suburb of Minneapolis, has been the site of some of the most confrontational and part of the push for one-day and the position of the A.S.N. as a whole. successful organizing so far. Twice in the same-day delivery. Any contributions, criticisms, letters past year, Amazon warehouse workers Workers in this Chicago warehouse nor- or there have walked off the job to protest mally make $15 per hour. As an incentive, Comments are welcome. management’s ever-increasing productiv- managers had promised to pay $18 per ex- REBEL WORKER ity goals and discrimination against Mus- tra hour worked on top of a regular shift—but the higher rate applied only for P.O. BOX 92 lim workers. the extra hour, not the whole shift. BROADWAY 2007 NSW Those actions backed by the Awood Center, a worker center based in Min- Many workers are not scheduled for E-mail: Via our web site nesota’s East African community, led to enough hours to qualify for the company’s www.rebelworker.org the first negotiations between Amazon health insurance. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: and a U.S. labor organization. Workers The warehouse can get intensely hot, since AUSTRALIA: $12 a year affiliated with the center have orga- its walls and roof are metal. Amazon pub- OVERSEAS nized under the slogan “We Are Hu- licized that it was installing air condition- $25 (Aus.) by Air mans, Not Robots,” and are also ing in its fulfillment centers in 2012 after $20 (Aus.) by Sea mail campaigning against retaliation and public scrutiny and high-profile incidents, health and safety problems. but air conditioners have not been installed Free to Prisoners Bolstered by the Minneapolis example, in other facilities this one. Supporters Subs. $40 pa workers in an Amazon delivery center in Small walkout Receives copies of RW & ASN Chicago on July 16 took Prime Day action At the Minnesota facility, workers Pamphlets as published. of their own. They surveyed co-workers to walked off the day shift July 15 to join a Send to the above. Cheques should be develop demands, and settled on three: air community picket. Workers said manag- made out to Black Cat Media. conditioning, health insurance, and $18 an ers and police were staked out at the front hour throughout Prime Week. of the warehouse, keeping track of who Thirty workers on the night shift was exiting, which had a chilling effect on packed the shift manager’s office dur- participation. International Amazon ing a 2:30 a.m. break to deliver the de- Organizers had hoped that 100 workers mands. After a lively back and forth, would walk out. In the end, far fewer they secured a commitment to meet did. Nonetheless, workers and commu- Workers’ Strike with the warehouse’s top manager. nity supporters picketed, danced, and “Our goal today was to get a meeting with rallied until rain and flash flood warn- the person who has the ability to make the ings ended the action. By Joe DeManuelle-Hall decisions around the things that we’re de- Several Amazon tech workers from Seat- Amazon’s biggest shopping days of manding,” said Terry Miller (a pseud- tle flew in to join the rally. They are part of 2019 so far —”Prime Days,” July onym), who participated in the action. a group called Amazon Employees for Cli- 15-16— saw walkouts and protests by “We knew the best-case scenario was mate Justice, which has organized an open workers in the U.S. and Germany. The meeting with the site manager, and that’s letter signed by 8,000 employees demand- protests were semi-coordinated, target- what we got.” (Read his firsthand account ing that the company expand its commit- ing Amazon when its warehouses are of warehouse conditions here.) ment to renewable energy and stop running at full clip and the company is Co-workers abuzz providing technological support for oil in the media spotlight. After the meeting, the delegation re- and gas extraction. Dave Kamper contrib- In Germany, Amazon workers organizing turned to work and finished out the uted reporting to this article. This article with the Ver.di union struck over the shift. Workers who hadn’t participated was first published by Labor Notes. course of two days in an ongoing struggle were buzzing about what had hap- Thanks to Rank & File. Ca Edited over pay. The union claimed that 2,000 pened. workers participated across seven facili- ties. “[Other workers] saw A.S.N. APPEAL that we were able to Meanwhile in the U.S., a small group of make the company pay workers walked out at a fulfilment cen- attention to us,” said The Anarcho-Syndicalist Network requires suit- tre near Minneapolis. Others in a Chi- Miller, who sorts pack- cago warehouse marched on their boss able cost effective premises. $750,000 is urgently ages for delivery. “Peo- sought to buy premises for the proposed Rebel with demands. Workers and commu- ple were asking me nity supporters marched and rallied at Worker Anarcho-Syndicalist Network Media questions, catching up Centre. two warehouses in Portland, Oregon. with me after the action. Simultaneously, immigrant rights organi- It elevated our visibil- Please make out Cheques to Black Cat zations led protests in eight U.S. cities to ity.” Media & Send to P.O. Box 92 Broadway denounce Amazon’s collaboration with Delivery centres are 2007 NSW. the U.S. Immigration and Customs En- the last stop in the Am- forcement agency. Amazon hosts the on- azon warehouse chain. 3 Rebel Worker N.S.W. RAILWAYS NEWS up to 300 meters during mining opera- THE FIGHT FOR The current crisis of populism, politics and tions. Besides that, local rivers will be democracy, springs from the same source drained of 100’s of gigalitres of water. The OUR LIVES as the environmental crisis. The elites that mine itself is expected to add 128 million control over 90% of the wealth also are the tonnes of CO2 P.A. to the atmosphere, same ones that have access to the earth’s that’s more than the amount produced by a Crimson Coconut natural resources, often for free. The profit country with a mid-sized economy, such motive which drives environmental de- as Vietnam. While the fight for living standards and struction benefits the few and not the working conditions is still real, urgent, many. Exploitation of nature and workers Why does this matter for workers? and ongoing, one issue that is confront- in a workplace is of the same dynamic. The ing all people is about to overshadow elites only care about the wealth than they any other fight that we’ve been involved can extract, not about the people or nature Because it really will affect us all in in. That is the fight for survival and the that is left as collateral damage. multiple ways. prospect of human and life extinction. For example the Adani coal mining project Everyday we hear and see new scientific in central Queensland will provide few Firstly the uncertain future caused by the reports that point to the grave danger jobs in reality, yet the multinational com- ecological crisis will without doubt end that we are all in. pany has almost unlimited access to natu- life as we know it. The cliche “there are no This summer in Europe heat records have ral resources for a pittance. Australian jobs on a dead planet” really rings true. been broken across the continent. Temper- Governments are pouring billions of dol- Fighting for better working conditions still atures of 46 degrees centigrade have been lars into providing infrastructure for the does make sense in such a predicament experienced in the South of France though. Working conditions also means a while the Netherlands has recorded plentiful planet for all, not a world with temperatures over 41 degrees C, an shortages of food, water and scarcity. Eco- all time record. This heat wave was logical devastation usually means the end extensive, moving finally to the Arc- of jobs, quality of life and alienation from tic Circle causing the biggest ice nature itself. Traditional trade unions melt in human history and destabi- won’t exist if life itself becomes precari- lising the permafrost that has existed ous, instead we will probably be involved for thousands of years.