Daniel Imperato – Official Website
Daniel Imperato For President 2024
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Amazon warehouse workers protest Amazon’s unfair labor practices and shameful response to workers’ demands for better, safer jobs with fair wages and an end to retaliation at Amazon Air Hub on Friday, October 14, 2022 in San Bernardino, CA. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
When the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) first submitted union authorization cards, “we had to withdraw and file again,” recalled organizing committee member Justine Medina, “because Amazon challenged over one thousand of our signatures saying they no longer worked there.”
The sky-high turnover at the eight-thousand-worker fulfillment center on New York’s Staten Island, made collecting cards “a race against Amazon firing everyone,” she said.
Amazon has annual turnover of 150 percent. “They design the productivity quota, the rates system, to be a constant speedup situation, and that makes it hard to keep the job,” said Medina, who still works at the warehouse. Several ALU leaders have been fired.
Still, ALU, an independent union now with affiliates in Kentucky and California, was able to collect enough valid cards and win its election in 2022. “The faster the turnover is, the harder it is to organize,” said Medina. “You can still do it, but it’s obviously a challenge.”
Despite the churn, at Amazon, in charter schools, in restaurants, and among student workers, unions are developing strategies to organize high-turnover workplaces.
The 150 percent turnover figure at Amazon can be misleading: some people stay for years while a lot more stay briefly. But at Grinnell College in Iowa, where student dining workers organized a union in 2016, the workforce of undergraduates turns over completely every four years.
In light of this, the Grinnell Union of Student Dining Workers won in its first contract the right to do a union orientation with new workers.
The union deliberately kept contracts short — just two years long — so at least some members remember the details of the last negotiation, said union member Isaiah Gutman: “Outside the nuts and bolts, the negotiation experience helps members and leaders understand who we are up against, what [management] thinks of us.”
Resident advisors at Columbia University in New York City faced even more intense turnover when they started to organize last year. Only sophomores and above are eligible, and nearly half the workforce of 153 turns over every year.
To cope, they went public with the union earlier than would be recommended in a normal union drive, circulating a campus-wide petition on wages and worker input. They needed to cast a wide net to reach incoming RAs, said organizing committee member Leena Yumeen.
Columbia RAs attend a sixty-hour training before the semester starts, so the union, the Columbia University Resident Advisor Collective, used that opportunity to talk to new RAs about workplace problems and got one hundred to sign up for a group chat that was explicitly union. In May the RAs won their union election with 95 percent of the vote.
Ted Miin works at an Amazon delivery station in Chicago where, despite high turnover, workers have won drinking water and paid sick time, and conducted safety strikes after COVID hit. The independent worker-led collective Amazonians United coordinated walkouts at two stations and won a $2 raise that was extended to all delivery stations in Chicago.
Though workers don’t have a union that’s recognized by the company, new hires quickly learn about Amazonians United, because coworkers talk to them on break, and might invite them to a nearby potluck lunch after work (shifts are 1:00 a. m. to noon).
Their conversations with new workers emphasize a “coworker culture,” Miin said, “bringing attention to what the managers are doing, how they’re treating us, and building a culture where coworkers will look out for each other, don’t snitch on each other. . . . That kind of culture picks up pretty quick.” They petitioned to make their break room worker-only, and managers no longer sit there.
As a result, the facility has had a hard time finding workers willing to move up to management, Miin said. Two even stepped down after promotions.
Amazonians United also builds cohesion through a group chat, getaways, and get-togethers at restaurants, parks, ice-cream shops, or a neighborhood organization near the workplace. They also conduct a Union School political education program and hold annual citywide barbeques.
Recognizing that even committed organizers may leave or get fired, Amazonians United works to keep them in the union. “We have to develop our consciousness as a shared class that should be continuing to work and build together,” Miin said.
Even after they leave Amazon, some people continue to participate in the Union School and social events. One person used techniques learned fighting Amazon to stop wage theft at a new job administering COVID tests in prisons.
The same spirit animates the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), a new group started in Durham, North Carolina. Its structure is designed for workers who often switch low-wage jobs, like Iesha Franceis. She has worked in fast food and retail, and now works at a long-term care facility, but the whole time she has been a USSW member.
When COVID hit, she was working at Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers in Durham. Franceis and her coworkers conducted a four-day safety strike in October 2020, winning COVID protocols and paid quarantine time not just for her store but also for the thirty-two others owned by the same franchisee.
When they struck a year later because safety had backslid, the workforce was entirely new except for Franceis and one coworker, Jamila Allen, and included lots of high-school students.
“They were so amazed at what they did, at the fact that they walked out of the store, and the store shut down,” Franceis said. She knew that feeling from her first strike. “It was a whole new world for them.”
Like Amazonians United, USSW hosts a lot of social events and meetings. The union asks everybody to bring two new people each time. USSW members also will walk into stores where they don’t know anyone, introduce themselves, and strike up a conversation about working conditions.
“We know this industry. Everybody’s going through the same problems — not enough work time or not enough money, harassment. It’s universal,” said Franceis.
At charter schools in Chicago, annual turnover ranges from 15 to 30 percent. Turnover hampered but did not prevent charter organizing, said Chris Baehrend, former president of the charter teachers union. Sometimes losing important leaders meant organizing committees didn’t have the strength to go public with an organizing drive by the end of the year, he said, which was a “huge disappointment.”
Still, they were able to organize thirty-five schools under thirteen different employers, and in 2018 became a division of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). Baehrend is now a CTU organizer.
In 2018, teachers and paraprofessionals struck fifteen schools in the Acero chain, the first charter strike in the country. That made it easier to strike up a conversation about the union.
“New members come in and say, ‘I hear you strike here, that’s scary,’” Baehrend said. “But it starts a conversation about what is the union’s power.”
The union also maps schools to identify new people and “pushes delegates to meet new people who come in,” he said. (Delegates are like stewards.)
The more visible, vocal, effective, and participatory the union is, the easier it is to incorporate new people, said veteran union organizer Gene Bruskin, who has organized in food production, nursing, hotels, and more.
In new organizing, “you can’t avoid the fundamental organizing premises of a strong, representative, active committee and a visible campaign,” Bruskin said. “Without that, the turnover hurts you much more.”
Bruskin worked on organizing Smithfield, the five-thousand-worker pork processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, an open shop (“right to work”) state. The workers faced massive retaliation — at one point the company fired a third of the workforce, claiming that many Latino immigrant workers didn’t have proper documentation. The union had to completely rebuild its committee after that, but eventually won its union election in 2008.
Meanwhile, Bruskin noted, a neighboring poultry plant that already had a union had “30 percent membership, a weak contract, and they didn’t service it. Nobody’s going to join that union because you walk in there and people will tell you, the union’s for sh*t.”
At Smithfield, the union won an hour to orient any new hires. “An hour with ten people, and you have a good program, chances are you’re going to sign up eight of them,” said Bruskin. But he said many unions don’t take orientations seriously.
Jenn Gott, a pre-loader and Teamster steward at a United Parcel Service (UPS) warehouse in Davenport, Iowa, said it’s important to reach new people right away and tell them about the union. “If you don’t feel like you were invited to be part of it from the jump, then why now?”
Iowa is open shop, so new hires don’t have to join the union, but Local 710’s contract says the union can get contact information for any new hires. And every month they get ten minutes to talk with the new people.
Getting management to allow this is sometimes a battle, said Gott, but it’s worth it. She tells new workers, “I’ve been here twenty-eight years. I was fired once, and I’m here because of the union.”
Union gains — and the fact that workers are organizing together — can make jobs worth keeping.
Winning strikes teach you that you can make changes where you are, said the USSW’s Franceis: “That just lets you know you don’t have to quit and go to another job only to experience the same problems on the same level or at a higher level.” USSW’s goal, she said, is to make low-wage jobs into respectable high-paying union jobs.
A strong union presence keeps people from getting picked on by managers. “People get in trouble, somebody stands up for them, ‘Oh, don’t let them do that, come on, we’ll talk to your shop steward,’” said Bruskin. “That, and having a strong contract, keeps a lot of people from leaving.”
And day-to-day solidarity with your coworkers directly challenges high turnover, said Miin at the Amazon delivery station: “Many coworkers said, ‘I would have quit long ago if it wasn’t for this group. I never worked anywhere that has a group like this.’”
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Jewish leaders and organizations benefitting from Christian Zionists can no longer claim ignorance.
By Ellen W. Horowitz. Vision Magazine
If you haven’t heard the “good news” yet, multitudes of multi-denominational evangelical and messianic Christian “friends” of Israel are currently engaged in 21 days of fasting and prayer for Jews to repent and convert to a belief in their man-god.
The “Isaiah 62 Fast” culminates with Pentacost2023, a May 28th event to launch a decade of global evangelism – the lion’s share being focused on Israel, Jerusalem and the Jews.
All of this, including communion, is to take place on the southern steps of the Jerusalem Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, and will be televised to millions via GodTV and other Christian networks.
Why is this event different from other global Jesus-centered “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” happenings?
Well, it seems the organizers, led by Pastor Mike Bickle of the International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC), are not in sync with “Jewish Standard Time” which they believe has caused a delay in the return of their lord and savior.
Jews are clogging up the end-times works by not embracing Jesus. And so charismatic church leaders like Mike Bickle, Lou Engle, Jason Hubbard and many others have decided to try accelerating the clock by gathering millions of intercessory missionaries to take a more pro-active stand.
Now there is a palpable urgency to the agenda, and it’s no surprise to this writer that a number of Israel’s stalwart Christian Zionist “friends” are collaborating with and even spearheading the movement. Grape-picking volunteers, and those running lone soldier and aliya centers, which regularly partner with the Jewish Agency for Israel and other quasi-government organizations, are firmly on board, as is Israel’s vast network of messianic missionary organizations.
In his Isaiah 62 Church letter, Bickle expounds as follows:
“Israel’s national repentance and confession that Jesus is Messiah is deeply connected to Jesus’ second coming and to life from the dead for the whole earth. In this fast we are exalting the supremacy of Jesus, focusing on the connection of God’s blessing on Jerusalem to fulfilling the Great Commission. We can do so much more together in… unity.
“Repent therefore and be converted, that your [Israel’s] sins may be blotted out…” etc…etc…etc…
More oxymoronic than comforting, Bickle makes it clear that this is a “global Esther moment” and that 100 million intercessors “will stand with Israel as anti-Semitism continues to increase until the coming of Jesus.”
Journalist and author Sarah Posner has for years investigated the intersection of politics and religion in the United States and Israel. She understands Mike Bickle and his agenda vis-a-vis Israel and the Jews very well.
“Regardless of whether you are on the right or the left, a hawk or a dove, AIPAC or J Street, a full accounting of Bickle’s teaching would lead you to conclude that Bickle is not interested in Jewish history or in Israeli reality… his public views on Israel are entirely devoted to an end-times prophecy in which Jews and Israel must repent for not accepting Jesus as the Messiah. Bickle’s teaching is unequivocal: Jews must accept Jesus in order to accomplish God’s will that Jesus return to Jerusalem to rule the world from his throne on the Temple Mount. It’s hard to imagine how a Zionist of any stripe would define this position as pro-Israel.” –The Forward, February 23, 2016
But that was back in 2016, when pastors and their affiliated politicians still scrambled to do damage control when the Jewish community got any whiff of toxic winds blowing in from mega-church sermons involving hunters, fishers, Hitler and the Holocaust.
And indeed, back in the day, everyone from the Anti-Defamation League to Christian Zionist/messianic leaders were quick to condemn Bickle’s theological rhetoric. But Posner’s concerns were quickly swept under the rug by reckless Jewish leaders who can’t keep their house in order for fear of losing “friends.” One need not be a prophet of doom to know that, due to this gross lack of foresight, one day something big and menacing was going to crawl out from under that rug. It seems that day has arrived.
Today, talk of fleeing Jews and invasions coupled with conversionary campaigns and a global evangelical thrust (directed at Muslims too) can be openly preached in Jerusalem – within a stone’s throw of the Temple Mount.
Calls for mass evangelism of the Jews or peoples of any other faith is an affront to the integrity of Jerusalem and all that it stands for. And yes, many would deem it antisemitic – perhaps even “Lutheresque.”
Mike Bickle’s IHOPKC & co. is a horse of a different color. And with no effective counter-missionary measures in place and unbridled freedom of expression, Israel is incapable of reining-in brazen missionizing campaigns, or even caring about them.
It’s interesting that Bickle recently paid homage, in a Charisma News interview, to the aging or deceased pro-Israel “spiritual fathers,” singling out John Hagee and Pat Robertson in particular. It almost seemed to be a “step aside brothers, there’s a new church in town” moment.
With change in the air, it’s imperative that Jewish leadership and those Israelis hell-bent on faith-based alliances take another look at the meanings behind evangelistic refrains such as “the God of Israel” and “Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.”
We are likely not on the same page of the same book at all.
Bickle doesn’t leave much room for denial amongst the Jewish leadership when he says, “Jesus is the god of Israel” and “the unsaved Jews… who don’t believe in Jesus – they don’t know who the god of Israel is. They think He’s the God of Israel, the God of Moses in heaven. They don’t know it’s literally Jesus.”
And IHOPKC’s answer to the question of “Why do we so value praying for Jerusalem and Israel?” isn’t much better. But it is consistent and transparent:
“Israel’s national repentance (Act 3:19) and confession that Jesus is Messiah (Mt. 23:39) is deeply connected to Jesus’ second coming, the Great Commission, and “life from the dead” for the whole earth (Rom. 11:15). Jesus will not return until the leaders in Jerusalem acknowledge Him as Messiah according to Psalm 118:26.”
Clearly, the Jewish leadership involved in these relationships can no longer claim that “the evangelicals are our best friends – don’t ask questions or bite the hand that feeds you!”
Nor can they even claim “we didn’t know.”
Last week, Dr. Yael Ziegler of Matan concluded her Tanach (Old Testament, Prophets and Writings) class with this salient point: “Not knowing Tanach is not an intellectual failure, it’s a moral failure… In order to be a moral people we have to know. You have to be aware of what’s going on around you. To have morality you have to open your eyes and look around you.”
I started to pen this piece on Jerusalem Day, but needed to take a break lest a spirit of Tisha B’Av disrupt what should be a day of gratitude and celebration. Shabbat gave me a welcome reprieve, but then after Havdala [ceremony marking the end of the Sabbath) – on Rosh Ḥodesh Sivan (the first day of the Hebrew month of Sivan) – I found myself writing about this noxious stuff once again. I totally sacrificed my peace of mind and lost some sleep to boot. But I’m more mother than martyr and far more concerned about Jewish continuity and morality than eschatology and “theoidiocy.”
Now it’s almost the Festival of Shavuot [during which the biblical convert to Judaism Ruth is celebrated), and I’d like to thank and acknowledge the righteous gentiles who joined us by naturalizing into the people of Israel, leaving evangelical and messianic missionary congregations and who now work day and night to try and explain and expose this material to those who will listen.
Welcome to the Jewish introspective struggle. It’s uncomfortable and obligatory.
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