At a labour event on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden took aim at online retailer Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), praising his government task force on worker organisation “to ensure that the choice to join a union belongs to employees alone.”
“And, by the way, Amazon, we’re on our way.” “Watch. Watch,” he remarked at the North American Building Trades Unions (NABTU) Legislative Conference to thunderous applause.
Workers at an Amazon warehouse in New York City voted last week to create the first union at the country’s second-largest private employer, a victory that builds on labour activists’ recent grassroots victories in new industries. find out more
A request for comment from Amazon was not immediately returned.
Biden is widely regarded as the most pro-labor president in decades, earning acclaim from labour groups around the country.
He moved rapidly to remove government employees deemed antagonistic to labour by unions, and he reversed policies enacted by former President Donald Trump that critics believed undercut worker safeguards.
According to labour experts, the task committee, which comprises more than 20 agency chiefs and Cabinet officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, is an attempt to help reverse decades of erosion in union membership and power.
