Artur Widak/NurPhoto via AP
Earlier this year, Amazon agreed to pay more than $61.7 million to settle charges that the company had failed to pay the full amount of tips earned by Amazon Flex drivers.
Three major unions are stepping down from their positions on the board of the nation’s oldest consumer rights organization because of that organization’s continued ties to Amazon. As reported last Friday, the presidents of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and the United Auto Workers (UAW) have resigned from the board of the National Consumers League over the NCL’s involvement with and financial support from Amazon. The departing unions say that the consumer organization has prioritized donations from the retail giant over its historically progressive mission.
For its part, the NCL still touts its mission as one that “represent[s] consumers and workers on marketplace and workplace issues.” More than just representation, however, the NCL helped turn co-advocacy among its two core constituencies into an art form. Over a century ago, the NCL’s general secretary, Florence Kelley, who took the helm of the NCL in 1899, launched a groundbreaking national White Label campaign akin to today’s fair trade and No Sweat movements. The campaign aimed to mobilize smart shoppers, mostly middle-class women, to use the power of their purses to support manufacturers that complied with labor laws, which at the time consisted of prohibitions on child labor and limits to overtime and homework. Kelley was building on her previous experience as a chief factory inspector and her efforts to pass anti-sweatshop legislation. Over the years, the NCL has continued that tradition of trailblazing ways to support both workers and consumers.
The animating spirit and strategic sensibility that has long informed the NCL is as valid and important as it’s ever been.
Nonetheless, one would have to be living in a cave to not be aware of the myriad ways in which Amazon’s business model has resulted in huge profits to the company at the expense of workers, consumers, and small businesses. Over the years, the corporation has been embroiled in a multitude of regulatory enforcement actions and currently faces a lawsuit by the D.C. attorney general for antitrust violations for illegally controlling prices, harming consumers and small businesses. It is also currently under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for its proposed purchase of MGM, and has been ordered by the National Labor Relations Board to hold a new vote in the union elections at its Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse. Earlier this year, Amazon agreed to pay more than $61.7 million to settle charges from the Federal Trade Commission that the company had failed to pay the full amount of tips earned by Amazon Flex drivers. All of these actions come on top of other alleged labor law violations involving retaliation against workers and unsafe working conditions. Amazon is the very opposite of the “white label” employer the NCL asked its consumer base to support—and that is what makes the relationship so vexing to unions and other worker and consumer advocates.
The animating spirit and strategic sensibility that has long informed the NCL is as valid and important as it’s ever been. As corporations keep amassing power and wealth, consumers and workers need to work together to ensure their fair share of the prosperity they help create. Consumer activism, be it by individual consumers or under the umbrella of consumer organizations, can provide crucial oxygen in union organizing campaigns at large national and multinational corporations. Consumer rights organizations must unapologetically support worker organizing campaigns, especially when these corporations continue to extract and diminish the capital—monetary and political—workers and consumers may have in the marketplace.
Giving up funding is invariably painful for a nonprofit organization, where every dollar counts and losing a single funder can result in layoffs and services disruptions for the people who are counting on them. But consumer organizations have an important role to play in both educating consumers on the impact of their purchases and advocating for legislative changes that improve the lives of workers and consumers. They cannot credibly model those values in public while taking money from companies that have multiple documented egregious anti-worker policies. For the NCL, the cost of sacrificing its credibility will almost surely be bigger than the funding that is in play.
