In Alabama, Black Amazon Workers Vote Their Economic Interest: The failed unionization push highlights growing disillusionment with progressive priorities

By Jason L. Riley of The WSJ by Jay Bhattacharya. Excerpts:

"Black leaders of an earlier era, W.E.B Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, had their differences when it came to helping blacks advance, but there was little daylight between them on the subject of labor unions and black employment. Du Bois called them “the greatest enemy of the black working man,” and Washington wrote in the Atlantic Monthly that “the average Negro who comes to the town from the plantations does not understand the necessity or advantage of a labor organization which stands between him and his employer and aims apparently to make a monopoly of the opportunity for labor.”

Labor unions no longer openly discriminate against black workers the way they once did, but the union’s agenda still harms black employment prospects. Unions haven’t stopped attempting to “make a monopoly of the opportunity for labor.” And if you are a less educated or inexperienced worker, as a disproportionate number of blacks happen to be, a union’s ability to force companies to raise pay and benefits above what they would be in a free market only decreases your chances of employment.

In the name of helping the underclass, Democrats today work to keep big retailers that won’t unionize from opening new stores, even in depressed communities most in need of jobs and low-cost goods and services. In 2019, progressive activists and union leaders pressured Amazon into canceling plans to build a second headquarters in New York City’s borough of Queens. The company estimated that the facility would have created some 25,000 new positions, yet Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez strongly opposed the move and later celebrated Amazon’s decision to bow out. The lawmaker apparently believes that it’s better for certain New Yorkers to be unemployed than to be working at Amazon. Worse, she and her fellow leftists believe such decisions are theirs to make, even as polls showed that more than 60% of New Yorkers sided with Amazon.

According to the most recent jobs figures, New York City’s unemployment rate of 12.9% is significantly higher than the statewide average of 8.9% and more than double the national average of 6%. Amazon’s absence isn’t helping matters. Kudos, Congresswoman."