Danny Glover: "The Best Anti-Poverty Program is a Union"

Actor and activist Danny Glover traveled recently to the most-watched Amazon facility in the country — the Bessemer fulfillment center outside Birmingham, Alabama.

The warehouse’s more than 5,800 predominantly Black workers are in the middle of a historic vote on unionization. If a majority vote in favor, they would become the e-commerce giant’s first U.S. employees to form a union.

In the lead-up to the vote, Amazon deployed what the union calls the “gold package” of anti-union tactics, including intimidating meetings with managers, setting up a fear-mongering website, and plastering workplace restrooms with propaganda.

“We’re seeing all the draconian, ugly ways that corporations demonize the idea of organized labor,” Glover said in an interview with Inequality.org on February 22 before heading off to show support for the workers at the plant gate and in meetings with local officials and media. “We simply have to stop glorifying the billionaires who are trying any way they can to disempower workers.”

This is not the first time the Hollywood actor has stood in solidarity with employees of a wealthy, anti-union CEO like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. It’s not even his first time doing it in the South.

Several years ago, Glover was a steadfast supporter of a campaign to organize a Nissan auto plant in Canton, Mississippi that also had a majority-Black workforce. At that time, Nissan’s CEO was Carlos Ghosn, a centimillionaire known for making veiled threatsto undermine union drives.


https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/26/danny-glover-the-best-anti-poverty-program-is-a-union/