An interview with Reverend Ryan Brown
By Carl Hintz
After a successful union card signing campaign, Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE) has secured a NLRB election. On February 10th through February 15th, thousands of Amazon workers at the RDU1 warehouse in Garner, NC will vote whether to unionize with CAUSE.
Amazon has illegally fired some workers for organizing, including the former VP of CAUSE and the current President of CAUSE, and even some workers for simply saying that they plan to vote yes to unionize. Amazon has subjected workers to captive anti-union meetings, attempted to divide the workplace with identity politics, and even had three organizers arrested who were providing free food, but workers at RDU1 remain steadfast.
Three years of organizing at RDU1
The idea for the organizing came to me when I was sent to a part of the warehouse that was a Covid hotspot. In January 2022, I approached Ms. Mary [co-founder of CAUSE] about organizing the warehouse, so we’ve been organizing for three years.
A lot of our leaders have developed through one-on-one [organizing conversations]. Some were just natural leaders. Others didn’t realize certain gifts that they had so I’ve watched more people than I can remember develop as leaders right in front of me.
Why workers are joining the union
People join workplace unions for various reasons—for working conditions, for pay, for more time off. People want to be recognized for their humanity, and not seen as replaceable robots. Workers want to live with dignity and respect and be treated with dignity and respect on the job.
Amazon’s disregard for worker safety
If you are injured on the job, you have to jump through all of these hoops to get accommodations approved by Amazon. If they keep denying, you have to go back to your doctor. I’ve seen folks return with a letter in hand and be forced to work against [the doctor’s order] and be injured that same day.
One of our demands is a one-hour paid lunch break. Everything is speed speed, speed, speed. Even the lunch period, the two 30-minute breaks are not really thirty minutes—all you’re doing is just walking and walking and you may just have ten to fifteen minutes to sit down. If you don’t get back to your station on time, you will be written up.
They’ve started exploiting workers another way. Workers that were hired for one department, and now forced to go to departments that don’t feel comfortable or safe. I saw a grown man come down crying from upstairs, from picking, and looking at him, you know he can’t perform the duties upstairs. He’s overweight, out of shape, and he has health chal lenges, and they sent him up there. [Amazon says] “we don’t want the union here because we want to have a direct relationship with you”—so if we have a direct relationship and I’m telling you that my body is in pain, why would you send me back to the same place of pain and failure?
We’re starting to see more and more folks bringing weapons into the buildings. Amazon is such a shitty place to work for, who can say that one day you’re not going to tee off the wrong person. They don’t check us coming in, but they check us going out. You talk about safety and security, that whole process is almost like it’s criminal.
Amazon’s poverty wages
If you start working at Amazon, you start off at $18.50. In three years, as you do the wage step, you will end up at $20.90 and then after that you’re at the mercy of the company if they decide they want to give you a raise.
There’s a lot of wealth [at the top] that comes from cheap labor. One of the things that I’ve been trying to educate and preach to, is folks do you see what’s going on? Have you ever heard of the Gilded Age? We’re living in a gilded age 2.0.
I honestly went to Amazon for a career. That just ain’t happening. What was very disappointing, when the pandemic hit, Amazon treated us so great. They gave us a two or three dollar pay increase, and double overtime. Unlimited paid time off if you don’t feel good, or if you got a loved one who’s not doing well, just leave, and just report it to us. And in two months, [Jeff Bezos] rolled back all those benefits and became the very first human being to make more than $200 billion.
Fighting for language justice
At one time there was not even language justice. [Amazon] would put everything in English, and you had a large influx of workers who only spoke Spanish. And when policies were broken, and they didn’t get the memo, [Amazon] would discipline them.
Workers have a voice in the union
There’s been a lot of times where I, personally, felt there was a wrong vote, but I committed to “hey, this is a democratic process.” But that’s the beauty of CAUSE and a true 100% democratic process, because as we recruit people to join CAUSE and as people get involved, they realize that they actually have a voice.
When they go to those captive audience meetings and [Amazon’s] saying that “Oh, the union’s going to decide this and that for you.” No, [workers] realize how the process [of our union] actually works.
CAUSE is like family, Amazon is not
I think you have to understand Ms. Mary and I, who were the founders of CAUSE and started all of this, we’ve always been organizers in our community. With my expertise with serving as a pastor for so many years and with the black church, with Ms. Mary’s community activities that she does, we tap into the best of our tradition. A part of that tradition, in the black community specifically, is that black people are very loving people. We love everybody. Everybody don’t always love us back. But we love everybody.
We have built a culture where we are a family. We’re a family that works together. If a family member is hurting, they’re in pain, we are there for that family member. A lot of the meetings that we have had, those meetings are in our very homes because we want you to feel our souls and the love that we have that’s expressed in our home and in our food and that’s why we call it soul food. We love all people.
Ms. Mary used to be a truck driver, I used to do a lot of missionary work around the world and all over the United States. We’ve met a lot of our coworkers in our past experiences on every single level. We were able to connect with people, we were able to recruit them to CAUSE and the structure of being just one big family. In this family, it don’t matter the color of your skin. It don’t matter what your pronouns are, it don’t matter if you’re religious, spiritual or atheist. We’re all a part of the human family. So our rank and file is very diverse.
We’re the experts of our own workplace
I don’t believe that there is one size that fits all when it comes to organizing Amazon. Every region, every demographic, has its own culture. Our building is majority Black and Hispanic. People of color, and oppressed people, any time that systems have not worked for us that were supposed to work for us and protect us, we’ve always gone outside of those systems, and built our own systems.
That’s just organically how CAUSE evolved. When we set out to organize, we didn’t really know anything about unions and organizing workers. But we just organically evolved, and said, hey it’s best that we do this by ourselves because we’re the experts of our own workplace.
A community effort
One of the ways that the broader community can help is to join or listen in to one of our community committee meetings and start having discussions. We have a community committee, and it’s led strictly by the community. Amazon has gotten so large that at least one of us knows somebody who is a delivery driver or works in one of their warehouses. Ask those people, really, is it as bad as people say that it is?
No man is an island unto himself. A lot of how Amazon comes into our communities, you may not be feeling the effects now. But it’s an essential threat to all of us, even with how they mistreat the environment. All of us at this point should have a vested interest in [resisting] this monster, this evil system.
To stand in solidarity with the Amazon workers at RDU1, go to amazoncause.com/volunteer-with-us/ and attend CAUSE’s Community Committee meetings and events.
Reverend Ryan Brown is a pastor, co-founder and current president of CAUSE, who was wrongfully fired by Amazon in retaliation for his organizing efforts.
Carl Hintz is a contributing editor for the Triangle Free Press.