Union Dues Are About Building Democratic, Self-Sustaining, Working-Class Organizations
Bosses like management at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, where workers are trying to unionize, love to bring up union dues as part of their union-busting. But union organizers shouldn’t shy away from talking about why dues are important: they allow workers to pool the resources needed to fight the boss and win.
Union meeting of sugar beet workers in Colorado, 1938. (Library of Congress)
As Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama cast their mail-in ballots in a potentially game-changing union certification vote, corporate management has been hitting them with a relentless barrage of anti-union propaganda.
As other companies have done when trying to brainwash their employees into voting against unionization, Amazon is attempting to stoke fears about paying union dues. The company has launched DoItWithoutDues.com, a disinformation website chock-full of infantilizing, cringeworthy slogans like, “Be a Doer, Not a Due’r” and “Dues Mean Don’ts.”
“WHY NOT save the money and get the books, gifts & things you want? DO IT without dues,” Amazon management tells the workers, presuming to lecture them about how they ought to spend their own wages.
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