JLC President Stuart Appelbaum Speaks Out.
NOTE: This article, by Arno Rosenfeld, originally appeared in The Forward, dated February 9, 2021.
The union election at an Amazon warehouse in central Alabama, which began Monday and will last for seven weeks, is being closely watched by both supporters and foes of organized labor. Workers at the facility have come closer to forming a union than any others in Amazon’s history, and a victory could have ramifications well beyond a single fulfillment center in the Birmingham suburbs.
“The importance of this campaign transcends this one facility,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Workers Union (RWDSU), which is organizing the workers in Alabama. “It’s really about what the future of work is going to look like.”
Appelbaum, 68, climbed the ranks of the retail workers union starting in 1987, after working for the Democratic National Committee and Michigan AFL-CIO. He has been president since 1998. He is also president of the Jewish Labor Committee, and sits on the executive committee of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, as well as the national advisory board for J Street, the liberal pro-Israel group. The son of a postal clerk in Bloomfield, Connecticut, Appelbaum said he would read union newsletters cover-to-cover as a child. The family attended a Conservative synagogue where the rabbi’s sermons made an impression.
“I remember my rabbi telling us all work is honorable, regardless of whether or not you have a job that requires a college education,” Appelbaum said. “That’s normally not a message you’d hear in Jewish synagogues — you’d hear, ‘Everyone has to go to college.’”
I spoke with Appelbaum about the stakes of the Amazon organizing drive and the changing role of Jews within the American labor movement. Appelbaum is, unsurprisingly, hostile to the e-commerce giant and that is reflected in the interview. We have also reached out to Amazon to request an interview with incoming CEO Andy Jassy, who is Jewish. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Many Jews came to the United States as working-class immigrants but their descendants have since ascended to the professional class: doctors, lawyers, business people. Is it harder to convince the Jewish community to support organized labor these days than it was 30 or 40 or 50 years ago?
I’d say that the approach is different. Rather than talking about people’s individual experience or their parents’ individual experience, I think that we turn to those core principles that make us proud of our heritage. I’m incredibly proud that the Jewish community voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden, I’m incredibly proud that the Jewish community has been at the forefront of so many social- justice battles, and I am confident that the Jewish community will continue to support working people.
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