Florida GOP Senator Marco Rubio has taken the unusual stance — for a conservative politician, anyway — of defending workers looking to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama. Republicans and union labor forces go together as well as pickles and peanut butter, so why is Rubio taking this unusual position? Simple. By trying to reframe Republicans, and himself in particular, as pro-worker, he’s trying to have his political cake and eat it too. But what he’s really doing is taking a stand against one of the conservative movement’s biggest bogeymen, Big Tech and its “woke agenda.”
In an OP/ED for USA Today, Rubio made it clear that he views Amazon and what he calls its “war against working-class values” as a much bigger threat than even the unions.
“Here’s my standard: When the conflict is between working Americans and a company whose leadership has decided to wage culture war against working-class values, the choice is easy — I support the workers. And that’s why I stand with those at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse today.”
In the same opinion piece, Rubio makes certain to let us know that the only reason he’s backing the attempts by workers at that Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama is because he says the corporate titan uses anti-competitive methods to crush small businesses, bans books by conservative authors, and blocks traditional charities from taking part in Amazon’s charity program. To be clear, there are legitimate complaints to be made of Amazon’s approach to small businesses. But the “conservative” books Rubio referenced was actually about one book that was anti-transgender and framed LGBTQ identities as mental illness. As for the “traditional charities” the senator says were unfairly excluded, they are non-profit groups labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups.
Back to the unions. Just so you don’t go thinking Rubio is going maverick and trying to be that rare Republican who actually believes in protecting workers rights, here’s a direct quote from his op/ed that states what he really thinks about labor unions.
“Republicans have rightly understood the dangers posed by the unchecked influence of labor unions. Adversarial relations between labor and management are wrong. They are wrong for both workers and our nation’s economic competitiveness. “
Rubio made sure to trash the Democrat-led Protecting the Right to Organize Act in his essay, claiming it would guarantee adversarial relations between corporations and their workforces. He also shared the story of how he recalled joining his father as a kid on the picket line during a Culinary Workers strike in Vegas. He claims that experience taught him that all workers deserve respect. But according to his own words, it seems that respect must come without union protection…unless the company is Amazon.