Bezos declines invitation from Sanders to testify before Senate Budget Committee

The Washington Post first reported the news of Sanders’ invitation.

He was invited to testify “to explain to the American people why he believes it is appropriate for him to be spending a whole lot of money denying economic dignity to Amazon workers in Bessemer who want to form a union, while he has become $78 billion richer during the pandemic and is now worth $183 billion,” Sanders said.

The attempt to unionize the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, has become the focal point of a growing struggle between Corporate America and labor groups to unionize within companies and states that have resisted such efforts. The election results in November have emboldened unions to expand their ranks, and President Joe Biden has offered his support to the workers attempting to organize in Alabama.

Sanders offered a resolution to put an employee on the board and increase the company’s minimum wage. The resolution was defeated.

Republicans continue to be skeptical of attempts to expand union ranks across the country and bust up laws in red states that prevent workers from being forced to join unions. GOP Senator Marco Rubio from Florida penned an op-ed in USA Today where he argued that creation of a union at the Amazon plant in Alabama would lead to fewer jobs and smaller wages.

“Adversarial labor relations are generally harmful. When it is a good American company — for example, certain American automakers — adversarial relations risk hurting labor and management alike by causing American industry to lose ground to foreign competition. And too often, the right to form a union has been, in practice, a requirement that business owners allow left-wing social organizers to take over their workplaces,” Rubio wrote.

The Florida Senator however was in agreement with Sanders on Bezos and Amazon who he accused of using “anti-competitive strategies to crush small businesses.”