Rubio Supports Amazon Workers’ Push to Unionize in Alabama

Mr. Rubio’s support for the organizational activity follows years of thought on the subject. The son of a casino bartender, he has written that one of his earliest political memories was of joining his father in a Culinary Workers Union strike in Las Vegas.

“Any discussion of the dignity of work should mention unions,” Mr. Rubio wrote in a 2018 article in The Atlantic. “No other American organizations occupy the same unique space as labor unions, which straddle the line between jobs and community. At their local levels, unions have historically served as an integrating force for the dignity of work.”

President Biden, a longtime union backer, has also expressed support for the Amazon warehouse employees in Bessemer, Ala., who are set to decide whether to become the first group of U.S. Amazon employees to unionize.

Organizers have said forming a union would let workers collectively bargain over safety standards, training, breaks, pay and other benefits.

Amazon has said it offers some of the best pay and benefits available for comparable jobs in similar industries, and that the company provides a competitive compensation package that includes 401(k) and healthcare coverage.

Mr. Rubio’s support for the union push is his latest tangle with the nation’s second-largest employer. He was part of a group of senators who wrote to Amazon about its decision to remove from its site and its Kindle and Audible platforms the book “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.”

Amazon later told the senators that it had decided not to sell books that frame transgender and other sexual identities as mental illnesses.

Write to Siobhan Hughes at [email protected]