New York, May 12 (RHC)-- The president of the newly-formed Amazon Labor Union told a U.S. Senate committee that the country's labor law is failing to protect the rights of workers to organize. 

Christian Smalls, who led the first-ever successful union campaign at a U.S. Amazon warehouse, was testifying to the Senate Budget Committee.  He said that during organizing campaigns, Amazon has routinely broken the law with impunity, forcing workers into captive audience meetings aimed at breaking up unions.

Christian Smalls told reporters: “They have captive audiences every single day.  For example, at JFK, they did them every 20 minutes.  They brought in classrooms the size of 50 to 60 workers, drilled anti-union propaganda into their heads for nearly an hour.  And they did this four times a week.”

Smalls called on senators to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a labor law reform that would make it easier for workers to form unions. 

The bill passed the Democratic-controlled House but is stalled in the Senate, where it faces opposition from Republicans and some Democrats. Thursday’s hearing was called by Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders, who urged politicians at all levels of government to cancel contracts with companies that bust unions and break labor laws.

Sen. Bernie Sanders said: “Taxpayer dollars should not go to companies like Amazon who repeatedly break the law.  And we’re talking about billions and billions of dollars in contracts.  No government, not the federal government, not the state government and not any city government, should be handing out corporate welfare to union busters and labor law violators.”

On Wednesday, Senate Democrats , voted overwhelmingly against a measure authored by Senator Sanders that would require semiconductor manufacturers that receive federal funding to respect workers’ union rights, while barring them from outsourcing jobs.  The measure failed on a vote of 6 to 87.