The right war … the wrong battle.
Give Marco Rubio high marks for honesty about his purpose in supporting the union organizers against Amazon. The senator from Florida might talk about respecting workers in his op-ed in his USA Today, but Rubio is much more concerned about the disrespect Amazon shows to conservatives through its monopolistic power in the marketplace. Why bother to defend corporate giants from unionization, Rubio argues, when they spend most of their time attacking Republicans and their values? For the past several years, Amazon has waged a war against working-class values. The Silicon Valley titan uses anticompetitive strategies to crush small businesses, bans conservative books and blocks traditional charities from participating in its AmazonSmile program. Not surprisingly, it has also bowed to China’s censorship demands.… For decades, companies like Amazon have been allies of the left in the culture war, but when their bottom line is threatened they turn to conservatives to save them. 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. But the days of conservatives being taken for granted by the business community are over. 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. That decision is curiously absent of any substance regarding the actual dispute between Amazon and its workers. It’s one thing to say that the federal government shouldn’t intervene in the situation in either direction, which is certainly a proper position.
