Episode #51: What's Next for Amazon Staff and Brands Find Themselves Stuck in the Middle of Culture Wars

Talking Shop Podcast

This week we learned that the strongest push yet for a union inside e-commerce juggernaut Amazon fell short. Ewan sifts through the wreckage to try and find the way forward for both the company and its staff. We also discuss how labor unions have fallen out of favor and might need an image overhaul.

"Cancel culture" seems to be on everyone's lips these days. When you combine it with severe political and cultural polarization, the result is companies being squeezed in the middle, often forced to take sides. The most recent example was Major League Baseball's decision to pull its all-star game from the US state of Georgia in opposition to new voting laws that could make casting ballots more difficult. Cam looks at the tough choice companies have to face, and provides a few examples from China, where local brands have faced similar pressure for many years already.

Plus: a dive into the world of Biggie and Tupac and the rap war of the 1990s that left both talented artists dead. You'll also be surprised to learn where the term 'cancel culture' came from.

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Links and Show Notes

• NLRB Announces Results in Amazon Election - National Labor Relations Board
• Amazon Workers Vote Down Union Drive at Alabama Warehouse - New York Times
• Blowout in Bessemer: A Postmortem on the Amazon Campaign - The Nation
• A Boot Camp for All Things Content and Communications - Marketing Influence 360
• The New Cancel Culture Capitalism - New York Times

Check This Out

• The Strange Journey of 'Cancel', from a Black-Culture Punchline to a White-Grievance Watchword - The Washington Post
• Slow Burn: Biggie and Tupac - Slate
• Biggie: I've Got a Story to Tell - Netflix

Hosts

Ewan Christie is an employment lawyer and partner at Duntrune LLP in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Cam MacMurchy is a corporate communications executive with a multinational technology company listed in Hong Kong and curator of the Digital Bits PR and Communications newsletter. He also contributes to Apple news website 9to5Macand shares his thoughts on PR, media, travel, and technology on his website.