Jeff Bezos must be losing sleep lately. Off the back of his recent $2 billion “gift” to Seattle in the form of another thinly-veiled charter school system in which “the child is the customer,” Bezos announced on October 2nd that Amazon will be raising the minimum wage for all employees to $15/hour. This number will look familiar to folks in Seattle who organized successfully around the Fight for $15 back in 2015—and that’s no coincidence.

This is a victory we should not take for granted.

This past summer, Bezos worked incredibly hard to kill a progressive tax on big business that would have put $45 million a year toward funding affordable housing and homelessness services. He even went so far as to put 7,000 jobs and two massive construction projects on hold in a “capital strike” in protest of a tax that would have cost Amazon roughly $10 million a year. (Bezos’s net worth is currently $155 billion.)

This paints quite the different picture from the charitable image he is now desperately trying to pivot to. While the laser-focus on Amazon and Bezos during this fight resulted in the tax being killed by our own Bezos-approved Mayor Jenny Durkan in an embarrassing (and possibly illegal) repeal, it clearly stoked the fire that has roared nationwide ever since the repeal.

We shouldn’t take this victory for granted, but we should be clear: this is a victory by and for the workers.

Amazon workers are some of the most exploited in the nation, with some Amazon warehouse workers being forced to pee in bottles or risk losing their job and thousands paid so poorly they’re forced to rely on food stamps. Workers have collectively refused to put up with this injustice and abuse any longer.

In Minneapolis, Muslim Amazon workers protested working conditions forced upon them during their observation of Ramadan. These conditions reportedly included Amazon doubling work by turning two jobs into one, which allegedly led to injuries during the month-long fast. Precarious contract delivery drivers in Seattle filed a lawsuit against Amazon over failure to pay overtime or give breaks. And on the heels of a massive acquisition by Amazon, employees at Whole Foods Market who rightly fear the company’s now-infamous exploitation want to unionize. Their key demand is “a $15 hourly minimum wage.” Congratulations workers of Amazon, this $15/hour minimum wage victory literally belongs to you.

While this will materially benefit thousands of workers and should be celebrated, it is vital to continue keeping Jeff Bezos up at night. Because while this is a positive step in the right direction, Jeff Bezos still has a dramatic distance to go before he should be able to sleep soundly.

Predictably, reporters found that to pay for its new wage increase Amazon will be cutting bonus and stock options previously promised to warehouse workers, because how else is Bezos supposed to satiate his vampiric need for the surplus value his workers create?

With this move, Bezos has unintentionally laid bare the contradictions of capitalism. He’s made it painfully clear that he is hoarding the surplus value of his workers, doling it out in small parcels only when he gets enough bad press. He is also currently doing his best to ensure that local taxes, minimum wage laws, pre-schools, and low-income housing are under control on his terms, not ours—the actual people of this city.

As economist and University of Massachusetts – Amherst Professor Emeritus Richard D. Wolff noted, “566,000 Amazon employees produced his wealth; he alone decides its use. That’s capitalist autocracy, not economic democracy.”

Nevertheless, this victory shows that bottom-up organizing based in class struggle works. Even in the “new gilded age,” the world’s richest man is not impervious to the powers of organized labor. As the old adage goes, we do not need the bosses, the bosses need us. Even Bezos is starting to realize that. Let’s keep it up.

Here's how: Support organizing inside and outside of your workplace. Show up to picket lines. (Don’t cross them!) Don’t let the bosses off the hook, and provide desperately needed solidarity to those on the front lines of the class war. Come learn the basics of organizing a union or a solidarity organization. If you have a job, organize your workplace! Form a union! Join one! Are you part of a union? Run for union office! Make it better! Are you none of the above? Then just keep up the pressure.