The world's largest online retailer is no longer union-free in the U.S., following a remarkable election victory by an independent union.
In a historic win for the labour movement, warehouse workers on Staten Island, New York, have voted to form the first union inside an Amazon facility in the U.S.
Employees at the company’s fulfillment centre known as JFK8 will be joining a new independent labour group, the Amazon Labor Union, following an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. The union delivered a stunning upset in the vote count held Thursday and Friday, winning 2,654 to 2,131.
If the labour board certifies the results to make them official, then the world’s largest online retailer will be obligated to bargain with a union representing several thousand of its employees, something it has never had to do except overseas.
Meanwhile, the labour board conducted a separate vote count Thursday for a different Amazon facility considering unionization, in Bessemer, Alabama. Workers voted 875 to 993 against joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, but more than 400 other ballots have been challenged and remain unopened, meaning the union could still win after the board determines those voters’ eligibility.
“[Amazon knows] that people don’t want to be here long, that these jobs break you down physically and mentally.” - Chris Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union
Amazon has put up stiff resistance against union organizing efforts, inundating workers with anti-union messaging and holding frequent meetings with workers to discourage them from signing union cards or voting for union representation. Disclosure filings that Amazon submitted to the Labor Department on Thursday indicate the company spent $4.3 million last year on labour consultants who help employers defeat organizing drives.
Until this week, those strategies had worked.
The labour victory in Staten Island is all the more remarkable because of the union’s unlikely roots. Amazon Labor Union, or ALU, was formed just last year by a group of workers in New York. It is led by Chris Smalls, a former Amazon worker whom the company controversially fired early in the pandemic after he spoke out about safety concerns, and Derrick Palmer, who works at JFK8.
Most unions have a large staff, including professional organizers, who are paid through workers’ dues to carry out the union’s work. But ALU has not been around long enough to have the resources of an established union. Smalls, Palmer and their fellow pro-union workers organized relentlessly outside the Staten Island facility, holding cookouts, speaking with workers about the campaign and urging them to sign union cards.
Now, the young union will face an even greater challenge: negotiating a first collective bargaining agreement with one of the most powerful companies in the world. It can take years for a union to secure a first contract, and some never manage to. Amazon would have a strong incentive not to offer the union a decent deal, for fear it would only encourage more unionization elsewhere.
Last year, Smalls told HuffPost that one of the greatest challenges to organizing Amazon is dealing with the company’s high turnover. Many workers, he said, don’t stay around long enough to be turned into union supporters.
“That’s the name of Amazon’s game: Hire and fire,” he said at the time. “They know that people don’t want to be here long, that these jobs break you down physically and mentally.”
ALU has called for a wage of at least $30 per hour to accommodate New York’s high cost of living, as well as greater job security. Amazon workers must meet the company’s well-known production quotas or they can lose their jobs with no recourse, something Smalls has said needs to change.
“We demand to be treated as human beings and not mere replaceable appendages to the robots and algorithms that run the warehouses,” ALU says on its website.
The union originally petitioned the labour board for an election last year, then withdrew it ahead of a vote. After gathering more signatures, the union returned to the board to file its petition with greater support from workers.
Later this month, workers at another, smaller Amazon facility on Staten Island are expected to vote on whether to join the ALU as well.
Source: Huff post
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