Vote counts in a union election at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, and a re-election at a facility in Bessemer, Alabama, are both underway. A public vote count, broadcast via Zoom to select viewers, including the press, began Thursday.
The Bessemer union vote took place by mail over a nearly two-month period ending on Friday, the same day an in-person vote began at Amazon’s Staten Island facility known as JFK8. Thousands of Amazon warehouse workers were eligible to vote in every election.
Last year’s Bessemer vote showed union efforts had failed, but the results were thrown out after a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board found Amazon had intervened illegally and “made a free and fair election impossible.” An Amazon spokesman called the decision “disappointing” at the time.
As the new elections began, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Stores Union (RWDSU), which is behind the Bessemer campaign, said it had received a list of 6,143 eligible workers, or nearly 350 more than last year. According to RWDSU, the NLRB eventually received approximately 2,300 ballots, or 39% of eligible voters. That’s significantly lower than last year’s turnout, when 3,215 ballots were received.
In the original Bessemer election, 1,798 workers voted against unionizing with RWDSU, far more than the 1,608 needed for either side to win. According to the RWDSU, more than half of those eligible to vote this time were eligible to vote last time.
Both the Bessemer and Staten Island union efforts grew out of frustration with Amazon’s treatment of workers in the early days of the pandemic and were further fueled by increased attention to racial justice issues across the country. The initial Bessemer action in particular helped put the spotlight on working conditions at the facilities of the country’s second largest private employer.
Jennifer Bates, an Amazon worker at the Bessemer facility, testified before the Senate Budget Committee in March 2021 about the working conditions, which she equated to “9 hours of intense training every day,” which prompted her and others to join RWDSU to organize. Celebrities and politicians, including President Joe Biden, publicly supported workers like Bates. But the two union efforts are different. The Bessemer election was organized by workers together with the 85-year-old RWDSU. The Staten Island effort, on the other hand, is being led by a newly formed group called the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), made up of current and former Amazon workers. The face of ALU is largely Christian Smalls, a former Amazon worker who was fired in March 2020 after leading a strike at the facility to protest pandemic-related health and safety concerns. (Smalls says he faced retaliation; Amazon says he was terminated for violating its policy requiring quarantine after being notified of possible exposure to Covid-19.)
Since then, Smalls has continued to organize, turning to crowdsourcing for donations to support the group’s efforts. ALU has also collected enough signatures for an NLRB election at a nearby Amazon facility in Staten Island, scheduled for late April.
Amazon has previously said that its “employees have always had a choice whether or not to join a union” and that their focus is “working directly with our team to make Amazon a great place to work.”
But Amazon has also tried to combat union organizing efforts, including with text messaging, signage in warehouses and mandatory pre-election group meetings where company officials communicated anti-union stances to workers. The latter is the subject of one of several complaints of unfair labor practices filed with the NLRB this year. RWDSU argues that requiring attendance at these meetings, a common tactic similarly used by a number of other employers and permitted by law, violates workers’ rights to stay away from union-related activities and calls on the NLRB to do so review law. (Amazon said the complaint was unfounded.)
In a statement to CNN Business earlier this year, Amazon spokeswoman Barbara Agrait said: “If the union vote is positive, it will affect everyone at the site, which is why we hold regular information sessions and give employees the opportunity to ask questions and learn about the situation.” What that could mean for them and their day-to-day work at Amazon.” Regardless of the outcome of the two votes, further union efforts could follow as unions increasingly encircle the company. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents UPS workers, voted in favor last year to make Amazon a key priority and help its workers get a union deal, and this month the president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations said it would help Teamsters take on Amazon.