Workers queue to cast ballots for a union election at Amazon’s JFK8 distribution center in the Staten Island borough of New York, March 25, 2022.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
On Friday afternoon, a stream of Amazon workers exited a sprawling warehouse on Staten Island in New York after finishing their day shift. Many of them packed into city buses to go home. On their way, they passed a large white tent that stretched across part of the parking lot.
This tent will be a crucial location for the next five days.
Workers at the facility, known as JFK8, have just started voting on whether to join the Amazon Labor Union, a group made up of current and former employees at the company. The findings will have implications well beyond New York City’s smallest borough, affecting workers at every Amazon warehouse where two-day Prime shipping is enabled.
The excitement was palpable on Friday as JFK8 staffers milled around a nearby bus stop and chatted about the election. Some wore yellow lanyards that said “vote yes,” while others wore blue T-shirts that said “vote no.”
The election runs until March 30, and the National Labor Relations Board will begin counting the votes the following day. ALU has urged Amazon to raise wages, along with other demands. Amazon recently raised its average starting salary to $18 an hour.
It’s the second union vote at an Amazon warehouse in a year, a potentially worrying sign for a company that has long opposed organized labor. Workers at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama, plant were the first to try to unionize last spring. That attempt failed, but workers there are back at it after the NLRB ordered an overhaul for improper interference in the previous union initiative.
In Alabama and New York, workers are voting to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Organizing efforts are underway at other facilities, including another warehouse on Staten Island, where an election is scheduled to begin later next month.
As more national unions have targeted Amazon, Amazon has become more aggressive in preventing employees from becoming members.
At JFK8, Amazon papered the walls with banners that read “Vote No.” The company even set up a website where it told employees, “ALU makes big promises but offers very few details on how they will deliver on them.” Amazon has also held weekly meetings with anti-union presentations that employees have to endure.
Kevin Pardee, who has worked at JFK8 for two and a half years, said it was hard to ignore Amazon’s “stunning union busting” as he walked through the facility.
“You can’t go anywhere without some form of anti-union propaganda in your face,” Pardee said.
Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for Amazon, referred CNBC to previous statements the company has made on the matter.
Amazon has papered the walls of the Staten Island facility with banners that read “Vote No.”
Kevin Pardee
“Every day we empower people to find ways to improve their work, and when they do, we want to make those changes quickly,” Amazon said. “This type of continuous improvement is more difficult to implement quickly and flexibly with unions in the middle.”
The ALU organizers also spoke up. Last year they set up a tent near a bus stop outside the facility to distribute flyers and collect union cards. More recently, they’ve been delivering meals to staff in JFK8’s break room while drawing attention to their cause Twitter and tiktok.
“We didn’t get this far by accident”
Activism among Amazon employees has increased since the coronavirus pandemic began. Essential workers were considered delivery and warehouse workers who worked on the front lines, while many white-collar workers worked from the comfort of their own homes.
As the pandemic dragged on, Amazon workers staged protests and spoke out for workplace safety. A tight US labor market continued to fuel support for unionization, and workers have seized the moment to demand higher wages and better benefits from their employers.
Located just off the busy Staten Island Expressway in an office park with two other Amazon warehouses, JFK8 serves as a key distribution point for the e-commerce giant’s operations in the region. More than 2.4 million packages are delivered every day in New York City.
During the lockdown, the roughly 6,000 workers at JFK8 helped keep packages flowing to city residents who were staying at home and wanted more materials shipped to their doorsteps.
In March 2020, shortly after the pandemic hit the United States, workers at the facility staged a walkout, expressing frustration at what they saw as Amazon’s failure to protect them.
Soon after, Amazon drew national attention for the firing of Chris Smalls, then an executive assistant, who led the protest. A leaked memo from Vice revealed that Amazon general counsel David Zapolsky called Smalls “not smart or articulate” in a meeting with the company’s top executives, an incident that further angered critics of Amazon’s labor practices.
Amazon employees at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse go on strike to demand the facility be closed and cleaned after an employee tested positive for the coronavirus in New York on March 30, 2020.
Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images
In October, the ALU submitted a union application to the NLRB for unionisation. After resubmitting its petition earlier this year, the NLRB gave the ALU the green light to proceed with a vote. Smalls is President of ALU.
The election is somewhat unusual as the ALU is a workers’ grassroots organization and not a national union. But organizers say it makes it easier for staff to understand.
Angelika Maldonado, chair of ALU’s workers’ committee, returned to Amazon in September after quitting her job at JFK8 in 2019. She soon met some ALU organizers huddled around a bonfire near the bus stop in front of the warehouse.
Maldonado, a single mother with a young son, said she learned a lot about the struggles her peers face. One of the organizers was homeless and some workers were sleeping in their cars, she said.
The ALU gathers support from outside. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the New York branch of Unite Here, a hospitality union, both contributed to the campaign.
“We have experience of unions guiding us,” said Derrick Palmer, an ALU organizer and worker at JFK8. “We didn’t get this far by accident.”
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