Demonstrators during an Amazon Labor Union (ALU) rally in the Staten Island neighborhood of New York, United States, on Sunday, April 24, 2022.
Victor J Blue | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon workers cast their ballots Monday in another high-stakes union action at a warehouse on Staten Island in New York.
About 1,500 workers at the LDJ5 camp are eligible to vote in the election, which is being held in a large white tent outside the facility. Voting began early Monday morning and will continue through Friday. The National Labor Relations Board will begin counting ballots on May 2nd.
The election is taking place directly across from another Amazon store known as JFK8, which surprisingly voted less than a month ago in the company’s first US union. Unlike JFK8, a massive 855,000-square-foot warehouse employing about 6,000 people, LDJ5 is a much smaller facility where employees sort packages for delivery.
The Amazon Labor Union, made up of current and former employees of the company, is calling on Amazon to increase hourly wages to at least $30 an hour for all LDJ5 workers. According to Amazon, the average hourly wage in US fulfillment centers is $18 an hour. Among other things, the union is demanding longer breaks and improved social benefits.
As more unions like ALU have targeted Amazon, Amazon has become more aggressive in preventing employees from becoming members. The company has held mandatory meetings in LDJ5, where employees have to sit through anti-union presentations, and has even hired an influential Democratic pollster to help with its campaign.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin last week that the company believes employees are “better off” not joining a union.
“In a place like Amazon that empowers employees, they can gather in a room when they see something they can do better for customers or for themselves and decide how they can change it,” Jassy said. “That kind of empowerment doesn’t happen when there are unions. It’s a lot more bureaucratic, it’s a lot slower.”
Amazon is trying to overturn the election results at JFK8, arguing in a filing with the NLRB that the federal labor agency and the union acted in a way that skewed the results. A lawyer representing ALU called Amazon’s allegations “manifestly absurd”.
Since the successful election at JFK8, Christian Smalls, president of ALU and a former Amazon worker, said he’s heard from a number of workers at other Amazon warehouses across the US
Union efforts at Amazon have garnered high-profile support in recent weeks. Earlier this month, President Joe Biden supported Amazon workers’ unionization, saying, “Amazon, here we come.”
On Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., joined ALU at a pre-election rally ahead of LDJ5. Sanders shot Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world, in a speech at the rally.
“I say to Jeff Bezos, who owns a $500 million yacht, Jeff, when you’re out on your yacht, I want you to think about the workers in Staten Island and your employees across the country,” Sanders said the audience. “They don’t want a $500 million yacht. You don’t want a $23 million mansion like yours in Washington, DC. They want affordable housing. They want to be able to put a few dollars aside to send their kids to college. They do not want to be exploited and continue this massive turnover that is happening here because of the terrible working conditions.”