Amazon Fighting Union Organizing in Bessemer, AL (11-29-2021, NLRB Orders New Vote)
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Amazon warehouse workers in New York have taken their first formal step toward unionization on Monday.
Organizers from Amazon's Staten Island facilities say they've collected some 2,000 signatures from warehouse workers who say they want a union election.
On Monday, about a dozen activists hand-carried four plastic containers filled with signed cards into a local labor office, petitioning it to authorize a union vote. Outside, supporters chanted pro-union slogans against the backdrop of a giant cutout of Jeff Bezos.
This labor push stands out for being unaffiliated with any national union. It's a product of a self-organized, grassroots worker group called the Amazon Labor Union, financed via GoFundMe. It is run by Chris Smalls, who led a walkout at the start of the pandemic to protest working conditions and was fired the same day.
The group is now pushing to unionize warehouses that employ an estimated 7,000 people and that pack and ship products for the massive New York market. They hope to help workers win longer breaks, better medical and other leave options and higher wages.
"We want better working conditions," Smalls told NPR on Thursday. "We want higher wages, we want longer breaks, we want better medical leave options."
The Staten Island campaign faces an uphill battle as Amazon has for decades successfully fought off labor organizing at its U.S. warehouses. The company is now the second-largest U.S. private employer after Walmart with 950,000 full- and part-time employees as of last month.
So far, the closest an Amazon warehouse has gotten to unionizing was this spring, when workers in Alabama voted on whether to join a retail union and overwhelmingly rejected unionizing. Later, a federal labor official found that Amazon's anti-union campaign tainted that election, and Alabama workers now await a ruling on whether they get a revote.
"Amazon's been around for 27 years, and all these established unions have been around, that have the expertise, the money, the resources," Smalls told NPR. "If it (unionizing) was that simple, it would have been done already, so maybe it's something that's different that needs to be done, and not the traditional way."
Amazon in its latest statement argued that unions were not "the best answer" for workers: "Every day we empower people to find ways to improve their jobs, and when they do that we want to make those changes — quickly. That type of continuous improvement is harder to do quickly and nimbly with unions in the middle."
in March 2020, workers have also filed 10 labor complaints, alleging that Amazon has interfered with their organizing efforts. The National Labor Relations Board says its lawyers have found some merit in three of them and continue to investigate others.
New York's attorney general is also pursuing a legal case over Smalls' firing. Smalls alleges that Amazon fired him as retaliation for his activism. Amazon says he had violated quarantine and safety measures. A top corporate executive also had to apologize after Vice News reported on leaked notes from a meeting with founder Jeff Bezos in which Smalls, who is Black, was described as "not smart, or articulate," prompting accusations of racism.
Since April, Smalls and the Amazon Labor Union have been collecting Staten Island worker signatures in favor of a union vote by holding barbecues, handing out water and coffee as people leave work and setting up fire pits with s'mores.
Smalls says Amazon, for its part, has begun posting anti-union signs around the warehouses and even mounted a fence with barbed wire to restrict the organizers' space. The company did not comment on those allegations.
"I know I'm excited, but also exhausted, so I don't know how to feel right now," Smalls said, as he drove boxes with coveted signatures — "more valuable the money" — to the Brooklyn NRLB office Monday.
Labor rules require organizers to show support from at least 30% of the workers they seek to unionize. The National Labor Relations Board officials will scrutinize eligibility of the collected signatures, among other things.
NPR's Taylor Haney contributed to this report.
Editor's note: Amazon is among NPR's recent financial supporters.
Amazon warehouse workers in New York have taken their first formal step toward unionization on Monday.
Organizers from Amazon's Staten Island facilities say they've collected some 2,000 signatures from warehouse workers who say they want a union election.
On Monday, about a dozen activists hand-carried four plastic containers filled with signed cards into a local labor office, petitioning it to authorize a union vote. Outside, supporters chanted pro-union slogans against the backdrop of a giant cutout of Jeff Bezos.
This labor push stands out for being unaffiliated with any national union. It's a product of a self-organized, grassroots worker group called the Amazon Labor Union, financed via GoFundMe. It is run by Chris Smalls, who led a walkout at the start of the pandemic to protest working conditions and was fired the same day.
The group is now pushing to unionize warehouses that employ an estimated 7,000 people and that pack and ship products for the massive New York market. They hope to help workers win longer breaks, better medical and other leave options and higher wages.
"We want better working conditions," Smalls told NPR on Thursday. "We want higher wages, we want longer breaks, we want better medical leave options."
The Staten Island campaign faces an uphill battle as Amazon has for decades successfully fought off labor organizing at its U.S. warehouses. The company is now the second-largest U.S. private employer after Walmart with 950,000 full- and part-time employees as of last month.
So far, the closest an Amazon warehouse has gotten to unionizing was this spring, when workers in Alabama voted on whether to join a retail union and overwhelmingly rejected unionizing. Later, a federal labor official found that Amazon's anti-union campaign tainted that election, and Alabama workers now await a ruling on whether they get a revote.
"Amazon's been around for 27 years, and all these established unions have been around, that have the expertise, the money, the resources," Smalls told NPR. "If it (unionizing) was that simple, it would have been done already, so maybe it's something that's different that needs to be done, and not the traditional way."
Amazon in its latest statement argued that unions were not "the best answer" for workers: "Every day we empower people to find ways to improve their jobs, and when they do that we want to make those changes — quickly. That type of continuous improvement is harder to do quickly and nimbly with unions in the middle."
in March 2020, workers have also filed 10 labor complaints, alleging that Amazon has interfered with their organizing efforts. The National Labor Relations Board says its lawyers have found some merit in three of them and continue to investigate others.
New York's attorney general is also pursuing a legal case over Smalls' firing. Smalls alleges that Amazon fired him as retaliation for his activism. Amazon says he had violated quarantine and safety measures. A top corporate executive also had to apologize after Vice News reported on leaked notes from a meeting with founder Jeff Bezos in which Smalls, who is Black, was described as "not smart, or articulate," prompting accusations of racism.
Since April, Smalls and the Amazon Labor Union have been collecting Staten Island worker signatures in favor of a union vote by holding barbecues, handing out water and coffee as people leave work and setting up fire pits with s'mores.
Smalls says Amazon, for its part, has begun posting anti-union signs around the warehouses and even mounted a fence with barbed wire to restrict the organizers' space. The company did not comment on those allegations.
"I know I'm excited, but also exhausted, so I don't know how to feel right now," Smalls said, as he drove boxes with coveted signatures — "more valuable the money" — to the Brooklyn NRLB office Monday.
Labor rules require organizers to show support from at least 30% of the workers they seek to unionize. The National Labor Relations Board officials will scrutinize eligibility of the collected signatures, among other things.
NPR's Taylor Haney contributed to this report.
Editor's note: Amazon is among NPR's recent financial supporters.
mastermind
Rest In Power Kobe
NPR Cookie Consent and Choices
Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama are getting a new vote on whether to form the company's first unionized warehouse in the United States.
A U.S. labor-board official is ordering a re-vote after an agency review found Amazon improperly pressured warehouse staff to vote against joining a union, tainting the original election enough to scrap its results. The decision was issued Monday by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board. Amazon is expected to appeal.
The news puts the warehouse in Bessemer, outside Birmingham, back in the spotlight as a harbinger of labor-organizing efforts at Amazon, which is now America's second-largest private employer with over 950,000 employees.
The union drive is being led by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Its president, Stuart Appelbaum hailed today's development:
"Today's decision confirms what we were saying all along – that Amazon's intimidation and interference prevented workers from having a fair say in whether they wanted a union in their workplace."
Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, noted that employees at the warehouse overwhelmingly chose not to the union in the previous vote. "It's disappointing that the NLRB has now decided that those votes shouldn't count. As a company, we don't think unions are the best answer for our employees."
During the first attempt in early 2021 — seen as the most consequential union election in recent history — Bessemer workers
voted more than 2-to-1 against unionizing. It was a stinging defeat for the high-profile push to organize Amazon's U.S. workers, after gaining nationwide support, including from President Biden, other politicians and celebrities.
That vote, tallied in April, was held by mail due to pandemic concerns. More than half the warehouse staff had cast ballots.
The union filed a legal challenge to the election, alleging Amazon engaged in unfair labor practices. Amazon denied the charge. The NLRB held a hearing before the hearing officer last month recommended a do-over of the Bessemer election.
Amazon appealed the recommendation, saying it did not act illegally or intimidate workers and called on the agency and the union to accept the choice of the Bessemer workers. The union maintained that Amazon "cheated (and) got caught."
Unions are a prominent presence at Amazon in Europe, but the company has so far fought off labor-organizing efforts in the United States. The election in Bessemer was the first union vote since 2014. The Teamsters union has passed a resolution that would prioritize its Amazon unionization campaign.
In October, workers from a Staten Island warehouse cluster in New York petitioned federal officials for a union election, but later withdrew the request.
anti-union campaign during the Bessemer election. One warehouse staffer testified that during mandatory meetings at the facility, managers said the fulfillment center could shut down if staff voted to unionize. Other workers said they were told that the union would waste their dues on fancy vacations and cars.
One key controversy had been over a new mailbox in the warehouse's private parking lot that Amazon said was installed by the U.S. Postal Service to make voting "convenient, safe and private." However, the mailbox's placement inside an Amazon tent right by the workplace prompted some employees to wonder whether the company was trying to monitor the vote.
Postal Service official Jay Smith, who works as a liaison for large clients like Amazon, testified that he was surprised to see the corporate-branded tent around the mailbox because the company appeared to have found a way around his explicit instructions to not place anything physically on the mailbox.
But Smith and other Postal Service officials also testified that no one at Amazon has been provided keys to access the outgoing mail or, in this case, election ballots. A pro-union Amazon worker told the hearing that he saw corporate security officers opening the mailbox.
Editor's note: Amazon is among NPR's financial supporters.
Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama are getting a new vote on whether to form the company's first unionized warehouse in the United States.
A U.S. labor-board official is ordering a re-vote after an agency review found Amazon improperly pressured warehouse staff to vote against joining a union, tainting the original election enough to scrap its results. The decision was issued Monday by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board. Amazon is expected to appeal.
The news puts the warehouse in Bessemer, outside Birmingham, back in the spotlight as a harbinger of labor-organizing efforts at Amazon, which is now America's second-largest private employer with over 950,000 employees.
The union drive is being led by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Its president, Stuart Appelbaum hailed today's development:
"Today's decision confirms what we were saying all along – that Amazon's intimidation and interference prevented workers from having a fair say in whether they wanted a union in their workplace."
Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, noted that employees at the warehouse overwhelmingly chose not to the union in the previous vote. "It's disappointing that the NLRB has now decided that those votes shouldn't count. As a company, we don't think unions are the best answer for our employees."
During the first attempt in early 2021 — seen as the most consequential union election in recent history — Bessemer workers
voted more than 2-to-1 against unionizing. It was a stinging defeat for the high-profile push to organize Amazon's U.S. workers, after gaining nationwide support, including from President Biden, other politicians and celebrities.
That vote, tallied in April, was held by mail due to pandemic concerns. More than half the warehouse staff had cast ballots.
The union filed a legal challenge to the election, alleging Amazon engaged in unfair labor practices. Amazon denied the charge. The NLRB held a hearing before the hearing officer last month recommended a do-over of the Bessemer election.
Amazon appealed the recommendation, saying it did not act illegally or intimidate workers and called on the agency and the union to accept the choice of the Bessemer workers. The union maintained that Amazon "cheated (and) got caught."
Unions are a prominent presence at Amazon in Europe, but the company has so far fought off labor-organizing efforts in the United States. The election in Bessemer was the first union vote since 2014. The Teamsters union has passed a resolution that would prioritize its Amazon unionization campaign.
In October, workers from a Staten Island warehouse cluster in New York petitioned federal officials for a union election, but later withdrew the request.
anti-union campaign during the Bessemer election. One warehouse staffer testified that during mandatory meetings at the facility, managers said the fulfillment center could shut down if staff voted to unionize. Other workers said they were told that the union would waste their dues on fancy vacations and cars.
One key controversy had been over a new mailbox in the warehouse's private parking lot that Amazon said was installed by the U.S. Postal Service to make voting "convenient, safe and private." However, the mailbox's placement inside an Amazon tent right by the workplace prompted some employees to wonder whether the company was trying to monitor the vote.
Postal Service official Jay Smith, who works as a liaison for large clients like Amazon, testified that he was surprised to see the corporate-branded tent around the mailbox because the company appeared to have found a way around his explicit instructions to not place anything physically on the mailbox.
But Smith and other Postal Service officials also testified that no one at Amazon has been provided keys to access the outgoing mail or, in this case, election ballots. A pro-union Amazon worker told the hearing that he saw corporate security officers opening the mailbox.
Editor's note: Amazon is among NPR's financial supporters.
Wargames
One Of The Last Real Ones To Do It
Studies show that it’s rare the second vote works if the first one didn’t which is why companies break the rules and cheat to make sure the first vote doesn’t work. This was always a weird and tough win and I don’t see it changing. How many workers signed the card saying they wanted the vote to begin with? That number usually gets cut to half come voting time.
I actually think this whole thing is a false flag to scare union attempts in places where it’s more likely to work like in the Northeast states. That NY attempt to unionize is the one everyone should watch.
I actually think this whole thing is a false flag to scare union attempts in places where it’s more likely to work like in the Northeast states. That NY attempt to unionize is the one everyone should watch.