Just after forming the first union at an Amazon warehouse in the United States, Amazon’s new union went bankrupt on Monday when it lost the election at another facility, Staten Island.
In a ballot count conducted by the National Labor Council, workers at Amazon’s plant classification, known as LDJ5, eliminated the union by counting 618-380. The Labor Council has not yet confirmed the results for them to officially announce and the union will appeal to them.
The Staten Island Warehouse, known as JFK8, which employs 8,000 people, was the first Amazon facility in the United States to join when workers voted 2654 to 2131 in favor of union formation in late March.
The small LDJ5 facility employs approximately 1,500 people. Given another success for the Amazon Workers ’Union, it could add fuel to one of the most tracked organizational campaigns in generations.
Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said the company is “happy” that workers can “hear their voices.”
“We look forward to continued direct collaboration as we strive to improve our employees every day,” Nantel said.
Seth Goldstein, an attorney who consulted with the Amazon Labor Union, told HuffPost that the union was “weighing our options” because it objected to the election results based on Amazon’s behavior. He will have until May 9 to do so.
Goldstein said the results were not a significant defeat and predicted there would be more elections.
“They will win and they will lose,” he told pro-union workers. “It won’t stop fixing itself”.
Amazon has aggressively fought union efforts in all of its warehouses. The company has distributed managers and External union consultants Hold group meetings and face-to-face talks with workers, encourage them to vote for the union. Last year, the company spent approximately $ 4.3 million on such consultants.
The union accuses Amazon of violating labor law by retaliating and threatening union workers. The NLRB Attorney General found merit in some of the union’s allegations.
The union could appeal against the results on LDJ5, which Amazon says voted illegally. Labor council officials found that Amazon did so in another labor union election in Alabama last year and ordered a vote to be held there in March. The results of these elections are still unclear due to the appeal votes.
Amazon accused the Amazon Labor Union of interfering with JFK8’s vote and called on the Labor Council to postpone the union’s victory there. The Labor Council has not yet investigated Amazon’s statements about this election.
The co-founder of the new Amazon Labor Union is Christian Smalls, a former Amazon employee who was fired from the company after raising safety concerns at the start of the pandemic. Smalls and his organizers formed a strong committee in the JFK8 warehouse Fight Amazon’s anti-union message And encourage pro-union staff.
After counting the votes on Monday, Smalls posted on Twitter and told supporters not to be disappointed with the LDJ5 results. He said organizing was harder than the warehouse where the union won:
Despite today’s result, I am proud of the staff and organizers of LDJ5, they faced a more difficult challenge after our win at JFK8. Our leaders should be very proud to give their employees the right to join the union. @amazonlavoro We will continue to organize and so will all of you
– Christian Smalls (@Shut_downAmazon) May 2, 2022
The electoral victory in JFK8 surprised the union movement, as the Amazon Labor Union did not exist until last year and generally lacked the resources of the consolidated union.
Coupled with the success of the Starbucks organization, the union’s initial success boosted workers ’hopes of reviving the union after decades of declining membership. Currently, only 1 in 10 workers joins the union, a number that doubled in the early 1980s. Connection densities are particularly low in the private sector where Only 6.1% of employees. They are union members.
Source: Huffpost
