Federal officials counted ballots for Amazon’s reunification election Thursday at an Alabama warehouse, but initial results were very close.
875 workers voted in the union of retail, wholesale and commercial malls, while 993 voted against. But another 416 ballots were contested by Amazon or the merger and these votes will decide the final result.
Any party can challenge the employee’s right to vote. The National Labor Relations Council is expected to take several weeks to sort out these ballots and eventually.
““It’s a lot of votes on appeal, which is more than the difference between yes and no votes,” Stuart Appelbaum, president of RWDSU, said at a press conference after the count.
Appelbaum noted the union’s recent success with Starbucks and REI, saying that “an important moment is happening right now in our country”.
“Workers are tired of being treated like disposable goods,” he said. “They’re tired of being treated like robots.”
Meanwhile, a separate tally of votes was held in Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse for Thursday’s election. In this case, the union, the new Amazon Labor Union, took the lead after counting down the hours before officials stopped today. Preliminary results will not be known as early as Friday.
The election in Alabama is the second in a year in which workers at a Bessemer facility outside Birmingham decide whether to join a union. The second election happened because Amazon broke the law in the first election, which was held in early 2021.
The union protested the results of this poll based on Amazon’s behavior. Labor Council officials later learned that the company had stopped the voting process and issued a decision. Appelbaum said the union could also protest Amazon’s behavior in the second election.
Amazon works with unions in some countries, but its extensive logistics network in the United States remains union -free. The company now employs approximately 1 million workers In the United States, most of them work in warehouses where they receive, pack and ship orders to customers.
Institutional integration Through elections, the union must collect union cards signed by at least 30% of workers in order to vote and thus win the majority of votes. Unions have not been very successful in recent years, trying to fix large structures like Amazon through traditional elections, where an employer often campaigns against a union.
Amazon has shown its firm determination not to let unions overrun its warehouses by hiring anti-union consultants and flooding workers with anti-union notices. Before the first election, some Amazon consultants were paid $ 3,200 per day to meet with workers and vote against the union.
Source: Huffpost
