Amazon has won a victory in its hard-fought campaign to stop workers at an Alabama warehouse forming the company’s first union, in a tough blow for the US labor movement.
Workers at the Bessemer, Alabama, plant have voted 1,798 to 738 to reject the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Counting concluded on Friday morning, and attention will now focus on some 505 challenged ballots , but the margin of victory was too greatto change the outcome.
The saga is far from over. To start, both Amazon and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which seeks to represent the approximately 5,800 employees at BHM1, have challenged about 500 ballots. According to CNBC, Amazon contested about 300 of those, primarily based on eligibility. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) won’t release the official tally of contested ballots until it completes counting all the votes. Those contested ballots could play a pivotal role in the results as the election should the vote get closer as the NLRB continues the counting process.
There are likely to be legal challenges as well. On Thursday, RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum called on the NLRB to investigate claims that Amazon had pressured the US Postal Service to install a mailbox outside of BHM1. “Amazon has left no stone unturned in its efforts to gaslight its own employees. We won’t let Amazon’s lies, deception and illegal activities go unchallenged, which is why we are formally filing charges against all of the egregious and blatantly illegal actions taken by Amazon during the union vote,” he said in a statement.
Amazon workers outside BHM1 have carried out more informal activism, including during the coronavirus pandemic, when employees claimed that Amazon had failed to reveal COVID-19 cases and provide adequate protective measures. In complaints obtained by news outlets, the NLRB determined that Amazon illegally retaliated against some of these workers. The NLRB also found that Amazon acted illegally in firing two workers who pushed it to address its climate impact.
