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First Amazon labour union in the US: Watch warehouse workers celebrating their victory
The Amazon Labor Union list of demands include immediate changes to health and safety policies, higher pay, more promotions, and better working conditions.
Amazon Labor Union wins election at
Amazon warehouse in New York City
The Amazon Labor Union was declared the winner Friday in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) contest held in Staten Island, New York. The vote covers more than 8,000 Amazon workers at the JFK8 Amazon fulfillment center, the largest warehouse in the city.
JFK8’s workers voted in the ALU with 2,654 “yes” votes to 2,131 “no” votes, or a margin of close to 10 percentage points, in an election which drew out more than half of the warehouse’s eligible voters. Another ALU election is planned for April 25 at the LDJ5 warehouse on Staten Island, which employs roughly 1,600 workers.
The ALU’s victory came a day after results were announced for a similar union election at Amazon held in Bessemer, Alabama. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) is losing the vote at the BHM1 fulfillment center, where it received only 875 “yes” votes to 993 “no” votes. Several hundred contested ballots are currently being litigated, and the result will be announced by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) within the next few weeks.
The highly depressed turnout (only 39 percent) for the Alabama vote came despite glowing media coverage and high-profile political support from Biden and other Democrats. Biden’s NLRB allowed the RWDSU to re-run the election after an initial attempt failed.
The larger turnout at the JFK8 facility may be attributed to the fact that the ALU has promoted itself as an independent union, run by current and former Amazon workers. Christian Smalls, the ALU’s leader, is a former JFK8 worker who was fired in 2020 after he and several co-workers organized a walkout in protest of Amazon’s lackluster COVID-19 protections.
In another difference from the RWDSU campaign, the ALU raised a specific set of demands of the company, including raises to $30 an hour, more vacation days and paid time off as well as an increase in break times during shifts. Numerous investigations have revealed the widespread occurrence of workers injuring themselves in Amazon’s vast warehouses as well as foregoing rest times and bathroom breaks in order to make obscenely high “rates.”
A New York Times investigation of the JFK8 warehouse last year determined that the corporation tracked “every minute of most warehouse workers’ shifts, from how fast they packed merchandise to how long they paused… If productivity flagged, Amazon’s computers assumed the worker was to blame.”
No doubt, many workers voting for the ALU did so out of a desire to improve their conditions and carry out a fight against the corporation and its multi-billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos.
Such a fight, however, requires the mobilization of the working class independently of the corporatist trade unions, which are heavily promoted by sections of the ruling class, particularly the Democratic Party, as critical instruments for the suppression of the class struggle. This requires the development of a network of rank-and-file committees, democratically controlled by the workers themselves.
While the ALU claims to be independent, its orientation is in fact to the trade union apparatus, a section of which sees in such initiatives (at Amazon, Starbucks and other companies) a method to somehow revive support for thoroughly discredited organizations.
Tellingly, Democratic Party-connected media outlets have heaped praise on Smalls and the ALU. As it has throughout the entire Amazon unionization campaign, the Times led the way, declaring the JFK8 vote “a stunning win” and “one of the biggest victories for organized labor in a generation.” The Democratic Socialists of America-aligned Jacobin magazine, which sees as its principal role the strengthening of the trade union apparatus, called it a “David-and-Goliath… fight between the independent union and one of the world’s most powerful companies.”
There are already numerous signs that Smalls and the ALU are open to an approach from the RWDSU or other pro-corporate organizations. Speaking to NPR about the RWDSU, Smalls declared “I hope they’re successful… We know we show our support and solidarity with them.” The RWDSU’s president Stuart Appelbaum, a longtime Democratic Party and state operative, has offered to “support them [the ALU] and not look for anything in return” if “Chris runs out of money.”
During the campaign for unionization at JFK, the ALU borrowed office space from the Unite Here, an organization (with $150 million in assets) that has played a critical role in isolating and defeating the struggles of service workers—and keeping them on the job during the pandemic.
There is no doubt that in the aftermath of its victory at Amazon, the fledgling ALU will have more than just office space offered to it. Mary Kay Henry, the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) quickly offered “whatever support we can” to the ALU.
Why 2 union drives for Amazon workers had such different
outcomes
It’s a historic victory. On Friday, workers at an Amazon (AMZN) Staten Island warehouse voted to unionize, marking the first U.S. union in the e-commerce giant's history.
Where does that leave a pending union vote for Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama? Though 6,153 workers were eligible for that vote, 1,868 valid votes were counted Thursday — 875 voted "yes" to being represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) while 993 voted "no.” It looks like Amazon has come out ahead there so far, though the hundreds of challenged votes, a little north of 400, could swing the election towards the union.
However, in Staten Island, where workers voted to be represented by the emerging Amazon Labor Union, it was a resounding victory. The difference, experts said, is in part a matter of location, location, location.
“Alabama is an anti-union, right-to-work state,” said Patricia Campos-Medina, a Cornell University labor expert. “The level of outside pressure against the union in Alabama is so high, whereas New York is a pro-union state.”
In a right-to-work state, employees are not required to join or pay dues to a union in order to work for a given company.
In 2021, Hawaii and New York were the most unionized states in the country, with membership rates at 22.4% and 22.2% respectively, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report. The figures in Alabama are much lower, at about 6%. To be sure, Alabama’s neighbors in the Deep South are even less union-friendly — South Carolina is the least-unionized state, with membership rates at 1.7%.
Still, the victory in Staten Island could have ramifications for Amazon workers across the country. “It could force Amazon to come up with a new strategy nationwide,” Tamara Lee, a professor at Rutgers University, told Yahoo Finance.
The company released a statement on Friday saying that, while it was disappointed with the outcome in Staten Island, it was exploring next steps. The company also suggested that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had unfairly influenced the vote.
"We’re evaluating our options, including filing objections based on the inappropriate and undue influence by the NLRB that we and others (including the National Retail Federation and U.S. Chamber of Commerce) witnessed in this election," the company said.
The role of race in Bessemer
The Bessemer warehouse’s workers are predominantly Black, making up about 80% of the workforce, according to a study conducted by Lee and Maite Tapia, a labor expert at Michigan State University. Bessemer itself is a predominantly Black suburb of Birmingham, with 72.7% of the population identifying as Black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The study released by Lee and Tapia reveals that workers’ lives at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer are particularly tinted by the South’s deep history of racial injustice and contemporary Black experiences of policing.
“Public records indicate that Amazon engages police on an off-duty basis around the country, but this engagement is significantly more prevalent among fulfillment centers located in the Southern ‘Black belt’ than in other parts of the country,” the report states.
To be sure, we don't have the final results of the Alabama vote yet and likely won't know more for several weeks. Whether the workers in Bessemer ultimately prevail like those in Staten Island, it’s going to be a much closer call. It’s a marked difference from the 2021 Bessemer vote, which was a landslide victory for Amazon. Some experts believe the closeness of the Alabama election is already an achievement, one that will resound even further with the success of Amazon’s Staten Island workers.
“This should be talked about as a victory for Black workers and Black workers in the South,” Tapia said. “That’s not to say that white workers didn’t vote yes, but it is important to highlight the resilience of Black workers who are fighting against strong racist legacies inside and outside the workplace.”
Allie Garfinkle is a senior tech reporter at Yahoo Finance. Find her on twitter @agarfinks.
