Amazon chews through the average worker in eight months. They need a union

Amazon has earned the dubious distinction of replacing Walmart as the nation’s fiercest anti-union employer

‘Amazon seems averse to letting its employees utter a pro-union peep.’

 Photograph: Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images
Fri 4 Feb 2022 11.28 GMT

It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that Amazon warehouse workers would benefit from having a union. The average Amazon warehouse worker leaves within just eight months – that’s an unmistakable sign that Amazon’s jobs are unpleasant, to put it kindly, and that many Amazon workers quickly realize they hate working there because of the stress, breakneck pace, constant monitoring and minimal rest breaks. Indeed, experts on the future of work often voice concern that Amazon’s vaunted algorithms and technologies treat Amazon’s warehouse workers like mindless, unfeeling robots – having them do the same thing hour after hour after hour.

And then there are the endless tales from Amazon warehouse workers that the company is so stingy about break time that they often don’t have enough time to go back and forth to the bathroom without getting demerits for exceeding their allotted daily break time. It’s hard to believe that here in the 21st century, one of the nation’s biggest, most respected companies makes it so hard for many of its workers to pee.

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In this way, working at Amazon resembles working at a poultry processing plant, where workers often wear adult diapers to work because their bosses frequently tell them they can’t take a break right now from cutting all those drumsticks and wings to go to the bathroom.

Amazon workers continue to endure all this pain and strain even though Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and the world’s richest human being, has said he is committed to making Amazon “Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work”. Evidently Bezos fails to realize that any company whose workers leave after eight months on average is light years from being Earth’s Best Employer. As for being Earth’s Safest Place to Work, Bezos shouldn’t insult workers’ or the public’s intelligence by making such a claim, considering the rate of serious injuries at Amazon’s warehouses in 2020 was nearly twice that at other warehouses across the US.

If Amazon were to be the Earth’s Best Employer, then its employees would probably be eager to work there until age 65 or 70, rather than say good riddance after a few months. By the way, the eight-month average that Amazon workers stay is a piddling one-sixth the average job tenure for America’s 155 million workers.

However much Bezos detests unions, there’s one thing Bezos can’t honestly deny –unions would be a surefire way for Amazon to become a better employer. Indeed, if Bezos is serious about making Amazon Earth’s Best and Safest Employer, not only should Amazon stop fighting so hard to block unionization, as it has in Alabama, Staten Island and elsewhere, but it should roll out the red carpet for union organizers. If Amazon workers had a real voice at work, a real voice in shaping and improving Amazon’s working conditions – perhaps in de-stressing and slowing down Amazon’s the-algorithm-uber-alles work routines – Amazon might become a far better place to work, and perhaps take a few steps closer to Bezos’s much-ballyhooed goal of becoming Earth’s Best Employer. (I would settle for Amazon becoming Earth’s Best Warehouse Employer – Best Employer is a laudable goal, but a bridge way too far for Amazon.)

If Amazon workers had an effective union that improves pay and conditions, they might stay for eight years on average instead of eight months. In that way, a union might go far to cure Amazon’s biggest headache: it chews through so many employees so fast that it is always desperate to hire new workers – more than 500,000 new hires some years (before quickly chewing through those new ones and spitting them out). Deep down, Amazon executives must be terrified that at some point, so many millions of Americans will have gone through and been chewed up by the Amazon push-it-to-the-max, stress machine, that Amazon simply won’t be able to find enough workers to keep all its warehouses operating – unless, perhaps, it raises its starting pay to $25 or $30 an hour.

Some labor experts see an anti-union method to Amazon’s stress-o-matic madness: that it intentionally wants its workers to stay only a short time because its workers will then conclude that they won’t be there long enough to make it worthwhile to fight for a union. Besides, with such enormous employee turnover and with so many workers staying for such a short time, that makes it immensely hard for union organizers and union-supporting workers to explain to all of a warehouse’s workers how they would benefit from having a union.

Making it even harder to unionize Amazon is the company’s apparent willingness to violate labor laws

To say that unionizing Amazon is an uphill battle is an understatement. It’s one thing to unionize a Starbucks cafe with 30 baristas – and that’s quite hard, considering how aggressively anti-union Starbucks is. But it’s a whole different level of difficulty to unionize a warehouse with 5,000, especially when Amazon pumps out anti-union propaganda to its workers 24/7, while it prohibits union organizers from setting foot on company property.

Making it even harder to unionize Amazon is the company’s apparent willingness to violate labor laws. Fed up with Amazon’s numerous alleged labor law violations at its warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, the National Labor Relations Board pressured Amazon into reaching a settlement in December in which the company promised to comply with federal laws that protect workers’ right to unionize.

But just a month after that settlement, the NLRB again accused Amazon of serious labor law violations, this time at its Staten Island warehouse. In a complaint issued on 27 January, the NLRB said that one of Amazon top anti-union consultants, Bradley Moss, had called union organizers “thugs”, a word that some see as racially insensitive considering that most of the organizers in Staten Island are Black. The NLRB also said Moss had told workers it would be “futile” to vote for a union because a union would “never happen here”. The NLRB said Amazon committed other illegalities; confiscating pro-union literature, preventing workers from distributing flyers in break rooms and telling workers they couldn’t distribute union literature without Amazon’s permission. Amazon denies the NLRB’s allegations. While Amazon pushes its anti-union message to the max – remember the anti-union posters it put in its toilet stalls – Amazon seems averse to letting its employees utter a pro-union peep.

Amazon has earned the dubious distinction of replacing Walmart as the nation’s fiercest anti-union employer. This week, more than 6,000 workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer are getting a second chance to vote on whether to have a union; the NLRB ordered a new election after asserting that Amazon’s illegalities prevented a fair, first union vote there.

The bottom line here: not only would unionizing Amazon make it a better place to work – something Bezos says he badly wants – but a successful unionization vote at Amazon would be a huge, hopeful signal to embattled workers across the US that even at a fiercely anti-union corporation like Amazon, workers can indeed choose to have a union as a surefire way to improve their jobs and their lives.


Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace. He is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and the author of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor

V FOR VICTORY

Amazon workers at New York warehouse vote to form company's first US union


By Sara Ashley O'Brien, 

CNN Business
April 1, 2022

(CNN Business)Amazon (AMZN) warehouse workers at a facility in New York City have voted to form the first US union in the tech giant's 27-year history, marking a stunning victory for a bootstrapped effort led by a fired employee.

In a closely watched election, workers at a Staten Island, New York, facility known as JFK8 voted in favor of forming a union with a newly-established organization called Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which was started by current and former warehouse employees.

There were 2,654 votes in favor of unionizing and 2,131 votes against it by the end of the second and final day of public vote counting on Friday. Out of approximately 8,325 eligible voters, 4,785 votes were counted and another 67 were challenged. Seventeen ballots were voided.

The parties have five business days to file any objections.

Amazon union vote in Alabama is too close to call

In a statement after the vote, Amazon indicated that it is exploring various legal channels to fight the results. "We're disappointed with the outcome of the election in Staten Island because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees," Amazon said in the statement. "We're evaluating our options."

The staggering result could prove to be a milestone moment for Amazon and the broader labor movement in the United States. The union vote has the potential to upend how Amazon, the country's second largest private employer, engages with some members of its vast workforce. It could also add fuel to organizing both within the company's own sprawling empire, where some efforts are already underway such as at an Amazon Fresh store in Seattle, as well as at other companies across the country.

The outcome was hailed by advocacy groups, large labor unions and the White House, with press secretary Jen Psaki telling reporters Friday that President Joe Biden was "glad to see workers ensure that their voices were heard." John Logan, professor of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, called the ALU win a "jaw-dropping result." He added: "There really is no bigger prize for unions than winning at Amazon."

Shortly after the tally was complete, Christian Smalls, the president of ALU who is largely the face of the organization, joined a crowd of other ALU organizers and members of other labor groups that had gathered in downtown Brooklyn to celebrate the win. Sipping from a bottle of champagne and wearing pants emblazoned with the brand name "Billionaire Boys Club," Smalls gave a brief history of his contentious relationship with the company.

"Two years ago, my life changed forever," said Smalls, who was fired from his job at the facility in March 2020 after leading a walkout to protest pandemic related health and safety concerns. (Smalls says he was retaliated against; Amazon says he was terminated for violating its policy that required him to quarantine after being notified of a possible Covid-19 exposure.) "I only wanted to do the right thing and speak up for workers behind me," he said

In his speech, he also mentioned a widely reported suggestion by an Amazon executive in 2020 to disparage Smalls as "not smart or articulate." At the time, the executive said his comments were "personal and emotional," and that he'd allowed his emotions to "get the better of me."

"It's not about me. Amazon tried to make it about me from day one," Smalls said. "It's always going to be Amazon versus the people and today, the people said they wanted a union."

At the gathering, some handed out fliers that read, "Vote Yes For The Union. Despite what Amazon tells you, the union isn't some outside organization. It's a legal recognition of our right to have a say at work — as a group instead." Members of another pro-labor group held a large sign that read: "Amazon and Starbucks: Stop Union Busting! Recognize the union and negotiate now!"

The results of a separate do-over election at a facility in Bessemer, Alabama were too close to call. A total of 875 workers at the facility voted for joining a union and 993 voted against it, according to the tally, which was also conducted on Thursday. But another 416 ballots were challenged. The National Labor Relations Board expects to hold a hearing on the matter in the next few weeks to determine whether any of the challenged ballots will be opened and counted.

A bootstrapped push succeeds while an established union stumbled

Both union efforts were borne out of worker frustrations with Amazon's treatment of workers amid the pandemic and were also motivated in part by increased national attention to racial justice issues and labor rights. But there are key differences between the two.

The Alabama effort was done in coordination with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), an 85-year-old labor union, which has organized tens of thousands of workers. By contrast, the Staten Island push is not aligned with an existing labor union but rather is trying to create its own.

A demonstrator during the vote count to unionize Amazon workers outside the National Labor Relations Board offices in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., on Friday, April 1, 2022.

Smalls previously told CNN Business that ALU is running on "pennies compared to other campaigns," garnering $100,000 in donations raised through pages on GoFundMe, a crowdfunding platform.

He has sought to differentiate his organizing effort from the one in Bessemer, stating that having an independent union led by current and former employees of the facility "was working and resonated with the workers." (ALU has also garnered enough signatures for an NLRB election at a nearby Amazon facility in Staten Island later this month.)

The two union pushes are also unfolding in two very different parts of the country. The RWDSU drive occurred in Alabama, a right-to-work state, where union membership is low. New York, on the other hand, has the second highest union membership in the nation. Amazon's starting wage for workers of at least $15 an hour also fares differently in Alabama where the minimum wage is $7.25, compared to New York City's $15.

"They're enormously important elections. [Amazon] is a company that is not just retail, it is not just logistics, it cuts across almost every sector of the economy," Logan said.

"I think lots of pro-union Amazon workers will take inspiration from this. There's nothing exceptional about Staten Island to suggest that you can win at Amazon there but not somewhere else," Logan said, "All of a sudden, organizing at Amazon no longer seems futile."

Logan credits the initial RWDSU Bessemer drive one year ago, which was celebrated by a number of celebrities and politicians alike, with broadly creating "energy and enthusiasm amongst young people interested in organizing themselves." While the results of that election favored Amazon, a do-over was called for after the company was deemed to have illegally interfered. (An Amazon spokesperson called the decision "disappointing" at the time.)

Labor experts have repeatedly said that organizing Amazon workers is an incredibly difficult task given current labor law and the company's opposition to such efforts. Amazon's anti-union campaigns included signage inside its warehouses, text messages, and meetings that workers were required to attend before the election periods kicked off.

"In both cases, it's a David and Goliath situation. They're up against a very powerful, determined opponent," Ruth Milkman, a labor sociologist at City University of New York, previously told CNN Business. "In both cases, it's a very heavy lift because of Amazon's resources and determination to stamp out any unionization efforts."

Amazon has previously said its "employees have always had the choice of whether or not to join a union" and that it is focused on "working directly with our team to make Amazon a great place to work."

For more on the biggest and most important technology companies of our time, watch Land of the Giants: Titans of Tech on CNN+. This exclusive new series investigates the complicated history and meteoric rise of Meta (formerly Facebook), Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google.

Catherine Thorbecke and Clare Duffy contributed to this report

Amazon Union Scores Unexpected Win in New York Election, a First in the US

In a six-day election, warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York, voted to join the Amazon Labor Union.


Laura Hautala

CNET  
April 1, 2022

Amazon Labor Union organizer Chris Smalls at an Amazon facility in Staten Island, New York. The union became the first to win an election at a US Amazon facility on Friday.

Getty Images

In a first for the Amazon's US facilities, warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York, have voted in favor of joining a union. The union's win, if certified by the federal labor board, adds momentum to an organizing movement that's been gaining steam around the country.

The tally of 2,654 yes votes to 2,131 no votes came after six days of in-person voting at the warehouse and an intense campaign. In the leadup to the vote, the union filed complaints to the National Labor Relations Board alleging that Amazon engaged in unfair labor practices.

The Amazon Labor Union, a new group that was formed by current and former Amazon workers, emerged from workers' efforts to demand better COVID-19 protections in 2020. The group eventually began an organizing bid after some workers involved in planning walkouts were disciplined or fired. That included fired worker Chris Smalls, who caught the attention of Amazon's top leadership. In a memo that was later leaked, Amazon's general counsel, David Zapolsky, said the company should try to make him the face of the movement because he's "not smart or articulate."

In a tweet Friday, Smalls said Amazon got what it hoped for. "Amazon wanted to make me the face of the whole unionizing efforts against them.... welp there you go!" he wrote, addressing the comments to Zapolsky and Jeff Bezos.

Separately, a vote on unionization at an Amazon facility in Alabama failed on Thursday, though the result could be affected when hundreds of challenged ballots are resolved.

Amazon said in a statement that it's disappointed with the results of the Staten Island vote: "We believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees."

The statement went on to say that Amazon would evaluate its options for filing objections to the election based on "inappropriate and undue influence by the NLRB." Amazon didn't respond to a follow-up question from CNET about what that alleged influence involved.

"The NLRB is an independent federal agency that Congress has charged with enforcing the National Labor Relations Act," said NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado in a statement. "All NLRB enforcement actions against Amazon have been consistent with that Congressional mandate."

At a briefing with reporters, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said President Joe Biden "was glad to see workers ensure their voices are heard with respect to important workplace decisions." She added, "He believes that every worker in every state must have a free and fair choice to join a union and the right to bargain collectively with their employer."

The Staten Island victory defied predictions of labor experts, who noted before the election that the union only secured support from 30% of workers when they formally requested a union election. Amazon expressed skepticism that the workers' group had even achieved that benchmark but agreed to move ahead with the election. ALU also won in the face of Amazon's extensive campaign urging workers to vote no, including mandatory meetings with consultants describing downsides to unions and messages sent to phones and posted around work spaces.

"It's very, very difficult to win in any circumstances, and especially against an employer with unlimited resources," said Rebecca Givan, an associate professor of labor relations at Rutgers University.

A new union strategy

Connor Spence, vice president of membership at ALU, said turning in signatures from just over 30% of workers was a strategic move. By the time organizers got 50% of signatures, many of the people who signed on would likely have stopped working at the facility because turnover is so high. Instead, the union's team of about 20 core organizers worked to file for an election as quickly as possible and focus on the existing group of workers while they were still employed at the warehouse.

"That's the only strategy that will work at Amazon," Spence said, adding it was especially true for a union with limited resources.

A single unionized warehouse is unlikely to have an effect on customer experience or Amazon's bottom line. Still, it could inspire further organizing, said Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at Forrester, which is one reason for Amazon's aggressive approach.

"It's been something that Amazon has been advocating against for a long time," she said.

The company is also facing higher labor and logistics costs at a time of rising wages, after having spent the pandemic growing its capacities with new facilities that need staffing.

Amazon has said it thinks unions will get in the way of communication between managers and workers, slowing things down. The company spent $4.3 million on anti-union consultants in 2021, according to a report Thursday from HuffPost. It's not known how much the company has spent so far this year fighting organizing drives at Staten Island as well as in Bessemer, Alabama, where a separate union drive culminated in a vote that was also counted Thursday.

In the Alabama election, workers voted not to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. However, the results can't be finalized until more than 400 challenged ballots are resolved.

ALU secured an early lead when counting began Thursday at the NLRB office in Brooklyn, New York, widening to more than 300 votes by the end of the day. Counting resumed Friday morning. A separate warehouse in Staten Island has also petitioned for a union vote.

Spence, ALU's vice president of membership, said the union is still getting used to the feeling of victory.

Still, he said, "Failure was never an option."

First published on April 1, 2022 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out after Amazon workers win historic first union vote
Jon Skolnik, Salon
April 01, 2022

Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez speak about the importance of a Green New Deal at a town hall organized by the Sunrise Movement.

(Rachael Warriner / Shutterstock.com)

Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, R-N.Y., is in hot water for promoting an employee-led organizing effort at Amazon after critics noted that she backed out of a speaking engagement with those same employees during a union rally last summer.



The spat played out over Twitter on Thursday, when the Amazon Labor Union, which recently held a successful union vote at an Amazon facility in New York City's Staten Island, revealed that it was winning by 400-vote margin.


About an hour later, Ocasio-Cortez expressed solidarity with the union. But that comment did not sit well with some leftist commentators, including most notably, Krystal Ball, a host of the "Breaking Points" podcast.



"Here's the guy who organized the union drive talking about how you left them high and dry," Ball responded, tweeting a video of her interview with Amazon labor organizer Christian Smalls. "These are your constituents and you couldn't be bothered to show up until they're on the cusp of victory."

For his part, Smalls also piled on Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of Queens and the Bronx.

"So what exactly is the insinuation here?" the progressive lawmaker shot back. "That we are secretly in the tank for Amazon? That we're 'sellouts' despite leading congressional investigations into Amazon, taking huge blowback to call out the scam HQ2 deal, meeting with workers in our district warehouses? It's reaching."


RELATED: Biden just backed a union drive in Alabama but didn't mention Amazon. Here's why that's a good thing

The exchange appears to stem from an incident last August when Ocasio-Cortez was slated to appear for a speech at a rally held by the Amazon Labor Union. Before the event, however, the progressive lawmaker unexpectedly canceled her appearance over "scheduling conflicts" and "security concerns."

"Security was an issue as well. 2021 included a lot of high level threats on my life, which limited what activities I was able to do, especially those outside," as Ocasio-Cortez explained over Twitter. "The combination of that + when we are able to get resources/time to secure them creates scheduling + logistical conflicts."


On Friday, the Amazon Labor Union in Staten Island officially voted to unionize, marking one of the biggest labor victories in modern American history. According to the National Labor Relations Board, the union vote won by more than 10 percentage points with 2,654 votes for the Amazon Labor Union and 2,131 against. The Staten Island facility, which employs roughly 6,000 workers, is now the first Amazon facility in the company's history to join a union.

During the leadup to the union drive, Amazon aggressively fought to stamp out the organizing effort, posting anti-union signage in its facility, holding mandatory weekly meetings about the alleged ills of unionization, and hiring a Democratic consultancy to advise them on various union avoidance tactics.

RELATED: Amazon election: Why union votes are so tough for labor to win


The Amazon Labor Union was led by Smalls, a former Stand Island Amazon worker who alleges he was fired back in 2020 for organizing protests against the company's non-observance of social distancing amid the spread of COVID-19.

"I say what I say and that's what got me here," Smalls told Bloomberg before the election. "The same thing with the union: It represents what the workers want to say."



On Friday, the House of Representatives opened a federal probe into Amazon's unfair labor practices. Leaders of the inquiry, which includes Ocasio-Cortez, have demanded that the company hand over documents related to its labor policies and procedures, particularly when it comes to severe weather events like the Illinois tornado that ripped through an Amazon warehouse back in January, killing six workers who were told to stay despite fearing for their safety. She also joined Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., in a letter to Amazon demanding more information about its worker safety protocols.

CAPITALIST CRIES CROCODILE TEARS

 'Dreadful!' CNBC's Jim Cramer bitterly complains about historic union win at Amazon warehouse
Brad Reed
April 01, 2022

Jim Cramer (CNBC/screen grab)


CNBC host Jim Cramer does not appear enthused about the historic win for organized labor that occurred on Friday when an Amazon warehouse in State Island voted to unionize.

While discussing the victory on CNBC, Cramer complained that Amazon will no longer be allowed to order their workers at the State Island warehouse to show up whenever they're needed.

"If you can't tell your employees when they work, then you're really not able to have much of an ability to move product," he said. “The unions will be in charge of time that you need to work, and that would be dreadful!"

Cramer did acknowledge unions do exist in other companies and that those companies are still profitable, but he then pivoted back to griping about unions being able to set schedules for workers.

"No one wants to work certain shifts," he said. "So you can just say, 'Listen I'm not going to work that shift.' And Amazon would not be able to say, 'Yes you must work it!' So that's what's at stake with unions."

Cramer also added that "one reason why Amazon works so well is that people must work when Amazon says you must work."

Watch the video below.

How Amazon Crushes Unions

In a secret settlement in Virginia, Amazon swore off threatening and intimidating workers. As the company confronts increased labor unrest, its tactics are under scrutiny.

 

Amazon’s warehouse in Chester, Va., where a union effort tried to organize about 30 facilities technicians in 2014 and 2015.Credit...Carlos Bernate for The New York Times

By David Streitfeld

NYT
March 16, 2021

RICHMOND, Va. — Five years ago, Amazon was compelled to post a “notice to employees” on the break-room walls of a warehouse in east-central Virginia.

The notice was printed simply, in just two colors, and crammed with words. But for any worker who bothered to look closely, it was a remarkable declaration. Amazon listed 22 forms of behavior it said it would disavow, each beginning in capital letters: “WE WILL NOT.”

“We will not threaten you with the loss of your job” if you are a union supporter, Amazon wrote, according to a photo of the notice reviewed by The New York Times. “We will not interrogate you” about the union or “engage in surveillance of you” while you participate in union activities. “We will not threaten you with unspecified reprisals” because you are a union supporter. We will not threaten to “get” union supporters.

Amazon posted the list after the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers accused it of doing those very things during a two-year-long push to unionize 30 facilities technicians at the warehouse in Chester, just south of Richmond. While Amazon did not admit to violations of labor laws, the company promised in a settlement with federal regulators to tell workers that it would rigorously obey the rules in the future.

The employee notice and failed union effort, which have not previously been reported, are suddenly relevant as Amazon confronts increasing labor unrest in the United States. Over two decades, as the internet retailer mushroomed from a virtual bookstore into a $1.5 trillion behemoth, it forcefully — and successfully — resisted employee efforts to organize. Some workers in recent years agitated for change in Staten Island, Chicago, Sacramento and Minnesota, but the impact was negligible.

Bill Hough Jr., a machinist at the Chester warehouse who led the union drive. Amazon fired him in 2016.Credit...Carlos Bernate for The New York Times

In an employee notice, Amazon listed behavior it said it would disavow.


The arrival of the coronavirus last year changed that. It turned Amazon into an essential resource for millions stuck at home and redefined the company’s relationship with its warehouse workers. Like many service industry employees, they were vulnerable to the virus. As society locked down, they were also less able to simply move on if they had issues with the job.

Now Amazon faces a union vote at a warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. — the largest and most viable U.S. labor challenge in its history. Nearly 6,000 workers have until March 29 to decide whether to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. A labor victory could energize workers in other U.S. communities, where Amazon has more than 800 warehouses employing more than 500,000 people.

“This is happening in the toughest state, with the toughest company, at the toughest moment,” said Janice Fine, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. “If the union can prevail given those three facts, it will send a message that Amazon is organizable everywhere.”

Even if the union does not prevail, “the history of unions is always about failing forward,” she said. “Workers trying, workers losing, workers trying again.”

The effort in Chester, which The Times reconstructed with documents from regulators and the machinists’ union, as well as interviews with former facilities technicians at the warehouse and union officials, offers one of the fullest pictures of what encourages Amazon workers to open the door to a union — and what techniques the company uses to slam the door and nail it shut.

The employee notice was a hollow victory for workers. The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that negotiated the settlement with Amazon, has no power to impose monetary penalties. Its enforcement remedies are few and weak, which means its ability to restrain anti-union employers from breaking the law is limited. The settlement was not publicized, so there were not even any public relations benefits.

Amazon was the real winner. There have been no further attempts at a union in Chester.

The tactics that Amazon used in Chester are surfacing elsewhere. The retail workers union said Amazon was trying to surveil employees in Bessemer and even changed a traffic signal to prevent organizers from approaching warehouse workers as they left the site. Last month, the New York attorney general said in a lawsuit that Amazon had retaliated against employees who tried to protest its pandemic safety measures as inadequate.

Amazon declined to say whether it had complied with labor laws during the union drive in Chester in 2014 and 2015. In a statement, it said it was “compliant with the National Labor Relations Act in 2016” when it issued the employee notice, and “we continue to be compliant today.” It added in a different statement that it didn’t believe the union push in Alabama “represents the majority of our employees’ views.”

The labor board declined to comment.

The Chester settlement notice mentions one worker by name: Bill Hough Jr., a machinist who led the union drive. The notice said Amazon had issued a warning to Mr. Hough that he was on the verge of being fired. Amazon said it would rescind the warning.

Six months later, in August 2016, Amazon fired him anyway.

Mr. Hough (pronounced Huff) was in a hospital having knee surgery when Amazon called and said he had used up his medical leave. Since he couldn’t do his job, he said he was told, this was the end of the line.

“There was no mercy, even after what they had done to me,” Mr. Hough, now 56, said. “That’s Amazon. If you can’t give 110 percent, you’re done.”

Amazon declined to comment on Mr. Hough.

No Constraints

A truck at the warehouse in Chester. Amazon has been fending off attempts to unionize since at least 1999. Credit...Carlos Bernate for The New York Times

Amazon was founded on notions of speed, efficiency and hard work — lots of hard work. Placing his first help wanted ad in 1994, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, said he wanted engineers who could do their job “in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible.”

Amazon managers openly warned recruits that if they liked things comfortable, this would be a difficult, perhaps impossible, job. For customer service representatives, it was difficult to keep up, according to media accounts and labor organizers. Overtime was mandatory. Supervisors sent emails with subject headings like “YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD.”

In 1999, the reps, who numbered about 400, were targeted by a grass-roots group affiliated with the Communications Workers of America. Amazon mounted an all-out defense.

If workers became anything less than docile, managers were told, it was a sign there could be union activity. Tipoffs included “hushed conversations” and “small group huddles breaking up in silence on the approach of the supervisor,” as well as increased complaints, growing aggressiveness and dawdling in the bathroom.

Amazon was in sync with the larger culture. Unions were considered relics of the industrial past. Disruption was a virtue.

“Twenty years ago, if you asked whether the government or workers should be able to put any constraints on companies, the answer always was ‘No constraints,’” said Marcus Courtney, a labor organizer on the 1999 Amazon campaign. “If companies wanted to push people 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, hats off to them.”

When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Amazon lost some of its glow. For a time, its very existence was in question.

This caused problems for the activists as well. The company reorganized and closed the customer service center, though Amazon said there was no connection with the union drive. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the Prewitt Organizing Fund, an independent group, made no inroads organizing Amazon’s 5,000 warehouse workers.

A decade later, in 2011, came a low point in Amazon’s labor history. The Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, Pa., revealed that Amazon was hiring paramedics and ambulances during summer heat waves at a local warehouse. Workers who collapsed were removed with stretchers and wheelchairs and taken to hospitals.

Amazon installed air conditioning but otherwise was undaunted. After the Great Recession in 2008, there was no lack of demand for its jobs — and no united protest about working conditions. In Europe, where unions are stronger, there were sporadic strikes. In the United States, isolated warehouse walkouts drew no more than a handful of workers.

The Machinist

Mr. Hough said he had felt pressured to cut corners to keep conveyor belts running.Credit...Ruth Fremson for The New York Times


Mr. Hough worked as an industrial machinist at a Reynolds aluminum mill in Richmond for 24 years. He once saw a worker lose four fingers when a steel roller fell unexpectedly. Incidents like that made a deep impression on him: Never approach equipment casually.

Reynolds closed the plant in the Great Recession, when Mr. Hough was in his mid-40s. Being in the machinists guild cushioned the blow, but he needed another job. After a long spell of unemployment, he joined Amazon in 2013.

The Chester warehouse, the size of several aircraft carriers, had opened a year earlier, part of Amazon’s multibillion-dollar push to put fulfillment centers everywhere. Mr. Hough worked on the conveyor belts bringing in the goods.

At first, he received generally good marks. “He has a great attitude and does not participate in negative comments or situations,” Amazon said in a March 2014 performance review. “He gets along with all the other technicians.”

But Mr. Hough said he had felt pressured to cut corners to keep the belts running. Amazon prided itself on getting purchases to customers quickly, and when conveyor belts were down that mission was in jeopardy. He once protested restarting a belt while he was still working on it.

“Quit your bitching,” Mr. Hough said his manager, Bryon Frye, had told him, twice.

“That sent me down the wrong road,” Mr. Hough said.

Bryon Frye’s tweet about Amazon union campaigns.Credit...Twitter

Mr. Frye, who declined to comment, no longer works for Amazon. On Twitter last month, he responded to a news story that said Amazon was hiring former F.B.I. agents to deal with worker activism, counterfeiting and antitrust issues.

“This doesn’t shock me,” he wrote. “They do some wild things.”

The Union Drive


Members of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union distributed literature outside the Alabama warehouse where Amazon workers are voting on whether to join the union.Credit...Bob Miller for The New York Times


In 2014, Mr. Hough and five other technicians approached the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. A unionization effort was already taking place with the technicians at an Amazon warehouse in Middletown, Del. If either succeeded, it would be the first for Amazon.

The elections for a union would be conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. The first step was to measure interest. At least 18 of the 30 technicians in Chester returned cards indicating their willingness to be represented by the union.

“It was not too difficult to sign people up,” said Russell Wade, a union organizer there. “But once the word leaked out to Amazon, they put the afterburners on, as employers do. Then the workers started losing interest. Amazon spent oodles of money to scare the hell out of employees.”

The board scheduled an election for March 4, 2015. A simple majority of votes cast would establish union representation.

Amazon brought in an Employee Resource Center team — basically, its human resources department — to reverse any momentum. A former technician at the warehouse, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, said the reps on the team followed workers around, pretending to be friendly but only seeking to know their position on the union drive.

If safety was the biggest issue for the technicians, there were also concerns over pay equity — machinists said they were paid different amounts for doing the same job — and about their lack of control over their fate. Part of Mr. Hough’s pitch was that a union would make management less arbitrary.

“One guy, all I remember is his name was Bob,” he said. “They paged Bob to the control room, and the next thing I saw was Bob coming down the steps. He had taken off his work vest. I said, ‘Bob, where are you going?’ He said, ‘They terminated me.’ I didn’t ask why. That’s the way it was.”

Several technicians said they recalled being told at a meeting, “You vote for a union, every one of you will be looking for a job tomorrow.” At another, the most outspoken union supporters were described as “a cancer and a disease to Amazon and the facility,” according to Mr. Hough and a union memo. (In a filing to the labor board, Amazon said it had investigated the incident and “concluded that it could not be substantiated.”)

Mr. Hough, a cancer survivor, said the reference had offended him. He declined to attend another meeting run by that manager. He said he had known in any case what she was going to say: that the union was canceling the election because it thought it would lose. Amazon had triumphed.

On March 30, 2015, Mr. Hough received a written warning from Mr. Frye, his manager.

“Your behavior has been called out by peers/leaders as having a negative impact,” it said. Included under “insubordination” was a refusal to attend the Amazon victory announcement. Another incident, Amazon said, could result in termination.

The machinists union filed a complaint with the labor board in July 2015 alleging unfair labor practices by Amazon, including surveilling, threatening and “informing employees that it would be futile to vote for union representation.” Mr. Hough spent eight hours that summer giving his testimony. While labor activists and unions generally consider the board to be heavily tilted in favor of employers, union officials said a formal protest would at least show Chester technicians that someone was fighting for them.

In early 2016, Amazon settled with the board. The main thrust of the two-page settlement was that Amazon would post an employee notice promising good behavior while admitting nothing.

Wilma Liebman, a member of the labor board from 1997 to 2011, examined the employee notice at the request of The Times. “What is unusual to my eye is how extensive Amazon’s pledges were, and how specific,” she said. “While the company did not have to admit guilt, this list offers a picture of what likely was going on.”

Amazon was required to post the notice “in all places where notices to employees are customarily posted” in Chester for 60 days, the labor board said.

From the machinists union’s point of view, it wasn’t much of a punishment.

“This posting was basically a slap on the wrist for the violations that Amazon committed, which included lies, coercion, threats and intimidation,” said Vinny Addeo, the union’s director of organizing.

Another reason for filing an unfair labor practices claim was that the union hoped to restart its efforts with a potentially chastened company. But most of the employees who supported the Chester drive quit.

“They were intimidated,” Mr. Wade, the union organizer, said.

Mr. Hough was beset by ill health during his years at Amazon. Radiation treatment for his cancer prompted several strokes. His wife, Susan, had health problems, too. Mr. Hough said he wondered how much the unionization struggle contributed to their problems. He added that he didn’t know whom to trust.

After leaving Amazon, Mr. Hough began driving trucks, at first long haul and later a dump truck. It paid less, but he said he was at peace.
Maximum Green Times

Nearly 6,000 workers in Bessemer have until March 29 to decide whether to join the union.Credit...Wes Frazer for The New York Times

When Amazon vanquished the 2014 union drive in Delaware, the retailer said it was a victory for “open lines of direct communication between managers and associates.”

One place Amazon developed that direct communication was in its warehouse bathrooms under what it called its “inSTALLments” program. The inSTALLments were informational sheets that offered, for instance, factoids about Mr. Bezos, the timing of meetings and random warnings, such as this one about unpaid time off: “If you go negative, your employment status will be reviewed for termination.”

Amazon’s “inSTALLments” program used postings in warehouse bathrooms to communicate with workers.Credit...The New York Times

As the union drive heated up in Bessemer, the direct communication naturally was about that. “Where will your dues go?” Amazon asked in one stall posting, which circulated on social media. Another proclaimed: “Unions can’t. We can.”

Amazon also set up a website to tell workers that they would have to skip dinner and school supplies to pay their union dues.

In December, a pro-union group discovered, Amazon asked county officials to increase “maximum green times” on the warehouse stoplight to clear the parking lot faster. This made it difficult for union canvassers to approach potential voters as they left work. Amazon declined to comment.

Last month, President Biden weighed in.

“There should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda,” he said in a video that never mentioned Amazon but referred to “workers in Alabama” deciding whether to organize a union. “You know, every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union. The law guarantees that choice.”

Workers in Alabama – and all across America – are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace. It’s a vitally important choice – one that should be made without intimidation or threats by employers.

Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union. pic.twitter.com/2lzbyyii1g— President Biden (@POTUS) March 1, 2021

Owning 25 Hats

Mr. Hough, in an interview before the pandemic, said part of him wanted to forget what had happened at Amazon. Why dwell on defeat? He threw away all the papers from the union drive. He never saw the employee notice because he was recovering from a stroke.

But he has not forgiven the retailer.

“You’re only going to step on me one time,” he said, sitting in his home in the outskirts of Richmond.

Amazon’s customers just don’t know how miserable a job there can be, he suggested.

“I guarantee you, if their child had to work there, they’d think twice before purchasing things,” he said.

Ms. Hough, sitting next to him, had a bleaker view.

“The customers don’t care about unions. They don’t care about the workers. They just want their packages,” she said.

As if on cue, their son, Brody, came in. He was 20, an appliance technician. His mother told him there was a package for him on his bed. It was from Amazon, a fishing hat. It cost $25, Brody said, half the price on the manufacturer’s website.

“I order from Amazon anything I can find that is cheaper,” Brody said. That adds up to a lot of hats, about 25. “I’ve never worked for Amazon. I can’t hate them,” he said.

Ms. Hough looked at her husband. “If your own son doesn’t care,” she asked, not unkindly, “how are you going to get the American public to care?”

The pandemic helped change that, bringing safety issues at Amazon to the forefront. In a Feb. 16 suit against Amazon, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, said the company continued last year to track and discipline employees based on their productivity rates. That meant workers had limited time to protect themselves from the virus. The suit said Amazon retaliated against those who complained, sending a “chilling message” to all its workers. Amazon has denied the allegations.

Last week, regional Canadian authorities also ordered thousands of workers at an Amazon warehouse near Toronto to quarantine themselves, effectively closing the facility. Some 240 workers recently tested positive for the virus there, a government spokeswoman said, even as the rate of infection in the area fell. Amazon said it was appealing the decision.

Alabama is now the big test. Mr. Hough worries the union supporters will be crushed.

“They will fall to threats or think, ‘I won’t have a job, Amazon will replace me,’” he said by phone this month. “When a company can do things to you in secret, it’s real hard to withstand.”

Still, he added, “I’m hoping for the best. More power to them.”

Amazon and Workers

Amazon Workers’ Union Drive Reaches Far Beyond Alabama

March 2, 2021

Amazon’s Great Labor Awakening

Feb. 18, 2021

Amazon Union Drive Takes Hold in Unlikely Place

Jan. 25, 2021

Pushed by Pandemic, Amazon Goes on a Hiring Spree Without Equal

Nov. 27, 2020

David Streitfeld has written about technology and its effects for twenty years. In 2013, he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.   

UK Amazon workers lose union vote

Wednesday 17 July 2024  

Amazon staff members on a GMB union picket line outside the online retailer's site in Coventry. File pic: PA

Amazon workers have failed to achieve enough support for union recognition in the UK, the results of a landmark ballot have shown.

More than 3,000 workers at the company's Coventry warehouse were asked if they wanted to be represented by the GMB union.

But the union fell "agonisingly short" - 49.5% of the 2,600 workers who voted backed union recognition, falling shy of a majority.

The GMB, which has staged a long-running campaign for better pay and rights across Amazon's UK operations, said "workers had been bombarded with an unrelenting campaign of anti-union messages by company bosses, including multiple anti-union seminars and threats to terms and conditions".

Amazon has always maintained that its employees have always had the right to union membership.

The result means the GMB cannot officially represent its membership among the workforce.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

Amazon workers narrowly reject union in historic vote

By Zoe Conway,

BBC  Employment correspondent


The GMB has narrowly lost its historic bid for union recognition at the Amazon warehouse in Coventry.

Some 49.5% of workers balloted voted in favour, while 50.5% voted against. The union needed a majority to vote in favour.

If the GMB had won, Amazon would have been forced to negotiate with workers over pay and conditions.

In a statement, Amazon said it placed "enormous value on engaging directly" with staff.

"We look forward to continuing on that path with our team in Coventry," it added.

'Agonising'


The GMB said its drive for recognition fell “agonisingly short” and accused Amazon of “union-busting”.

It said there were “anti-union messages by company bosses, including multiple anti-union seminars” at the warehouse.

It added that “the fire lit by workers in Coventry and across the UK is still burning”, and that the union would “carry on the fight” for pay and recognition.

“Amazon bosses have created a culture of fear for low paid workers trying to improve their pay, terms and conditions," said Stuart Richard, GMB's senior organiser.

It had been called a David vs Goliath battle, with workers facing fierce resistance from the company.

The fight for union recognition began with a rag tag show of defiance in the summer of 2022.

Amazon had offered workers a pay rise of between 35p and 50p an hour. Having toiled in warehouses during the Covid pandemic, workers said this felt like an insult, and in Coventry a small group of angry workers spontaneously walked out and protested outside the fulfilment centre.

Then the GMB got involved and urged the workforce to unionise.

In January 2023, with a GMB membership of just 50, Coventry workers held the first ever Amazon strike in the UK.

It went on to organise a further 37 days of industrial action over the last year and by recruiting on the picket line, steadily built up its membership to more than 1,400 members out of the centre's estimated 3,000 plus workers.

British pro-GMB workers narrowly lose Amazon union election

By Doug Cunningham

JULY 17, 2024 / 

Amazon workers in Britain voted against union representation 50.5% - 49.5%, according to results released Wednesday. GMB union organizer Amanda gear said Amazon created a culture of fear in an anti-union campaign. GMB is legally challenging the tactics. Amazon said it looks forward to working with "our team in Coventry." Photo courtesy of GMB

July 17 (UPI) -- British Amazon workers narrowly defeated an effort to join the GMB union, according to election results released Wednesday.

The effort failed in a 50.5%-49.5% vote to reject the unionization bid that would have made GMB the first labor union recognized at Amazon in Britain.

"Our members have come agonizingly close to winning today and GMB will carry on the fight for the pay and recognition they deserve," GMB organizer Amanda Gearing said in a statement. "Amazon bosses have created a culture of fear for low-paid workers trying to improve their pay, terms and conditions."

Amazon said in a statement that it placed enormous value on engaging directly with its workers.

Related

Campaigning begins ahead of historic union recognition vote by British Amazon workers
Amazon labor union votes to affiliate with Teamsters
British Amazon workers announce two rounds of strikes over pay

"We look forward to continuing on that path with our team in Coventry," the statement added.

Gearing accused Amazon of using union-busting threats to scare workers into voting against the GMB. She said workers were pressured into going to "six hours of anti-union seminars on top of the fortune spent by Amazon bosses to scare workers."

She said workers were told they would not get pay raises this year and will have to lose even more benefits if they vote for union recognition.

"Amazon's anti-union stance has succeeded in this case, but the underlying antagonisms around work intensity and wages that sparked this dispute are still very much in evidence," University of Essex senior lecturer Callum Grant told The Guardian.

Paul Nowak, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress labor federation, said in a statement, "Union-busting has no place in modern Britain and shows why the government's New Deal for Working People is so important. This is not the end. Our movement will re-group and will continue to shine a light on bad employers."

He added that the new Labor government in Britain will "usher in a new era of stronger workers' rights, companies like Amazon are on the wrong side of history."

According to a GMB legal challenge against the company, Amazon actively engaged in efforts to get workers to cancel union memberships.

The GMB said Amazon put up posters with QR codes that workers could use to send emails to the union requesting membership cancellations.

"It's time for Amazon to answer for its bullying, threats and unlawful one-click-to-quit QR codes. We are proud to be supporting over 900 workers in their inducement claims and we look forward to seeing Amazon in court," Rosa Curling, Director of Foxglove Legal said in a statement.

Amazon told the BBC workers were allegedly telling management they wanted to cancel but couldn't find a way to do it.

"We have always been clear, that union membership is an employee's personal choice," Amazon said.

Leaked Audio: Amazon Workers Grill Managers at Anti-Union Meeting

"We are putting the company on our back 10 hours a day...They’re taking time away from our breaks. There is no voice here."

By Lauren Kaori Gurley
17.11.21
On the Clock
On the Clock is Motherboard's reporting on the organized labor movement, gig work, automation, and the future of work.

“We’re here to share facts, opinions, and experiences,” Ronald Edison, a senior operations manager at Amazon told warehouse workers in Staten Island in a mandatory anti-union meeting last week.

“[Amazon Labor Union] is a newly formed group that wants to represent workers at all four Staten Island campuses even though it has no experience,” he continued.

Last week, Amazon began holding mandatory anti-union meetings at JFK8, its largest New York City warehouse, and three neighboring warehouses, where workers recently filed and withdrew a petition for a union election in Staten Island. This particular meeting, which roughly 50 workers attended, turned contentious. Workers pushed back against management on what workers said were misleading talking points about unions, and spoke about grueling and dangerous working conditions that they believe a union can help improve.

Unionfacts.com (IS ANTI UNION)

Motherboard is publishing excerpts of the audio, recorded at what is known in the organized labor world as a “captive audience meeting,” to show how Amazon takes advantage of its direct access to workers to discredit union drives at the company. The recording has been cut down to 15 minutes and has been edited to protect sources. Across all sectors, these types of sessions have historically been very successful in scaring workers out of voting for a union. This is the first time audio from a captive audience meeting at Amazon has been published.

Amazon Audio 2 by Jason Koebler (soundcloud.com)

The recording is a direct look at the type of messaging that Amazon management is sending workers about unions, which is particularly notable because Amazon successfully thwarted a high stakes unionization effort in Bessemer, Alabama earlier this year. To date, no Amazon facilities in the United States have successfully unionized.

Amazon workers in Staten Island are unionizing with an independent union, known as Amazon Labor Union (ALU), that was formed by current and former employees earlier this year after the election in Bessemer.

“We continue to be a target for third-parties who do not understand our pro-employee philosophy and seek to disrupt the direct relationship between Amazon and our associates,” Edison, the operations manager, told workers at the outset of the meeting. “It would charge its members dues, fees, fines, and assessments in exchange for their representation.”

“Hey, you mind if I jump in real quick?” a worker, who self-identified as a leader of the union, said. “Now you said ‘third party.’ So the ALU is a third party? Allow me to correct you because I actually started the ALU. ALU is full of all Amazon associates. You say a ‘third party,’ but they’re all Amazon associates trying to form a union.”

Throughout the meeting, Amazon representatives repeatedly described the Amazon Labor Union as a “third party” that could take money from workers, a common argument made by companies to discredit unions and distract from the fact that many unions are made up of and led by workers.

“We regularly hold meetings with our employees as our focus remains on listening directly to them and continuously improving on their behalf,” Barbara Agrait, a spokesperson for Amazon told Motherboard. “It’s our employees’ choice whether or not to join a union. It always has been. And it’s important that everyone understands the facts about joining a union and the election process itself. We host regular information sessions for all employees, which includes an opportunity for them to ask questions. If the union vote passes, it will impact everyone at the site so it’s important all employees understand what that means for them and their day-to-day life working at Amazon.”

The November 11 meeting started as many captive audience meetings do, with the positives about working for Amazon. Edison and someone who introduced himself as an Amazon human resources employee who has worked at the company for 11 years, outlined a series of mechanisms at workers' disposal to raise concerns about their working conditions, including an internal comment board called “Voice of Amazon,” an opportunity to share workplace concerns on your birthday month called, “Birthday Roundtables,” as well as mechanisms for contacting the general manager of their warehouse, or even higher level managers beyond the warehouse.

“Birthday roundtables is another way we pull associates in during their birthday month. It’s your chance to get a nice treat, do a fun activity, but it’s also a communication time where we can talk about what’s going well, what are some opportunities, and what you want to see more of, and what can we do to create a great culture,” said Edison. (Promising to listen to workers’ concerns is a typical tactic of employers looking to convince workers that they don’t need a union.)

But the meeting quickly turned into a lecture about the Amazon Labor Union. “Let’s talk about Amazon and third parties,” Edison said. “We have an amazing workforce, and our direct relationship with associates like you has been a key factor to our ability to deliver the best possible services globally to our customers.”

Do you work for Amazon and have a tip to share? Please get in touch with the reporter Lauren Gurley, via email, lauren.gurley@vice.com or on Signal 201-897-2109.

“You may be approached by an ALU representative or an associate wearing a vest who could ask you to sign something,” the Amazon human resource representative said. “That’s perfectly fine. They’re legally allowed to do that but just make sure you’re reading the fine print of what that authorization card is implying. By signing you could be authorizing the ALU to speak on your behalf or you could be obligated to pay union dues so just make sure you read everything closely.

This statement is false. While collecting signed union cards from employees is what allows the National Labor Relations Board to determine whether there is enough support from workers for a union to qualify for an election, it does not give unions the right to extract union dues from workers. Workers are only legally required to pay union dues in New York if and once a majority of their workforce votes to join a union and a contract is ratified.

“Not to call you guys out,” one worker at the meeting said. “But you guys are always open and honest with us? I find that very false especially during COVID? I mean come on man, people get COVID here everyday.”

Last month Amazon Labor Union filed for a union election at four Staten Island facilities, submitting more than 2,000 union authorization cards with the National Labor Relations Board. But last week, Amazon Labor Union withdrew their petition for the election because they didn’t get enough signatures to qualify for a union election. (Typically a union needs authorization cards signed by a third of a company’s workers to qualify for a union election.)

In a tweet, the union blamed the situation on Amazon’s high turnover and firing union organizers and said they planned “replace those few cards and resubmit shortly.”

If Amazon workers in Staten Island vote to unionize they’d be the first to do so in the United States at the vehemently anti-union company, which is on track to become the largest employer in the country within the next year or two.

For decades, mandatory anti-union meetings have been a common tactic employers use to crush support for union drives. In fact, 89 percent of employers use captive audience meetings during union drives, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Employers typically present these meetings as “educational,” lay out anti-union arguments as fact, and spread fear among workers by focusing on what they could potentially lose by joining a union.

Under current labor law, employers can fire and retaliate against employees who refuse to attend captive audience meetings, but a bill known as the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which passed the House of Representatives and parts of which are included in President Biden’s Build Back Better Act, would attempt to level the playing field by prohibiting employers from mandating workers to attend captive audience meetings.

“We continue to be a target for third-parties who do not understand our pro-employee philosophy and seek to disrupt the direct relationship between Amazon and our associates.”

Over the past six months, Amazon employees who formed Amazon Labor Union have set up a tent outside of JFK8, where workers can sign union authorization cards. The union has also provided hotdogs, hamburgers, and mac and cheese for workers at these events, and in recent days, has been giving out free marijuana.

During the meeting, Amazon suggested that these barbecues are intended to deceive workers into signing union cards.

“The ALU can say or promise anything. It’s important to read closely anything the ALU gives you to sign,” the Amazon human resources said. “They may tell you it’s for free food or other things, but you may be giving up your voice and you may be obligated to dues ...If you’re being promised something—more pay, better benefits, a voice, whatever that may be—the thing I’d challenge is a ‘promise’ versus a ‘guarantee,’ and in legal terms, they mean two completely different things. So if you’re being promised something, ask for that in writing and see if the ALU can give you that in writing.”

It is true that unions cannot guarantee raises, benefits, or perks to workers who vote to unionize, because these terms are negotiated in a contract at a bargaining table with management once a union is formed. But statistics show that on average workers who are part of unions earn 11.2 percent more than their non-union counterparts in the same industries, and are significantly more likely to be covered by employer-paid health insurance, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Data shows that Black and Latinx employees are paid 13.7 percent and 20.1 percent more than their non union counterparts, respectively.

“If you don’t want a union, you have to start treating people better instead of turning them over at a rate that’s just insane.”Unionfacts.orgunionfacts.com

Following the information session at JFK8, the Amazon representatives leading the meeting opened up the floor for questions—and workers challenged the session’s leaders intentions, and brought up workplace concerns.

“What state are you all from? Where ya’ll from?” one worker asked. “Seriously, I’m asking you.”

“Indiana area,” one of the representatives said.

“Chicago area,” another representative said.

“Connecticut,” another representative said.

“Okay so you guys aren’t from New York,” the worker said. “They are flying you out here from Indiana, Connecticut and all that. Got ya’ll staying in hotels, paying y’all’s bread and we are putting the company on our back 10 hours a day, 11 hours a day. They’re taking time away from our breaks. There is no voice here,” the same worker said earlier.

“So the union [negotiates] for your salary, respect, seniority, your retirement?” another worker asked the meeting’s leaders.

“What I’ll say to that is the fact is that nothing is guaranteed,” the human resources representative said. “Your health benefits and the premiums you pay could be more, they could be the same, or they could be less.”

“See you’re dodging it,” another worker interrupted, raising his voice. “A lot of [members] get better benefits when they join a union. That’s the whole point of this. Why would Amazon workers decide to form a union if Amazon was doing everything they wanted it to do?”

The representatives attempted to cut the worker off, but the worker continued, “No, I’m going to talk….You mentioned all these [mechanisms] that workers have to speak out. And what has Amazon done? Nothing. I’ve been at Amazon for six years, bro. What are we talking about here? The issues that were occurring in 2015 are occurring now. So you talk about using your voice? There has been no change at all. The same amount of personal time. The same amount of vacation time. The same amount of [unpaid time off]. People get fired left and right. People get sick. Amazon didn’t even want to tell nobody about COVID. What are we talking about?”

“You can leave if you like. Don’t get mad at me,” the human resources representative said.

Another worker then spoke up. “I’ve been here three years and I only make $21.50,” he said. “After that three years, they got no incentives for anybody. This is not a long term job and you treat it like that when you turn people out so quickly. Your turnover rate is like 120 percent and that was in The New York Times, and you guys turn over people so much that you’re literally running out of people to hire because no one wants to stay here for long because you’re not making it an environment that people want to stay here and work for years at a time.”

(The New York Times reported in June that prior to the pandemic turnover at Amazon was roughly 3 percent a week, or 150 percent a year.)

“If you don’t want a union, you have to start treating people better instead of turning them over at a rate that’s just insane,” the worker continued. “I work with a 60-year-old woman. Don’t get me wrong. She busts her ass here. She puts in work. This workload is not easy. But what happens when she’s 62 and has terrible back issues because she’s been working a 10-hour day for three years? Are you guys going to pay her medical bills? No, because the second she can’t meet ‘rate’ or doesn’t work for the company, she doesn’t exist for you guys. There’s no medical care after you stop working here even though people sacrifice their legs and their backs. How many people here have gotten terrible injuries from working here? Back issues. Knee issues. They’re coming in for braces all the time, and you guys make all that stuff so incredibly hard. A friend of mine just recently, while she was here, pulled a muscle in her hand, went to a doctor and went to Amazon. They said ‘oh, it’s not that big of a deal’ and she went back to work. Turns out she tore ligaments in her hand but Amazon was like ‘oh, you can go back to work.’”

(“Rate” is the productivity quota that Amazon sets for its warehouse workers.)

The human resources representative said he could not comment on the specific situation “because of HIPAA laws.”

“You guys always hide behind the loopholes,” the worker retorted. “You guys work in a complete grey area.”

Another worker chimed in about recently being in the hospital for nine days with COVID-19, and having lost two close family members to COVID-19 last year, noting that “nothing has changed” at the facility.

“Extremely sorry for your loss,” the human resource representative said.

The worker also noted it was “ridiculous” that Amazon sometimes didn’t notify workers for up to a week when they had been exposed to someone who contracted the virus.

After 29 minutes, the meeting’s leaders abruptly brought the meeting to a close while workers continued to express their anger over working conditions at the facility and talk over the meeting’s leaders.

It is unclear whether Amazon will continue to hold captive audience meetings now that the petition has been withdrawn but the company has spent months spreading anti-union messages, including in fliers on bathroom stalls, text messages, and on TV displays visible to workers at the Staten Island facilities. In August, Motherboard reported that the National Labor Relations Board found that Amazon illegally confiscated union literature from the Amazon Labor Union.

Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, are also organizing toward a second union election this year, after the National Labor Relations found that Amazon had interfered so thoroughly with election proceedings earlier this year to scrap the initial results for the defeated union election in April. Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama, too, have been forced to sit through captive audience meetings.