Employees at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, handed the online retail giant a decisive victory when they voted against forming a union and cut a path that labor activists had hoped would lead to similar efforts across the company and beyond.
After months of aggressive campaigns from both sides, 1,798 warehouse workers ultimately rejected the union, while 738 voted for the union, according to the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees the process.
Of the 3,117 votes cast, 76 were voided for being incorrectly entered and 505 were disputed by Amazon or the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which led the organizing efforts in Bessemer. But the NLRB said the disputed votes were not enough to influence the outcome. About 53% of the nearly 6,000 workers voted.
The union said it would appeal to NLRB and accuse the company of illegal interference in the union vote. It will seek a hearing with the labor council to determine whether the results should “be set aside” after it accused Amazon of spreading disinformation about the union effort at meetings workers had to attend.
“Amazon has left no stone unturned in its efforts to spotlight its own employees. We will not leave Amazon’s lies, deception and illegal activities unchallenged, ”said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of RWDSU.
Amazon said in a statement that it did not intimidate employees.
“Our employees heard far more anti-Amazon messages from the union, policymakers and media outlets than from us,” the company said. “And Amazon didn’t win – our employees chose to vote against union membership.”
The union action was the largest in Amazon’s 26-year history and only the second time an organizational effort from within the company reached a vote. But Bessemer has always been viewed as a long shot, as it pitted the country’s second-largest employer against warehouse workers in a state with laws that don’t favor unions. Alabama is one of 27 “right to work” states where workers are not required to pay dues to unions representing them.
It was unexpected that the workers’ movement in Bessemer even got that far. Amazon has an unbeaten track record of dying out union efforts before they can spread. And at a time when the economy is still trying to recover and companies have cut jobs, it is one of the few places still hiring during the pandemic, with 500,000 employees last year alone.
But the pandemic also exposed inequalities in the workforce, with many having to report to their jobs even while the coronavirus was raging, sparking health and safety concerns. The organizing efforts in Bessemer coincided with protests across the country after the murder of George Floyd by police, raising awareness around racial injustice and frustration with how workers in the warehouse – more than 80% who are black – are turning handled, with 10 – hour days of packing and loading of boxes and only two 30 minute breaks.
In a press conference held by Amazon, four employees at Bessemer’s warehouse said talk of abuse by the company was the opinion of a few employees, not all.
“We are really sorry that their experience is not the same as ours,” said Will Stokes, one of the warehouse workers who voted against the union.
The organizational effort at Bessemer’s warehouse began last summer when a group of workers approached the RWDSU to form a union. The movement has since gained momentum, drawing the attention of professional athletes, Hollywood stars and high-profile elected officials, including President Joe Biden.
During the voting process, workers were inundated with messages from Amazon and the union. Amazon put up anti-union signs all over the warehouse and held mandatory meetings to convince workers why the union was a bad idea. It also argued that it already offered more than twice the Alabama minimum wage plus benefits without paying union fees.
Union organizers, meanwhile, stood outside the warehouse gates to talk to people driving in and out of work. There were also volunteers who called all of the nearly 6,000 workers, promising that a union would lead to better working conditions, better pay and more respect.
Senator Bernie Sanders, a progressive icon who traveled to Alabama last month for a pro-union rally, said he was “disappointed but not surprised by the vote.”
“It is extremely brave for workers to take on one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world, a company that has spent unlimited sums of money to defeat the organizing efforts,” he said in a statement.
Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia University Business School, says Amazon’s warehouses are “juicy targets of opportunity” for unions because they can be organized one at a time. The company has more than 950,000 full and part-time employees in the US and nearly 1.3 million worldwide. Additionally, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ status as the richest man in the world makes him easy to malign, especially when his company made record profits of 84% to $ 21 billion last year.
Cohen, formerly an executive at Sears Canada, called the retail industry a “tough and tough” industry and added that “Bezos has built a high-performance culture with expectations of performance and productivity at every level, right down to the shop floor If that’s not your gig, don’t work for them. “
The National Retail Federation, which represents Walmart, Target, and other major retailers, hit a tone of relief after the vote in Bessemer.
“Union representation is a choice for workers, but many clearly prefer opportunities in a competitive marketplace that offers strong wages and benefits to the anonymity of a collective bargaining agreement,” said David French, a federation spokesman.
Unions have lost national ground for decades since their peak in the decades after World War II. In 1970, nearly a third of the American workforce belonged to unions. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, that figure was 10.8% in 2020. Private sector workers now account for less than half of the 14.3 million union members nationwide.
Richard Bensinger, a former organizing director of the AFL-CIO and the United Automobile Workers, noted the large number of workers who did not vote in Bessemer: “For me it’s all about the paralysis, the fear. They don’t want to support the company, but they are afraid to stand up for the union. “
Despite the union’s defeat, Lynne Vincent, a professor at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management, believes the momentum of the workers’ movement will continue to grow as more Amazon workers consider creating union organizations and the possibility that labor laws will be modified to give employers less benefit.
“I don’t think Amazon can breathe comfortably,” she said.
Emmit Ashford, a pro-union worker at Amazon in Bessemer who spoke at a retail press conference, said he is not giving up.
“This is just a spark that started the fire,” said Ashford. ‘We will keep fighting. This experience has connected us. Our time will come again and next time we will win. “
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