An independent union that led Amazon warehouse workers to a victorious vote last month fell short on its second attempt to organize workers in Staten Island.
Workers at a smaller Staten Island warehouse voted against joining the Amazon Labor Union Monday, with about 380 votes for unionization and 618 votes against.
It’s a setback for the union, which gained significant momentum from its victory last month — a win that marked the first time an Amazon warehouse in the United States had successfully voted to unionize.
Amazon strongly opposes unionization at its warehouses, and workers say the company ramped up its union busting efforts at smaller warehouse LDJ5 in the weeks before the vote. The company held mandatory classes to discourage workers from voting for the union, and hired outside consultants to talk to workers on the warehouse floor.
“This is a huge disappointment for the Amazon Labor Union a day after May Day,” labor organizer Jason Anthony said.
But John Logan, the chair of the labor and employment studies department at San Francisco State University said the result was not a surprise because Amazon had been campaigning hard against the effort.
“But there’s no question that the ALU’s organizing campaign will continue and that labor activism at Amazon will continue to spread across the country,” he said. “In many ways, this election was even more important to Amazon than it was to the ALU – a second defeat could have proved fatal to the company’s efforts to stop the organizing from spreading like wildfire, just as it has done at Starbucks.”
The new labor union, started by a fired worker and led by former and current employees, won 55 percent of the vote in its first election on April 1, with little support from established national unions. Workers at the massive JFK8 warehouse voted 2,654 to 2,131 to join the ALU — stunning many labor observers who believed that Amazon would succeed in using its vast resources to discourage workers from organizing.
Amazon workers in New York voted to unionize. Here’s what to know.
Then the union took its fight across the street to smaller warehouse LDJ5, which has about 1,500 employees.
The ALU turned its full attention to the second warehouse after notching its first victory. Amazon responded by ratcheting up anti-union tactics at the facility. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
The company has strongly opposed the union campaigns, paying outside consultants millions of dollars to discourage employees at its U.S. warehouses from voting yes. Amazon also has held “captive audience meetings,” where it requires workers to leave their work stations and attend classes meant to dissuade them from unionizing. And it has printed posters, sent text messages and handed out fliers suggesting that the union’s primary motive is collecting union dues and enriching itself.
Those kind of tactics can be hard for organizers to overcome, but the ALU succeeded at the larger warehouse.
Remaining text from the WaPo.
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