Amazon faces a family opponent in the Alabama Union election

The trade giant faces a family opponent: the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, or RWDSU, which along with local organizers helps lead the pro-union campaign. The union has helped organize thousands of poultry workers in Alabama, a state of the right to work, and has become a frequent antagonist of the Amazon in recent years. RWDSU fought the company’s plans for a second headquarters in New York in late 2018 and supported workers ’protests in some warehouses during the coronavirus pandemic.

So far, the current effort has been more successful than other attempts to organize Amazon workers, according to labor experts. They point out that a union success in the warehouse could drive similar actions at more than 800 Amazon facilities in the US

“Amazon has seen its demand skyrocket” during the pandemic, said Arthur Wheaton, director of Western NY Labor and Environmental Programs for the Worker Institute at Cornell University. The company’s continued growth will bring increasing control over how it pays and treats its employees, he said.

The effort still faces formidable obstacles. Amazon has tried to postpone the election scheduled for Feb. 8 and appealed against the National Labor Relations Board’s decision to allow an email vote. While voting is likely to take place as planned, the decision to unionize could lead to years of negotiation over the first contract, labor experts say.

The company holds frequent meetings at the 855,000-square-foot facility, about 15 miles southwest of Birmingham, to counter the union’s effort, employees say. He also hired a law firm that specializes in counteracting organizational efforts and created a website that stated that employees already received the benefits and payments for which a union would bargain and should vote no to avoid the cost of dues.

An Amazon spokeswoman said the company does not “believe that RWDSU represents the majority of our employees’ opinions. Our employees choose to work at Amazon because we offer some of the best jobs available everywhere we hire and encourage everyone.” to compare our total compensation package, health benefits and workplace environment with any other company with similar jobs “

If workers vote in favor of the union, Alabama’s “right to work” rules mean that employees are not automatically part of the union. Workers would not be required to join the union or pay dues, which could make it difficult for members to expand. Some workers interviewed by The Wall Street Journal said they did not support it because they did not believe union representation would substantially improve their conditions.

Amazon has opposed several previous unionization efforts. The effort backed by RWDSU in 2018 to organize employees of the Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market failed. About four years earlier, a small number of maintenance and repair technicians rejected an attempt at syndication at a facility in Middletown, Florida.

To defend this occasion, local organizers have gathered near the facilities of Amazon, Bessemer, Alabama, with red signs and dresses, talking to employees at a traffic light and handing out flyers. “Don’t let Amazon scare you!” a reading.

Organizers are unable to enter the warehouse, and the union recently received contact information from facility workers, according to Joshua Brewer, an organizer of the union’s South-South Council.

The union has relied on local ties to Bessemer, disseminating information through workers ’family members and relying on the support of local unions. Because many of Amazon’s warehouse employees are black and some have been involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, the union has addressed issues related to racial empowerment, Brewer said.

“He gets here and is not present for either an event or a day, but he establishes an off-premises presence that says we’re here and we’re not leaving,” he said. “They see us every day.”

A group of employees at the Bessemer facility, which opened last spring, first contacted the union last summer. According to the union, workers were frustrated by what they say were Amazon’s grueling workload demands and supervision of company employees.

Amazon uses cameras and an internal system that tracks employee movements and productivity to the second, an issue that has been a concern for employees for years. Some workers criticized the use of the techniques during the pandemic, when they competed to cover a drastic increase in orders, and felt that their essential work should have earned them a setback from these methods.

RWDSU representatives; union members of nearby warehouses, poultry plants and nursing homes; and Amazon workers began meeting at restaurants and hotels and began their outreach campaign in October.

Organizers collected thousands of signatures from employees who supported the election. In December, the working board decided to allow the elections to move forward and later set the voting period from February to March.

RWDSU has been successful in the southern states, especially in the poultry industry. The union said it represents about 15,000 poultry workers across the south, including Alabama. Early in the pandemic, he reported deadly outbreaks of Covid-19 at poultry facilities, while employers were urged to improve working conditions. Major poultry companies have implemented temperature controls, increased cleanliness and issued protection equipment, among other measures.

Hired in the late 1930s, RWDSU now represents thousands of employees in retail chains including Macy’s Inc.

and Bloomingdale’s, as well as workers in the warehousing and service industry.

The union was among a group of critics at the heart of a fierce reaction when Amazon announced plans to locate a portion of a second headquarters in New York City in late 2018.

Amazon had selected the city as part of its so-called “HQ2” development at the same time that RWDSU had been supporting workers ’support to unionize at a Staten Island facility, an effort that eventually faded. The union opposed the nearly $ 3 billion in government incentives Amazon would have received to create 25,000 jobs in the city.

The union took part in a final meeting with company executives organized by Governor Andrew Cuomo to save the planned expansion. At the meeting, executives and labor leaders tentatively agreed to continue discussions related to the unionization effort, according to people familiar with the talks.

Amazon ended its plans for expanding New York, but the company recently announced plans to hire thousands of new employees in several major U.S. cities, including New York.

“We saw that they were big, big and powerful, but they were also arrogant,” RWDSU president Stuart Appelbaum said in an interview. “” You can face Amazon “was an important lesson from HQ2.”

Write to Sebastian Herrera to [email protected]