Amazon workers at an Alabama warehouse are getting closer to holding a unionization vote, laying the groundwork for establishing the first union representation at an American facility in Amazon.
Workers at an Amazon compliance center in Bessemer, Alabama, located outside Birmingham, last month notified the National Labor Relations Board that they planned to hold an election to create a bargaining unit represented by the Retail union. Wholesale and Department Store. The NLRB said Thursday it found “enough demonstrations” to allow voting, rejecting Amazon’s claims that the union had not garnered enough support.
At a hearing on Friday, Amazon and the union continued to disagree on the size of the potential bargaining unit and on which employees should be eligible to vote. The hearing is also intended to plan details such as when a union vote will take place and how it will take place. The hearing may take a few days to resolve.
“The parties in this case have different positions on certain job classifications on whether these employees should be included or excluded from a proper bargaining unit,” said Terry Combs, assistant regional director for the Atlanta region. of the NLRB.
To get the green light for elections, the NLRB usually wants 30% of workers to sign union authorization cards or petitions. In its request, the union said the bargaining unit would cover 1,500 full-time and part-time workers at the facility.
Amazon has argued in documents submitted to the NLRB that the facility employs more than 5,700 people, suggesting the union gathered fewer signatures than it needed to move forward with the election.
It’s unclear how Amazon came to this total. Amazon said in a 2018 ad that it would employ 1,500 people at the facility.
Amazon spokeswoman Heather Knox said Amazon has created more than 5,000 full-time jobs in Bessemer, with an average salary of $ 15.30 per hour, health care and other benefits.
“We don’t believe this group represents the majority of the opinions of our employees,” Knox said in a statement. “Our employees choose to work at Amazon because we offer some of the best jobs available anywhere we hire and we encourage anyone to compare our overall pay, benefits and workplace environment with any other company with jobs similar “.
An RWDSU spokesman declined to comment.
The unions have organized part of Amazon’s European workforce, but no U.S. facility has been formed or successfully joined any union. A union success in Alabama would represent an innovative change for the country’s second-largest employer, which has more than 1.37 million front-line employees at Amazon and Whole Foods in the U.S.
The push to unionize in Alabama comes as Amazon has experienced growing unease in the warehouse and delivery staff during the pandemic. In recent months, some employees have protested demanding safer working conditions, created online petitions to draw attention to their concerns, and formed new groups of workers.
A website announcing the Alabama campaign says a union would help employees advocate for changes related to safety, pay, disciplinary procedures and other work issues.
“Amazon has built up decades of increasingly daring and aggressive attacks on workers’ rights that have dramatically eroded union density, damaged working conditions and reduced the standard of living of many workers. And it doesn’t stop,” he says. the website. “Our union will not back down until Amazon takes responsibility for these and so many more dangerous work practices.”
Labor experts say the hearing is just the beginning of what will likely be a long way ahead of the union of Alabama labor unions. Amazon has taken an aggressive stance against unions in the past, clearly expressing its opposition to workers.
But one could only need a successful campaign on an Amazon installation to inspire others to follow suit.
“If it succeeds, I think it will send a message that there is some hope for organizing workers,” said Tom Kochan, an MIT professor of labor relations, labor and employment. “But it’s a big uphill battle because you have to organize one warehouse at a time, which requires a huge amount of resources.”