The election will allow approximately 6,000 employees at the company’s Bessemer, Alabama facility to vote by email starting Feb. 8, according to a National Labor Relations Board decision released Friday.
The union momentum comes at a time when working conditions at the Amazon warehouse have come under intense scrutiny during the pandemic. The company has hired hundreds of thousands more workers worldwide to support increased demand. Several warehouse workers have been talking about security issues since the beginning of the pandemic.
Although some Amazon workers are unionized in Europe, the company has so far defended unions in the United States. A union election was held in a Delaware warehouse in 2014, but workers largely rejected the effort.
The possible unionization in Bessemer has been ongoing for months. Facility workers first filed a notice in November with the NLRB about holding an election.
“Having a union on Amazon would give us the right to bargain collectively over our working conditions, including items such as safety rules, training, rest, pay, benefits, and other important issues that would improve our workplace,” he says. a website in support of syndicating Amazon Bessemer workers.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNN Business.
During a series of hearings in late December with the NLRB, Amazon and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) agreed on who could vote. The list includes a wide range of full-time, part-time and seasonal time associates.
The NLRB wrote that it considers conducting elections by mail, rather than face-to-face as preferred by Amazon, to be “the safest and most appropriate method” given “the extraordinary circumstances presented by the Covid-19 pandemic.”