In a public defeat for organized labor, a sizable majority of Amazon warehouse employees voted against unionization in Bessemer, Ala. in an election overseen by federal authorities Friday. While the final vote tally isn’t yet confirmed, the retail and cloud-computing giant appeared to win by a margin better than 2-1 of the votes cast.
More than 3,200 fulfillment center workers participated in the vote with the initial count as 1,798 against union representation and 738 in favor. The National Labor Relations Board on Friday morning completed the two-day process of hand counting the ballot at the NLRB offices in Birmingham, Ala. The defeat ended what was the most serious effort to unionize a segment of the workforce in the 27-year-old company that employs 1.2 million people worldwide.
The unionization effort was backed by the Retail, Wholesale Department Store Union. After the preliminary count was announced, RWDSU President Stuart Applebaum immediately said the union would object to the election based on what it claimed was the company’s illegal union-thwarting tactics.
BREAKING: RWDSU is formally filing Objections and ULP charges against Amazon’s blatantly illegal conduct during the @BAmazonUnion election. We won’t rest until workers’ voices are heard fairly under the law–and when they are, we believe they will be victorious. #BAmazonUnion #1u pic.twitter.com/blj1tvNOtf
— RWDSU (@RWDSU) April 9, 2021
In a news conference Friday following the vote count, Applebaum said that even in defeat, the vote represents a milestone. “Make no mistake about it: This still represents an important moment for working people,” he said. “People should not presume that the results of this vote are in any way a validation of Amazon’s working conditions and the way it treats its employees.”
Amazon managers disagreed, noting that fewer than 16% of employees voted to join the union.
“It’s easy to predict the union will say that Amazon won this election because we intimidated employees, but that’s not true,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “Our employees heard far more anti-Amazon messages from the union, policymakers, and media outlets than they heard from us. And Amazon didn’t win — our employees made the choice to vote against joining a union.”
Here’s Amazon’s full blog post.
At issue in Bessemer and other fulfillment centers isn’t primarily Amazon’s pay rate — slightly more than $15 an hour — but the work rate, lack of sufficient breaks, and employee tracking that some workers find onerous. In the effort to gain employee and political support, RWSDU organizers often cited Amazon’s industry-worst employee turnover rate as evidence.
University of Washington historian and professor Margaret O’Mara said that even though the union lost, it’s important to put the loss into context. The history of the labor movement, she added, is mostly one of numerous losses before each win.
“(The union) is not just going to pick up and go home,” she said. “They have political allies at the national level and even in the White House.”
At a press conference following the count, four Amazon employees who voted against the union said they didn’t need a union to advocate for better workplace conditions. “Amazon is not perfect, there are flaws, but we are committed to correcting those flaws,” Will Stokes, a Bessemer warehouse worker, said to the Washington Post.
The union specifically called out Amazon’s logistical tactics in the weeks leading up to the vote. First, the RWSDU said that Amazon convinced the city of Bessemer to shorten traffic signals around the plant in a cloaked effort to impede union organizers who had been talking to workers stopped at the lights while leaving and entering the plant.
Later, the union also protested Amazon’s communication with the United States Post Office local branch to get a mailbox installed on the plant’s grounds to collect unionization votes. Union officials later said Amazon managers then pushed workers to vote onsite, which they said was an intimidation tactic.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a vocal supporter of the unionization campaign, supported the union’s claims. In a tweet posted after the vote count, Sanders said NLRB will be examining Amazon’s tactics.
“It also appears that some of Amazon’s anti-union efforts may have been in violation of NLRB law. And that is something that the union is addressing with the NLRB right now,” he tweeted Friday. “The fact that the company was able to force workers to attend closed-door, anti-union meetings is just one reason as to why we need legislation that finally gives workers a fair chance to win organizing elections.”
