Amazon defeats drive to unionize second New York facility

Amazon employees at a facility in Staten Island voted to not be part of an upstart union weeks after the group received a significant victory at a warehouse throughout the road.

Amazon, which has managed to maintain unions out of its United States operations for greater than 1 / 4 century, is combating to get the JFK8 facility's vote overturned [File: Victor J Blue/Bloomberg]

Amazon.com Inc. employees at a facility in New York voted to not be part of an upstart union solely weeks after the group received a convincing victory at a warehouse throughout the road.

The election on the LDJ5 sorting middle in Staten Island wasn’t shut, with the Amazon Labor Union garnering simply 345 sure votes to 550 nos as of two:23 p.m. native time. On a Zoom broadcast of the depend, there gave the impression to be just some dozen ballots left to tally.

The defeat is a setback for the ALU, which was seeking to improve its bargaining energy by repeating the success of the earlier vote on the JFK8 achievement middle.

Nonetheless, the primary victory helped ALU founder Christian Smalls elevate cash and win assist from highly effective politicians, together with Senator Bernie Sanders, Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Joe Biden.

Sanders final week despatched a letter to Biden urging him to cancel federal contracts with corporations that violate U.S. labor legal guidelines and has scheduled a listening to on the matter this week. Whereas Biden is unlikely to cancel Amazon’s federal contracts, his administration is working to make it simpler for employees to hitch unions.

Nelson Lichtenstein, who directs the Heart for the Research of Work, Labor and Democracy on the College of California, Santa Barbara, stated the loss most likely wouldn’t derail the ALU.

“They’ll attempt it time and again and once more,” he stated in an interview earlier than the votes have been tallied. “There’s sufficient ‘oomph’ happening that I don’t assume it could be an enormous setback.” Furthermore, the ALU is making an attempt to prepare two extra Amazon services in New York.

Amazon, which has managed to maintain organized labor out of its U.S. operations for greater than a quarter-century, is combating to get the JFK8 vote overturned. In a submitting to the Nationwide Labor Relations Board final month, the Seattle-based firm stated the company repeatedly “failed to guard the integrity and neutrality of its procedures” by turning away voters.

The NLRB additionally allowed media and union representatives to remain too near the voting space, Amazon stated, amongst different objections.

–With help from Michael Tobin and Josh Eidelson.