Preparing for a New Vote at the Retail Giant’s Alabama Warehouse, Workers Outline the Company’s Illegal Efforts to Sway Union Election
Amazon’s outrageous gaming of an already rigged system has set the stage for a new union election at the company’s Bessemer, Ala., fulfillment warehouse.
And this time, the head of the union fighting to organize those workers says things will be different — largely because the company and its founder Jeff Bezos have just gone too far.
“During the first vote, Amazon may have won the official vote, but they lost the public debate on the way they operate,” Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) says.
Big employers, including Amazon, are charged with breaking existing labor law in 55.4% of union elections that the National Labor Relations Board oversees.
According to Appelbaum, Amazon pressured Bessemer employees to cast ballots early in the seven-week voting process stretching from Feb. 8, to March 29.
‘This is an existential fight for the labor movement. The issues at stake are the most important issues for working people in our society.’ Union leader Stuart Applebaum
“Part of the problem with last election,” he says, “was people felt compelled by Amazon [to vote against the union] even before they had the opportunity to engage with the union in a meaningful way.
“Amazon tried to push people to vote immediately — encouraging them to bring their ballots to the workplace and mail them there.”
That, Appelbaum maintains, led to a lot of regret from workers who wanted to change their votes later on, but couldn’t.
“The atmosphere in the warehouse changed so much in the seven weeks. But most votes were already cast.”
Corporate Corruption
Amazon’s corruption has grown so transparent, thanks in large part to the NLRB hearing officer’s findings, that many of those Bessemer workers who regretted voting against unionization the first time around are now serving on RWDSU organizing committees and pushing hard for unionization, Applebaum said.
“Unlike last time, we won’t be starting from scratch,” Appelbaum says. “People have a greater understanding [now] of what the union is about before they vote. We’ve lifted the curtain on the way Amazon sought to corrupt the election process. Workers are aware of that now.”
For working people in Bessemer and across the nation, existing labor law will continue to operate, even if the NLRB follows up on the hearing officer’s findings and formally orders a new election.
HR 842, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, isn’t going to be enacted in time — if at all, thanks to the Senate filibuster, to make a difference in the election. So, the Amazon workers still be playing under the same old set of anti-worker rules and regulations that Amazon was so easily able to subvert and exploit it its advantage the first time they held a union vote.
Firing Union Supporters
Amazon will continue to fire pro-union workers like Chris Smalls, David Jamel Williams, Rashad Long and others; interfere with the election process, stall, coerce, intimidate obfuscate and otherwise do everything in the book to crush unionization efforts yet again.
Amazon’s turnover rate among its workers is a whopping 150% annually. While the company used a number of ploys to increases its chances of winning the vote, the most crucial thing it did under existing labor law was explode the bargaining unit in Bessemer from 1,500 full-time and part-time employees to 5,800 employees.
They did that by forcing temporary and seasonal employees into the mix — groups of workers Amazon knew were less invested in their positions and, therefore, less likely to care about unionization.
The company has not responded to requests for comment, but immediately after the NLRB hearing officer determined Amazon violated U.S. labor law, Amazon bemoaned the “noisy time” surrounding the initial Bessemer vote. Amazon said its employees voted overwhelmingly in favor of a “direct connection with their managers and the company.”
New York Precedent
That’s the same thing Amazon Vice President of Public Policy Brian Huseman told the New York City Council in 2019 before the e-commerce giant abruptly scrapped plans to build an East Coast headquarters in Queens.
City Council members had asked Amazon to simply remain neutral in the event future employees of the facility might want to unionize.
But Huseman balked, telling elected officials, in part, the “direct connection” it has with its employees is the best way to “respond to the concerns of the workforce.”
“What they said was typical crap from an employer,” Appelbaum says. “The [NLRB] is saying it was an unfair election. The results can’t be respected because of the way Amazon conducted itself. Amazon is saying, ‘We stole the election. We stole it, so it’s ours’.”
Amazon is already one of the largest U.S. employers, the uncontested e-commerce giant, and it works closely with the U.S. government on issues of cybersecurity and big tech.
“For me, this is an existential fight for the labor movement,” Appelbaum says. “The issues at stake are the most important issues for working people in our society going forward.
“How workers are going to be treated and respected on the job — and whether or not employers are just going to treat them as another version the robots they have in their workplaces.
Teamsters, Too
Just prior to the NLRB hearing officer’s findings that Amazon broke the law during the first Bessemer election, the United Brotherhood of Teamsters announced its plan to unionize Amazon from coast-to-coast.
Appelbaum welcomes the 1.4 million-member Teamsters to the fight. The RWDSU and the Teamsters were close allies in the contentious 2019 fight to keep Amazon’s “H2Q” out of New York City unless it agreed to abandon its anti-union stance.
“We believe the fight against Amazon has to be a fight waged by the entire labor movement,” Appelbaum says. “No single union is large enough to take on Amazon by itself. This is something that needs to be a mission of the entire labor movement.”