Union objections to Amazon outcome gain strength

 

Bill Knight column for 5-27, 28 or 29, 2021

 During days of National Labor Relations Board hearings, a worker at Amazon’s Bessemer, Ala., warehouse last week said company security guards there had keys to a mailbox that Amazon urged workers to use to vote in the unionization election this spring.

Kevin Jackson said he’d witnessed two guards use keys to open one of the slots on the mailbox.

Jackson’s allegation comes after the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which would have represented workers there if the union had won, challenged the results. Its Unfair Labor Practice charges include complaints about the mailbox, which the union argues created the perception that Amazon was running the election instead of the NLRB, and the impression that workers were being watched,

The NLRB had denied Amazon’s request to collect workers’ ballots at the warehouse, but the company got the Trump-appointed U.S. Postal Service leadership to place a mailbox outside the facility, near security cameras.

RWSDU is asking the NLRB to overturn the results due to improprieties such as the mailbox, Amazon firing some pro-union workers, and threatening layoffs or closing the warehouse. That said, such appeals can take months and have little impact beyond a “do-over” election conducted – at a place where the work force can be a lot different because of turnover.

A year ago, the union responded to requests for help from workers at the facility owned by Amazon, the nation’s second biggest employer (next to Walmart), with some 1 million workers. Organizing during a pandemic, the workers faced not just high turnover but an employer valued at $1.7 trillion.

Results from mail-in balloting in the first NLRB-supervised election at an Amazon site showed a 2-to-1 defeat for workers: 1,798 against and 738 for unionizing, with 505 ballots challenged.

However, especially noteworthy are the suspiciously low turnout and the votes for unionizing versus the number of authorizing cards signed beforehand.

The NLRB had accepted Amazon’s inflated number of employees in the proposed bargaining unit (5,805), which the union says included many managers. Still, workers gathered more than 3,000 signatures for an election.

So: 3,041 cast ballots (1,798 + 738 + 505) – a 52.3% turnout despite a typical turnout of more than 70%, meaning 2,764 workers didn’t vote. Some left the company during months of organizing, but more likely is Amazon intimidation or missing ballots,

The RWDSU faced obstacles such as COVID-19 restrictions on face-to-face meetings and few opportunities to warn workers about Amazon’s hardball tactics.

“There wasn’t enough time to prepare the masses for the union-busting campaign,” said RWDSU lead organizer Joshua Brewer.

Amazon’s campaign entailed:

* thousands of dollars spent on union-busting consultants,

* buyouts for some pro-union workers to leave,

* flooding workers’ phones with multiple texts daily,

* posting messages throughout the warehouse (even in bathroom stalls),

* requiring weekly “captive-audience” meetings with anti-union, often false, propaganda, such as claims that the corporation’s wages and benefits were great (despite a 2018 report in the Economist magazine showing “in the years since Amazon opened in Lexington County [S.C.], annual earnings for warehouse workers have fallen from $47,000 to $32,000, a decline of over 30%”), and

* hiring off-duty local police as security.

 

The outcome and aftermath for workers at that warehouse, throughout Amazon, and across the country were disappointing yet inspiring. Any assessment may be less postmortem than postpartum.

The loss isn’t a death knell, said Rutgers University professor Donna Murch.

“We must not confuse the failure of this specific campaign with the wants and aspirations of workers on the ground,” said Rutgers University professor Donna Murch “The Amazon drive is only one part of a larger tide of multiracial labor activism incubated in workplaces during the COVID-19 pandemic – activism that will undoubtedly grow as the lockdowns recede.”

Elsewhere within the corporate giant, RWDSU has heard from more than 1,000 workers asking to unionize; SEIU and Teamsters are active at Amazon sites in Minnesota and Iowa; and the independent Amazon Labor Union and Amazonians United are organizing at two Chicago-area facilities.

At a Staten Island Amazon warehouse, worker Derrick Palmer said, “We all wanted the union push to be successful in Alabama, but the fact that they had the opportunity to vote as a facility was historic. We have to take the bruises and pick it up where they left off. It’s going to be like a domino effect.”

Finally, besides getting endorsements across the political spectrum – Stacey Abrams and both Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) – the campaign showed other conservative support.

Oren Cass, a former campaign staffer for U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), said, “The behavior of firms like Amazon, as not only an economic but also a social and political force, is highlighting for conservatives that what’s good for profits is not always good for America.”