Efforts to unionize Amazon.com warehouse workers in Alabama
were defeated on Friday by a more than 2-to-1 margin in a major win for the
online retailer, but the union trying to organize workers was set to challenge
the results, assailing the company's methods.
According to the latest unofficial tally, 1,798 voted
against forming a union, with 738 ballots in favor. A simple majority is needed
for victory, but both sides have the right to challenge the eligibility of
ballots. Counting concluded and would next focus on adding up challenges and
voided ballots but the margin of victory may be too much to change the outcome.
Amazon shares rose 0.8% Friday, adding to earlier gains.
Union leaders had hoped the election outside Birmingham
would spark a new era of worker activism. Instead, it illustrated the continued
challenges facing the labor movement, joining high-profile failures to start
unions at auto and plane factories in the US South.
The US south has been an especially difficult region for
unions to make inroads because many of those states, including Alabama, passed
so-called right-to-work laws that curtail unions’ abilities to mandate dues and
other measures.
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU),
which is trying to organize the Amazon employees, said it is filing objections,
charging that Amazon interfered with the right of its Bessemer, Alabama
employees to vote.
It has the same legal options as Amazon: challenge the eligibility
of individual voters or allege that coercive conduct tainted the election.
In the latter case, the dispute would play out before the
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and then likely in a federal appeals
court.
Unionizing Amazon, the second-largest private employer in
America, would be a start to reverse long-running declines in union membership,
which fell to 11% of the eligible workforce in 2020 from 20% in 1983, according
to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The vote count followed more than a week of challenges to
ballots during closed-door proceedings that could influence the final result.
Lawyers for Amazon and the union were allowed to question ballots on suspicion
of tampering, a voter's eligibility and other issues.
The union says there have been hundreds of contested
ballots, making it unclear the number of votes needed to declare a winner.
The NLRB, which is overseeing the election, would adjudicate
challenges in coming days.
Amazon for years has discouraged attempts among its more
than 800,000 US employees to organize, showing managers how to identify union
activity, raising wages and warning that union dues would cut into pay,
according to a prior training video, public statements and the company's union
election website.
Amazon has said it is following all NLRB rules and wants
employees to understand each side of the contest, and that the RWDSU does not
represent a majority of its employees’ views. The company has said it wants as
many of its employees to vote as possible.
The union objection will focus in part on what it described
as Amazon pressuring the US Postal Service to install a mail box and then
pressuring employees to bring their ballots to work and use the mailbox.
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