Sixty-two percent of workers at Amazon's Staten Island
facility opposed the union push, with 618 employees voting no and 380 in
support, according to results released Monday by US officials.
The election at the LDJ5 warehouse followed on the heels of
an upset April 1 win by the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) at the much larger JFK8
Staten Island company site -- which established the first American union at the
retail colossus.
Last month's win stood as one of the biggest recent
victories by US organised labour, winning plaudits from President Joe Biden and
other leading unions, some of which visited Staten Island ahead of the second
vote.
But the ALU acknowledged its latest setback at Amazon -- the
second biggest private employer in the United States after Walmart.
"The count has finished. The election has concluded
without the union being recognized," the ALU said on Twitter. "The
organising will continue at this facility and beyond. The fight has just
begun."
Backers of the union drive said Amazon was well prepared for
the latest vote and had aggressively campaigned to quash momentum from the
earlier victory.
Further complicating their efforts, union leaders were not
as well-known as at JFK8, where the ALU's president Christian Smalls had
previously worked.
Smalls launched the drive after being fired in March 2020
for organizing a protest for personal protective equipment during New York's first
major Covid-19 outbreak.
"At the end of the day, this is a marathon not a
sprint," Smalls told reporters. "We all know there are going to be
wins and losses, we're going to fight another day."
More wins needed
On the other side of the fight, Amazon spokesperson Kelly
Nantel said the company was "glad that our team at LDJ5 were able to have
their voices heard."
"We look forward to continuing to work directly
together as we strive to make every day better for our employees."
Since its launch in the 1990s, Amazon has fiercely fought to
remain union-free, seeking to maintain its direct line to workers and boosting
pay and benefits during the pandemic when "essential workers" in
logistics kept the economy going.
Eric Milner, an attorney representing the ALU, called
Monday's result "disappointing" but said it reflected the effects of
"illegal conduct" on Amazon's part in patterns of disciplining
workers and otherwise working to "chill" union activity.
Analysing the result, Patricia Campos-Medina, co-director of
the Worker Institute at Cornell University, said Smalls' experience as an
employee gave him "credibility" with workers -- but that he had
lacked time to build credibility at the second facility.
She said it will be pivotal for the union to "keep
winning" to put pressure on Amazon to negotiate, drawing on backing from
the Teamsters and other established unions.
"They already expressed willingness to support ALU,
logistically and legally," Campos-Medina said.
"What now needs to happen is actually all these unions
who were planning to organise Amazon, they actually now need to do it. It has
to be a multifaceted organising effort of the corporation; it cannot just be
one by one."
For now, Amazon is challenging the ALU's April victory,
saying representatives of the labour group intimidated workers and that US
officials with the National Labor Relations Board were biased against the
company.
A hearing on the Amazon complaints is set for May 23 in
Phoenix.
The ALU has rejected the Amazon complaints as groundless,
arguing the company is using stalling tactics to avoid negotiations on a
contract.