Amazon faces well-known opponent in Alabama Union election

The trade giant faces a well-known opponent: the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, or RWDSU, which, along with local organizers, helps lead the pro-union campaign. The union has helped organize thousands of poultry workers in Alabama, a right to a job, and has become a regular Amazon antagonist in recent years. The RWDSU is fighting the company’s plans for a second headquarters in New York at the end of 2018 and is supporting workers’ protests at some warehouses during the coronavirus pandemic.

According to labor experts, the current attempt to date has been more successful than other attempts to organize Amazon workers. They note that a successful strike by unions at the warehouse could prompt similar action at Amazon’s more than 800 facilities in the US

“Amazon has seen their demand skyrocket” during the pandemic, said Arthur Wheaton, director of Western NY Labor and Environmental Programs for the Worker Institute at Cornell University. The company’s continued growth will increasingly investigate how it pays and treats employees, he said.

The effort still faces formidable obstacles. Amazon sought to postpone the scheduled start of the February 8 election and appealed to the National Labor Relations Board’s decision to allow a vote. Although the vote is likely to go according to schedule, a decision to unite could lead to years of negotiations over the first contract, labor experts say.

The employees hold regular meetings at the 855,000-square-foot facility about 25 miles southwest of Birmingham. It also hired a law firm specializing in combating organizational endeavors and setting up a website claiming that employees were already receiving the benefits and pay that a union would negotiate for and that they had to vote no to avoid incurring the cost .

An Amazon spokesman said the company does not believe the RWDSU represents the majority of our employees’ views. Our employees choose to work at Amazon because we have some of the best work available anywhere we hire, and we encourage everyone to compare our total compensation package, health benefits, and workplace environment with any other business with similar work. “

If workers vote in favor of the union, Alabama’s “right to work” rules mean that employees are not automatically part of the union. Employees will not be expected to join the union or pay money, which may make it more difficult to extend membership. Some employees interviewed by The Wall Street Journal said they were not supportive because they did not believe union representation would significantly improve their circumstances.

Amazon has opposed several previous union attempts. An effort backed by RWDSU in 2018 to organize employees at the Whole Foods Market owned by Amazon could not get traction. About four years earlier, a small number of maintenance and repair technicians had coordinated a union effort in a Middletown city, Del.

To voice their case this time around, local organizers gathered near Amazon’s Bessemer, Ala., Facility with signs and red clothes, talking to employees at a traffic light and handing out kites. “Do not let Amazon scare you!” a read.

Organizers could not enter the warehouse, and the union recently received contact details for the facility’s employees, according to Joshua Brewer, a union organizer for the union’s Mid-South Council.

The union relies on local ties in Bessemer, disseminating information via family members of workers and relying on support from local unions. Since many of the employees at the Amazon warehouse are black and some were involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, the union touched on themes related to racial empowerment, Mr. Brewer said.

“It comes here and is not attending for an event or a day, but to set up a presence outside the facility that says we are here and not going,” he said. “They see us every day.”

A group of employees from the Bessemer facility, which opened last spring, contacted the union for the first time last summer. According to the union, the employees were frustrated by Amazon’s grueling workload demands and the company’s employee monitoring.

Amazon uses cameras and an internal system that tracks workers’ movements and productivity for the second time, a problem that employees have been concerned about for years. Some workers criticized the use of the techniques during the pandemic when they rushed to fill a drastic increase in orders, and they felt that their essential work should have given them a postponement of such methods.

RWDSU representatives; union members from nearby warehouses, poultry plants and nursing homes; and Amazon workers began meeting in restaurants and hotels and launching their outreach campaign in October.

Organizers have collected thousands of signatures from employees showing support for an election. In December, the Labor Council decided to allow the election to proceed and later determine the voting period from February to March.

The RWDSU has achieved success in southern states, especially in the poultry industry. The union said it represented about 15,000 poultry workers across the South, including Alabama. Early in the pandemic, fatal outbreaks of Covid-19 were reported in poultry facilities, while employers were encouraged to improve working conditions. Major poultry companies have issued temperature controls, cleaning and protection equipment, among others.

In the late 1930s, the RWDSU now has thousands of retail chains, including Macy’s. Inc.

and Bloomingdale’s, as well as workers in warehouses and the service industry.

The union was among a group of critics at the heart of a severe setback when Amazon announced it would locate part of a second headquarters in New York at the end of 2018.

Amazon chose the city as part of the so-called “HQ2” development around the same time that the RWDSU workers were assembling to unite themselves at a facility in Staten Island, an attempt that eventually failed. The union opposed the $ 3 billion government incentive that Amazon would receive to create 25,000 jobs in the city.

The union was involved in a recent meeting with CEOs of the company organized by Governor Andrew Cuomo to salvage the planned expansion. According to the people familiar with the talks, managers and labor leaders have tentatively agreed to continue discussions on the union effort.

Amazon eventually rejected its plans for the expansion in New York, but the company recently announced plans to hire thousands of new employees in several major U.S. cities, including New York.

“We saw that they were big and big and powerful, but they were also arrogant,” Stuart Appelbaum, president of the RWDSU, said in an interview. “You can take on Amazon” was an important lesson from HQ2. “

Write to Sebastian Herrera by [email protected]