Amazon voting contracts blow up union membership expansion

Workers’ rejection of a union at Amazon.com Inc. ‘s warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., is a setback for the efforts of organized labor to reverse a decades-long decline in private-sector membership.

The Alabama result highlights unions’ challenges to increase membership in the U.S. private sector, where they represent only 6.3% of workers, compared to 24.2% in 1973, according to Georgia State University data.

Rents from Amazon – the second-largest private employer in the U.S. – and other e-commerce warehouses increased last year, even as the country shook millions of jobs, including more than 300,000 unions, during the pandemic. For unions, the time was ripe to organize workers in a growing sector and an environment where unions traditionally worked: a large premises where many employees do similar work.

The attempt failed despite the approval of President Biden, his stated goal of creating more unions and a renewed embrace of labor by many Congress Democrats.

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According to the Labor Department, last year more union members worked for the government than for employers in the private sector, which shows that the public sector is now the stronghold of organized labor. Teacher strikes and protests in 2018 and 2019 have won salary increases and other concessions in Arizona, West Virginia, Los Angeles and other states and cities, and more recently, educators’ unions have influenced plans to reopen schools during the Chicago pandemic and elsewhere.

The Amazon vote is bad for organized labor trying to increase the share of unionized workers and revive organized labor as a formidable voice in American workplaces, said Jonathan Spitz, co-leader of labor relations practice at Jackson Lewis , a management- said. kant-regsfirma. Trade union members made up 10.8% of the total U.S. workforce last year, up from 24% in 1973, according to Georgia State data.

Organizing workers at major employers like Amazon or Walmart Inc. has long been a ‘holy grail’ for unions, he said, but many large companies have the power and capital to pay competitively, examine employees about their experiences and respond to dissatisfaction before it grows.

“Employers control the economic issues, they decide what wages and benefits look like there, and if they want to organize based on economic issues, they can do it,” he said.

Amazon told its Alabama workers that union is not necessary, emphasizing that it starts workers at $ 15 an hour – more than double the state’s minimum wage of $ 7.25 an hour, the federal minimum – and the health benefits it offers employees. According to the Department of Labor, the median last year was $ 17.77 per hour in the U.S. for warehouse and warehouse workers.

The organizing union – the retail, wholesale and department store union – has sought to negotiate work rules and get paid better, citing the wealth of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

According to the National Labor Relations Council, workers at the Bessemer warehouse overwhelmingly rejected the union, with 71% not joining the union.

The failure at Amazon comes after other unsuccessful attempts to organize large companies. United Food and Commercial Workers sought to unite Walmart stores, and unions backed the fight for $ 15 protests against McDonald’s Corp. and other chains. Although the protests affected state and local minimum wage changes, they could not secure the union members.

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“One of the concerns here for people who would like to see something change is that they are spending a lot of money and energy on it and that it has not worked. Therefore, there is some reluctance to try it again with other retail giants, “Ruth said. Milkman, a sociologist and chair of the Department of Labor Studies at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies.

The Amazon effort has also taken place as employee activism grows in technology and media industry. A few months ago, about 200 employees of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. formed a union affiliated with the Communications Workers of America.

The group, called the Alphabet Workers Union, did not seek joint bargaining rights, and it did not go through an election process like at Amazon’s Bessemer facility. Instead, its leaders said they aim to articulate their problems that its members see at Google, including discrepancies in compensation and retaliation.

The organizational problems faced by trade unions in the private sector are in contrast to those in the public sector. More than 40% of local authorities, including teachers, firefighters and police, are union members.

In some cases, the unions receive widespread public support and are more in line with their governance.

“We saw the teacher go on strike. The management was often on the side of the workers because they also wanted more money,” she said. Milkman said.

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In general, working groups enjoy a moment in the spotlight, reinforced by a presidential government that addresses their concerns. Mr. Biden has expressed support for Amazon’s union organization. He also proposed a $ 2.3 billion infrastructure package that would rely on union labor and seek to increase unions in the private and public sectors, including by weakening the right to labor law.

A growing federal government can create more unions. However, state and local governments reduced jobs during the pandemic last year, which more than offset federal gains. The infrastructure plan of mr. Biden aims to lead jobs to industries where unions exist, especially construction, and the proposal is likely to include incentives to hire union workers for the job.

Public sector workers, such as teachers, are often already covered by collective bargaining agreements that provide job protection that can make them more willing to organize themselves, said Anastasia Christman, director of the Worker Power program at the National Law Employment Project. , a group advocating for workers.

Amara Omeokwe contributed to this article.