According to an unofficial ballot, employees at an Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, voted in a big victory for the online retail industry Amazon.
In a big win for online retailer Amazon, workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, voted against forming a union.
According to the National Labor Relations Council (NLRB), 1798 votes were cast against trade unions, and 738 votes were cast for it.
The vote in Bessemer, Alabama, has attracted national and international attention and was the first time since 2014 that employees of the online retail giant have been trying to unite in the United States.
Amazon is the second largest private employer in the US and has been heavily criticized in recent years for treating warehouse workers in the US and abroad.
Joshua Freeman, an emeritus professor of labor history at Queens College at City University of New York, said the union’s defeat could have a cool effect on other potential efforts to organize warehouse workers.
‘It was a pretty big defeat to lose by 2-on-1. That should make many union supporters unhappy, “Freeman told Al Jazeera. ‘Most unions do not go to a union election unless they have a fairly large base to think they are in the ballpark. And many thoughts have changed, or the union misunderstood the situation when they submitted an election. ”
Of the approximately 5,800 ballot papers sent out in early February, a total of 3,215 were returned to the local NLRB office in Atlanta.
Before the public count, which began Thursday, each ballot was first reviewed by representatives of Amazon and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU).
According to the news agency Reuters, about 500 of these were initially disputed over a range of issues, including the suspicion of tampering and eligibility.
The RWDSU said in a press release on Friday that it was challenging the outcome of the vote with the NLRB, claiming that Amazon had illegally interfered, “with the protected right of employees to engage in trade union activities”.
“We demand a comprehensive investigation into Amazon’s behavior to spoil this election,” Stuart Appelbaum, president of RWDSU, said in a statement.
Amazon denies allegations that it acted illegally and wrote in a press release on Friday: “It is easy to predict that the union will say that Amazon won this election because we intimidated our employees, but that is not true.”