The historic mood of the Amazon union begins at the Alabama Warehouse

For the next seven weeks, employees at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama will vote on whether they will be the first U.S. employee in the United States to unite. The only other U.S. employees at Amazon who went to a union election were a smaller group of maintenance workers in a warehouse in Delaware in 2014. The attempt failed after an aggressive anti-union campaign by a company that had long been hostile to the organization of workers. .

The vote in Alabama, at a warehouse outside Birmingham called BHM1, comes at an important time for the company and its workers. Amazon is emerging from the pandemic in a stronger position than ever before: posting record revenue, opening new warehouses quickly, and hiring hundreds of new workers every day. However, the workers increasingly spoke out about the fact that they did not share in the success of the business. Last year’s wave of protests over COVID-19 security measures and other issues won partial victories, but the Bessemer trade union would give workers the power to negotiate a contract that could lock up lasting changes to wages and working conditions. . It can also inspire other Amazon warehouses to organize.

Workers at BHM1 say one of the key issues driving the union push is the grueling and automatically enforced productivity measures of Amazon, a complaint that has also led to demonstrations at other Amazon facilities.

Darryl Richardson started working at BHM1 when it opened in March, after closing the car business in which he worked. At first he thought it would be a good job, but it did not take long before Amazon’s productivity tracking began to knock him out. Richardson is a ‘picker’, meaning he pulls products off the shelves that bring robots to his station, sometimes climbing a ladder to do so, scanning them and sending them to ship. Amazon keeps track of how many items it scans, how fast and how much time it spends not scanning, what it calls ‘time off task’ or ‘TOT’. To go to the bathroom, count as ‘TO’. Stretching between items counts as “TOT”, and after 30 minutes “TOT” workers get an automatic entry, and after two hours they are fired, Richardson says. He estimates that he should scan the item about every ten seconds, all day, to avoid fines. ‘It’s a very constant fast pace. You do not have time to step back. ”

“You’re going to get water, you can’t interrupt your time, and you get stuck for not scanning,” Richardson says.

“I mean, you come to work and have to be treated like a human being,” says another worker, a longtime Amazon employee who transferred to BHM1 when it opened. He supports the union, but has asked to remain anonymous because of “Amazon’s reputation for dealing with people trying to unite.”

By the summer, other problems arose. Amazon has terminated the risk payment it implemented at the outset of the pandemic, as well as its policy of allowing employees to take unlimited time without payment. Meanwhile, COVID cases in the South were on the rise. (A report to the National Labor Relations Board offers a snapshot of the COVID rate at BHM1, with Amazon saying that 218 employees at BHM1 ended COVID-19 in the two weeks to January 7). hot, workers say, and schedules will change unpredictably. “They change your schedule while you sleep,” Richardson says. “If they change the schedule and you do not know, they will terminate you.”

“I think a lot of these frustrations with the business trying to make every extra dollar, at the expense of the person doing work, have frustrated people here,” says the Amazon worker who asked to remain anonymous.

Amazon spokeswoman Rachael Lighty said the company offers a starting salary of $ 15.30 per hour with benefits at the Bessemer facility, and that 90% of employees there would recommend Amazon as a good place. “We do not believe that the RWDSU represents the majority of our employees’ views,” Lighty said.

Beth Gutelius, who studies the logistics industry at the Chicago Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois, sees the Bessemer Union’s push and other protests from Amazonas as a symptom of tensions that have long existed in e-commerce, but which was magnified by the pandemic. “We reach this point where some of the inconsistencies that exist awkwardly may no longer exist,” Gutelius says. ‘Companies like Amazon really benefited from meeting consumer demand during the pandemic, and workers see that profits have not fallen on deaf ears. Warehouse work in particular has long been invisible to the public and undervalued by businesses as a supply chain function, and I think it is possible that we are seeing the beginning of a fairly large course correction on this question, with the value of warehouses. seen in a new light. ‘

An atmosphere of activism

At Richardson’s previous job, he was a member of the United Auto Workers, and he felt that employees there were treated with more “respect”. There was a procedure to address workers’ grievances and rules that made dismissal less arbitrary. Meanwhile, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union has waged a public battle for better COVID-19 protection at poultry plants in the area. Richardson and other BHM1 employees decided to reach out.

The campaign came together quickly, attributing employees to a confluence of factors. Frustration with Amazon – with the grueling work, dehumanizing management approach and rapid profits of the company – was intense and widespread. This frustration coincides with the increasing tide of activism in the facility. The majority of BHM1 workers are black and many have been galvanized by this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd. “I think it also correlated with the recent racial movement,” said the anonymous employee. “There’s a lot of support for the movement in that building.”

Joshua Brewer, the chief organizer of the RWDSU for the campaign, agrees with the role played by the movement. “A lot of these workers are involved, especially a lot of these activists who have worked really hard to get their co-workers on board,” he says. “You feel that kind of spirit throughout the campaign.”

He also attributes the success of the campaign to the deep roots of Bessemer. ‘It’s a holiday village, so they go to their families, and they hear about their aunts and uncles and fathers and grandparents who worked in the steel industry or in the mines, and they say unions are good. You need to draw the map and get involved. ”

After several months of workers talking privately to other workers, Brewer says they have decided it’s time to appear in public. On October 20, RWDSU members from poultry plants and warehouses in the area came to the BHM1 gates and started talking to employees. A month later, they collected enough signatures to support an election to submit a petition to the National Labor Relations Council. Brewer says more than 3,000 employees, more than half of the employees Amazon says now work at the facility, have now signed cards in favor of an election. (Organizers need 30 percent of the workers to be interested in an election to start the election process, and more than half of the workers who vote to win the election and ratify the union.) On January 15, the NLRB decided that the election could continue. .

Amazon goes offensive

By that time, Amazon’s anti-union campaign was underway. In late December, it launched a website with the headline #doitwithoutdues, warning that signing cards in support of a union election could legally oblige workers to pay money. (This is misleading: levies would not start unless workers voted to approve a union contract, and even then Alabama has a right to work, so volunteers will volunteer.) The site also includes photos of happy employees from Amazon and an animated cartoon dog who inexplicably was also a DJ. Managers began to pull workers aside for presentations against unions – so-called meetings for ‘captive audience’, where they handed out similar arguments about money, according to employees, and handed out anti-union pins to wear.

Richardson and the other BHM1 employee say some of these meetings were held by people who do not work at the warehouse. It is common for companies to hire anti-union consultants who specialize in deterring employees from organizing, although Amazon did not directly comment on whether or not consultants were hired for BHM1’s union effort.

‘It is important that all employees understand the facts of joining a union and the election process, ”said Lighty of Amazon. “We offer regular information sessions for all employees, which provides the opportunity for employees to ask questions. If the union vote succeeds, it will affect everyone on the site, and it’s important that all employees understand what it means for them and their daily work at Amazon. ”

Workers now receive almost daily text messages from Amazon saying they should vote no, that a ‘union is a business that takes money from your salary to finance itself’, and other anti-union messages, according to screenshots provided by The edge. On Facebook and Instagram, employees are targeted with anti-union ads that link to Amazon’s website #doitwithoutdues.

‘I’ve never seen Amazon fight for something like this. I have never seen them try to push something so hard, ”says the longtime Amazon employee.

Anti-union banners and signs went up all over the warehouse. Even in the bathrooms, Amazon’s anti-union campaign is inevitable: signs have been placed on stall doors and at eye level above the urinal, warning workers about unions, saying they “must remember everything you already have without worrying about you. earned money to give to the RWDSU, ”reads one poster.

‘It’s right in your face, like when you walk there, so you have something to read. It’s a great way to get the information there, but come on, ‘says the worker.

At the NLRB, Amazon tried to delay the election and make it happen in person rather than by mail. Since the pandemic, 90 percent of union elections have been by mail, but Amazon claims that voter turnout will decline, and that in an argument that reflects misinformation about the presidential election, it will have a greater risk of ‘party fraud’. and coercion. Instead, Amazon suggested setting up a tent in the warehouse parking lot, testing all participants for COVID, conducting temperature research and monitoring the line for social distance, or using a ‘digital assistant’ either with human teams. Amazon has also proposed renting a floor of a local hotel for NLRB election agents and providing drivers and food to them.

On Friday, the NLRB rejected Amazon’s appeal, confirming its position that postal voting is safer, and that Amazon rents out hotels and monitors voting lines, creating an impression of prejudice and oversight. Ballot papers will be sent out on 8 February and must be returned by 29 March.

Amazon will no doubt continue its anti-union campaign, though it can no longer hold mandatory meetings about the company’s time now that the ballots have been sent. But the BHM1 organizers are optimistic about their chances and what a win will mean for Amazon employees elsewhere. “I hope they see what’s going on,” Richardson said. “And that they stand strong, they stick together and do what they have to do to try to improve it there as well.”

Update February 8 15:14 ET: The story has been updated to include replies from Amazon.