According to the decision of the National Labor Relations Board, published Friday, approximately 6,000 employees in the Bessemer, Alabama office will enable approximately 6,000 employees to vote by ballot.
The union push comes at a time when Amazon’s working conditions in the warehouse are under scrutiny during the pandemic. The company has hired hundreds of thousands of workers worldwide to support an increase in demand. A number of warehouse workers have spoken out about security since the start of the pandemic.
While some Amazon employees are united in Europe, the company has so far repelled unions in the United States. A union election was held in a warehouse in Delaware in 2014, but led to workers largely rejecting the effort.
The potential association at Bessemer has been in the making for months. Workers at the facility only submitted a notice to the NLRB in November about holding an election.
“If we have a union with Amazon, we will have the right to jointly negotiate our working conditions, including items such as safety standards, training, interruptions, compensation, benefits and other important issues that will improve our workplace,” reads a website in support of the union of Amazon’s Bessemer workers.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNN Business.
During a series of hearings at the end of December with the NLRB, Amazon and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) agreed on who may vote. The list includes a range of contributors for full-time, part-time and seasonal fulfillments.
The NLRB writes that it believes that the post-election, as opposed to personally voting like Amazon, “is the safest and most appropriate method ‘given’ the exceptional circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic. ‘