Amazon fought back the most significant labor dispute in its history on Friday when a tally showed that workers at its huge Alabama warehouse had voted firmly against the formation of a union.
Workers cast 1,798 votes against a union, which gave Amazon enough to forcefully thwart efforts. According to federal officials, the vote for a union was 738, less than 30 percent of the vote.
The one-sided outcome at the 6,000-person warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama dealt a heavy blow to work organizers, Democrats and their allies at a time when conditions were ripe for unions to move forward.
Amazon, which has repeatedly suppressed labor activism, appeared to be vulnerable as it faced increasing scrutiny of its market power and influence in Washington and around the world. President Biden signaled support for the union effort, as did Senator Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermonter. The pandemic, which caused millions of people to shop online, also shed light on the plight of key workers and raised questions about Amazon’s ability to protect these employees.
However, in an aggressive campaign, the company argued that its workers had access to rewarding jobs without having to involve a union. The win leaves Amazon the freedom to treat employees on its own terms as it went on a hiring frenzy and expanded its workforce to more than 1.3 million people.
Margaret O’Mara, a professor at the University of Washington who studies the history of tech companies, said Amazon’s message of offering good jobs with good wages won over criticism from the union and its supporters. The result, she said, “reads as a justification.”
She added that while the elections were just a warehouse, they had attracted so much attention that they had become a “brawl.” Amazon’s victory likely led organized workers to think “maybe it is not worth trying other places,” Ms. O’Mara said.
The retail, wholesale and department stores union that spearheaded the campaign blamed Amazon’s anti-union tactics before and during the vote, which ran from early February to late last month. The union said it would question the election results and call on federal labor officials to investigate Amazon in an attempt to create “an atmosphere of confusion, coercion and / or fear of reprisal”.
“Our system is broken,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the union’s president. “Amazon took full advantage of that.”
Amazon said in a statement that “the union will say that Amazon won this election because we intimidated employees, but that is not true.” It added, “Amazon did not win – our employees made the decision to vote against joining a union.”
About 50 percent of the 5,805 eligible voters in the camp cast ballots in the elections. A majority of 1,521 votes was required to win. About 500 ballot papers were mostly contested by Amazon, the union said. These ballot papers were not counted.
William and Lavonette Stokes, who started working at the Bessemer camp in July, said the union had not convinced them how to improve their working conditions. Amazon already offers good performance, relatively high pay starting at $ 15 an hour, and opportunities for advancement, said the couple, who have five children.
“Amazon is the only job I know of where they pay for your health insurance from day one,” said Ms. Stokes, 52. She added that she was put off by how organizers tried to view the union action as an extension of the Black Lives Matter movement as most of the workers are black.
“This wasn’t an African American problem,” said Ms. Stokes, who is black. “I think you can work there comfortably without being bothered.”
The vote could lead to a rethinking of strategy within the labor movement.
For years, union organizers have tried to use growing concerns about low-wage workers to break into Amazon. The retail, wholesale and department store unions had addressed critical issues related to supporting key black workers in the pandemic. The union had estimated that 85 percent of the workers in the Bessemer camp were black.
The inability to organize the warehouse also follows decades of unsuccessful and costly attempts to form unions at Walmart, the only American company that employs more people than Amazon. The repeated failures in two large companies could lead labor organizers to focus more on supporting national policies, such as a higher federal minimum wage, than on unionizing individual jobs.
The Amazon warehouse on the outskirts of Birmingham opened a year ago when the pandemic hit. It was part of a significant expansion for the company that accelerated during the pandemic. Last year, Amazon grew by more than 400,000 employees in the US, which now employs almost a million people. Warehouse workers typically assemble and package orders for items for customers.
The union efforts came together quickly, especially for someone aiming at such a big goal. A small group of workers in the Bessemer building reached out to the local retail union branch last summer. They were frustrated with the way Amazon was constantly using technology to monitor every second of their work day and felt that their managers were unwilling to listen to their complaints.
Organizers had at least 2,000 workers sign cards saying they wanted an election, enough for the National Labor Relations Board, which conducts union elections, to approve a vote.
The election was carried out by mail, a concession to the pandemic. Instead of holding elections for just a few days, workers had more than a month to fill out and send in their March 29 ballot papers.
Amazon’s public campaign focused on the company’s accomplishments and the $ 15 minimum wage, which is double the Alabama minimum wage. Internally, it was stressed that workers do not have to pay for union membership to have a good job. The company’s slogan – “Do it for free” – was conveyed to employees in text messages, mandatory meetings, and signs in toilet cubicles.
The union had complained that these tactics showed how companies like Amazon can have an advantage in holding mandatory anti-union meetings and having access to workers in the warehouse to convince them to vote no. In 2018, the union also tried and failed to gain a foothold in an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island.
Ms. O’Mara said complaints about the union about job stability and safety made it difficult for workers to organize. This is because the impermanence of warehouse jobs “counteracts solidarity and willingness to invest in this employer and this job,” she said.
Many union leaders said union formation at Amazon was critical to reversing the long-term decline in union membership, which fell from the upper teens to just over 6 percent of the private sector in the early 1980s.
They argued that Amazon had power over millions of workers in the industries in which it operated. The dominance of the company has forced its competitors to adopt their work practices, where efficiency is paramount.
“Amazon is changing the industry one by one,” said Appelbaum, president of the retail workers’ union, in an interview in 2019. “Amazon’s vision of the world is not the vision we want or can tolerate.” He has often referred to efforts to unify Amazon as a struggle for the “future of work”.
Some union leaders said the campaign in Bessemer would advance work goals, even if it ended in loss.
The election generated “a lot of coverage and discussion, and people in this country are hearing that unions are the solution,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. “We were able to have a real discussion about what the union is actually doing.”
Noam Scheiber, Sophia June and Miles McKinley contributed to the coverage.
