The National Football League players were the first to express their support. Then came Stacey Abrams, the Democratic star who helped turn Georgia blue in the 2020 elections. Actor Danny Glover traveled to Bessemer, Alabama, for a press conference last week, where he invoked Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to urge Amazon warehouse workers to organize. Tina Fey weighed in, and so did Senator Bernie Sanders.
Then, on Sunday, President Biden issued a resounding statement of solidarity with workers who now vote on forming a union at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse, without mentioning the company’s name. Posted on his official Twitter account, his video was one of the most compelling statements in support of unionization by an American president in recent memory.
“Each worker must have a free and fair choice to join a union,” said Biden.
A unionization campaign that has been deliberately under the radar for months, in recent days has blossomed into a star-studded clash to influence workers. On one side is the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and its many pro-labor allies in the world of politics, sports and Hollywood. On the other, is one of the dominant companies in the world, an e-commerce giant that has avoided previous union efforts at its facilities in the United States over its more than 25 years of history.
Attention is turning this union vote into a referendum not only on working conditions at Bessemer’s warehouse, which employs 5,800, but on the situation of low-income employees and, in particular, blacks. Many of the Alabama warehouse workers are black, a fact that union organizers highlighted in their campaign to link the vote to the fight for civil rights in the south.
The retail workers’ union has a long history of organizing black workers in the poultry and food production industries, helping them to obtain basic benefits such as paid time off and security protection and means of economic security. The union is portraying its efforts in Bessemer as part of that legacy.
“This is a campaign to organize the South for the right to work during the pandemic at one of the largest companies in the world,” said Benjamin Sachs, professor of Labor and Industry at Harvard Law School. “The importance of a union victory cannot be overstated.”
Warehouse workers started voting by mail on February 8 and ballots are due later this month. A union can form if the majority of the votes cast are in favor of such a move.
Amazon’s counter-campaign, both within the warehouse and on the national scene, focused on the pure economy: its starting salary is $ 15 an hour, plus benefits. This is much more than its competitors in Alabama, where the minimum wage is $ 7.25 an hour.
“It is important for employees to understand the facts of joining a union,” Amazon spokeswoman Heather Knox said in a statement. “We will provide education on this and the electoral process so that they can make an informed decision. If the union vote is approved, it will impact everyone on the site and it is important for members to understand what this means for them and their day-to-day work at Amazon. ”The company, which went through a huge wave of hiring last year, as domestic customers increased its sales to a record $ 386 billion, posted more than $ 22 billion in profit.
In Alabama, some workers are getting tired of the process. An employee recently posted on Facebook: “This union business is getting on my nerves. May it already be March 30 !!! “
The situation is becoming irritable, with union leaders accusing Amazon of a series of “anti-union” tactics.
The company placed signs throughout the warehouse, close to hand sanitizing stations and even in bathroom stalls. Sends regular texts and emails, pointing out problems with unions. He posts pictures of workers in Bessemer on the company’s internal app, saying how much they love Amazon.
In some training sessions, company representatives pointed out the cost of the union contribution. When some workers asked specific questions at the meetings, Amazon representatives accompanied them to their jobs, re-emphasizing the disadvantages of the unions, say officials and organizers. The meetings stopped as soon as voting began, but the signs are still high, said Jennifer Bates, a pro union worker at the warehouse.
In this charged atmosphere, even routine things have become suspect. The union raised questions about changing the time of a traffic light near the warehouse, where work organizers try to speak to workers when they are stopped in their vehicles when leaving the premises.
Amazon asked county officials in mid-December to change the daylight hours, although there is no evidence in the county records that the change was made to frustrate the union. “Traffic to Amazon is decreasing around the shift change,” public records said as the reason the county changed the traffic light.
Amazon regularly deals with traffic problems around its facilities, and wasting unpaid time in congested parking lots is a frequent complaint from Amazon workers in Facebook groups.
But the president of the retail workers’ union, Stuart Appelbaum, questioned the timing of the order in Bessemer, as it did at the height of the organization. “When the light was red, we could answer questions and have a brief conversation with the workers,” he said.
Last week, the union questioned an offer the company made to Alabama warehouse workers to pay them at least $ 1,000 if they gave up in late March. Mr. Appelbaum accused the company of trying to convince employees to leave before the voting ended.
“They are trying to remove the most likely union supporters from their workforce by bribing them to leave and give up their vote,” he said in an interview.
But “The Offer”, as it is known among employees, was the same that Amazon did to workers in all of its warehouses across the country. It is an annual program that allows the company to reduce the number of employees after the peak of the year-end shopping season, without layoffs. It has been around since at least 2014, when Jeff Bezos wrote about it in a letter to shareholders.
“Once a year, we offer payment for our associates to resign,” said Bezos at the time. “In the long run, an employee who stays in a place he doesn’t want is not healthy for the employee or the company.”
Mr. Appelbaum was not influenced. He said he believed Amazon chose to make the offer at all of its warehouses when it did so, in order to help eliminate possible “yes” votes for Bessemer.
President Biden hardly asked Amazon workers to join a union, but his statement immediately increased the risks of an already important campaign.
“Let me be very clear,” said Biden. “It is not for me to decide whether someone should join a union. But let me be even clearer: it is not up to the employer to decide that either. The option for the union is for the workers. Full stop.”
He added: “Workers in Alabama and across America are voting on whether to organize a union at their workplace. This is vitally important – a vitally important choice. “And it is one, he said, that must be done without intimidation or threats.
Despite the union’s suspicions, he did not file a formal complaint with the National Council for Labor Relations, Appelbaum said. Typically, unions can raise objections to a company’s tactics before an election and the labor council can intervene.
If a complaint were filed, the labor council could potentially determine that the election is invalid because of Amazon’s actions. But after working for months to build support inside and outside the Amazon warehouse, the last thing the union wants is for the labor council to intervene and determine that the election should be held again. The vote has been taking place in Bessemer for almost a month.
Harvard Law School’s Sachs said that despite Biden’s warnings that companies interfere in elections, current labor law allows Amazon to hold certain mandatory meetings with workers to discuss why they shouldn’t join a union and allows the company post anti-union messages throughout the workplace.
“It is very useful for the president to be calling on these tactics, but what we need is a new labor law to prevent companies from interfering,” he said.
It is rare for such a large union election to be held by post. Despite Amazon’s objections, the Labor Council demanded a vote by mail after determining that federal election monitors would be at risk of hiring Covid-19 if they had to travel to Bessemer to oversee the vote in person.
By reacting aggressively to the union, Amazon risks irritating Democrats in Washington, many of whom are already calling for more antitrust enforcement from the big tech companies, whose business has grown even more in the pandemic. Amazon mounted a public campaign to support legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour, buying prominent ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications.
In his video on Sunday, President Biden specifically mentioned how unions can help “black and brown workers” and vulnerable workers struggling during the economic crisis caused by the pandemic.
Bates, 48, one of the leaders of the union campaign, started working at Bessemer’s warehouse in May.
She said she was insulted by some of Amazon’s anti-union efforts, especially the company’s statements to employees that they would be required to pay about $ 500 in union fees each year. Since Alabama is a state with a right to work, there is no such requirement that a worker in a unionized workplace pay fees.
“It pisses me off a little because I feel that they know the truth and are not going to tell the truth and are taking advantage of it because they know that the employees come from a community considered to be black and low income,” said Ms. Bates, who is black. “It was really awful that you stayed there and intentionally deceived people. Give them the facts and let them decide. “