Amazon employees at a warehouse in Alabama continue to struggle with the company for unionization.
Amazon.com Inc.’s warehouse workers in Alabama are voting whether to unionize this month. Whatever the outcome, the e-commerce giant faces pressure from employees around the world to make changes in their working conditions.
So far, these actions have not reached a formal unionist impulse, but involve hundreds of employees and show how the working conditions in Amazon’s warehouses are increasingly highlighted. President Biden and other leading figures weighed in the vote in Bessemer, Alabama, among warehouse workers. Thousands of votes have already been cast in the election by mail, which ends on March 29.
None of Amazon’s 800,000 employees in the U.S. are unionized. A vote to form a union in Alabama would give workers more power to negotiate with the company on issues such as wages and benefits.
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Elsewhere, hourly Amazon employees are gathering petition signatures, discussing possible strikes and consulting unions about possible demands. The groups are trying to change company policies on the rate at which they should prepare packages, breaks and shift schedules, all factors that can make Amazon a physically demanding place to work, workers say, and key issues in the midst of Amazon’s expansion and its target delivery deadlines.
“It would be a victory for us and it would give impetus to others,” said Jennifer Bates, a workers’ organizer in Bessemer, in an interview. “It would be a fire start.”
A spokeswoman for Amazon said the company “already offers what unions are demanding for employees: industry-leading compensation, comprehensive benefits and career growth opportunities.”
Employee activism appears to be growing at several large technology companies. Actions organized among US technology officials almost tripled from 2018 to 2019 to more than 100, according to public policy consultant Access Partnership Ltd. The activity continued in 2020 and, in the case of Amazon, grew as the pandemic drew attention to the working conditions of essential employees.
A group of Google employees formed a union in January to talk about the company without facing career repercussions, members said. Some Twitter Inc. employees in the same month collectively pressured the social media platform to suspend former President Donald Trump’s account, while at Uber Technologies Inc. many drivers across the country have long sought employee status and benefits.
Amazon, unlike many other big tech companies, employs hundreds of thousands of workers an hour, whose daily jobs differ significantly from those of its white-collar engineers, finance and logistics professionals. The company, which grossed $ 386.1 billion in sales last year and saw its stock price rise by about 76%, hired more than 500,000 workers over the year to meet growing demand due to the pandemic.
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Amidst this growth, Amazon employees have been pushing for better working conditions during the pandemic and some have carried out strikes in cities like New York and Detroit. Amazon acted quickly to improve conditions and reduce workers’ absences, which made punctual deliveries of essential products difficult.
The company reinforced the supply of protective and cleaning equipment at the facility and tested employees for Covid-19. It also temporarily increased wages and implemented social distance measures in warehouses. Amazon said at the end of last year that more than 19,000 of its employees tested positive for coronavirus.
The company also provided vacations for all part-time workers, something that warehouse workers across the country, including in Chicago, had been asking for since 2019.
Previously, external pressure has also led Amazon to change its policies. The company in 2018 raised its minimum wage to $ 15 an hour, after criticism from political figures over hourly pay.
“Workers will continue to make demands on Amazon,” said Rebecca Givan, a work professor at Rutgers University. “Some will be units of union organization and some will take other forms”.
Along with the Alabama vote, formal organizational efforts are gaining momentum. In Europe, where union representation is more common, Amazon deposit and delivery workers went on strike in Italy on Monday to protest working conditions. In Iowa, about 400 to 500 current and former Amazon workers linked to two of the company’s warehouses there have been in contact with representatives from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, according to Randy Korgan, director of Amazon at Teamsters.
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Since the beginning of the pandemic, workers have had more frequent contact with the union and are seeking guidance on forms of organization, including strikes, according to union leaders. Workers are evaluating a series of possible campaigns, looking for changes related to the pace of work and productivity expectations, union representatives said. Amazon warehouse workers typically need to handle hundreds of items per hour of work, being closely monitored by the company.
“The organization of workers in a general sense can take many forms,” said Iain Gold, director of research and strategic campaigns at Teamsters.
Outside Chicago, a group of employees at a warehouse in a southwestern delivery center initiated a petition after Amazon told employees in January that it was closing the facility. Workers were told that they could choose jobs at other facilities in the area, but the only functions available were 10-hour night shifts, known as “megacycles”, according to Ted Miin, a group worker organizer, who calls himself Amazonians United Chicagoland.
The petition, which seeks accommodation for workers who can only work part of the shift, as janitors, had hundreds of workers’ signatures, Miin said. The group did not seek union representation because it has already changed conditions in its workplace without the intervention of third parties, he added.
“Everything about us is 100% led by workers,” said Miin.
The Amazon spokeswoman said the company is giving Chicago employees more than one shift option, “and we are working with each associate directly on the option that best supports them.”
Bessemer workers began to organize last summer, seeking to change policies at the facilities related to breaks and monitoring of Amazon workers, among other measures.
Some workers said they did not believe that union representation would substantially improve their conditions. Others see a victory as something that could go far beyond Alabama, motivating workers across the country to take action and change Amazon’s workplace policies more broadly.
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The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which would represent Amazon workers in Bessemer if they chose to unionize, listened to more than 1,000 Amazon workers across the country about organizing efforts and initiated conversations with them, according to union spokeswoman Chelsea Connor.
The Alabama union vote drew interest almost similar to a high-profile political race, with several politicians and celebrities participating. Last month, Biden called the election a “vitally important choice” in a video posted to the White House’s YouTube account. And Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida also publicly expressed his support for workers.
The vote also drew support from Democratic leaders like Stacey Abrams, National Football League players and actors Tina Fey and Danny Glover, who visited Bessemer in February. A Democratic delegation in Congress met this month with workers and organizers associated with the union election.
Amazon declined to respond to Biden’s comments. A spokeswoman responded to Rubio’s comments by pointing out the company’s $ 15 starting salary and other benefits.