Amazon faces well-known opponent in Alabama union election

The trade giant faces a well-known opponent: the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, or RWDSU, which along with local organizers is helping to lead the pro-union campaign. The union helped organize thousands of poultry farmers in Alabama, a state with a right to work, and has become a frequent antagonist of the Amazon in recent years. RWDSU fought the company’s plans for a second headquarters in New York in late 2018 and supported worker protests in some warehouses during the coronavirus pandemic.

So far, the current effort has been more successful than other attempts to organize workers in the Amazon, according to labor experts. They note that a successful union effort at the warehouse could spur similar actions at Amazon’s more than 800 facilities in the U.S.

“Amazon saw its demand soar” during the pandemic, said Arthur Wheaton, director of West NY Environmental and Work Programs at the Cornell University Worker Institute. The company’s continued growth will bring increased scrutiny over how it pays and treats its employees, he said.

The effort still faces formidable obstacles. Amazon tried to delay the start of the election scheduled for February 8 and appealed the decision by the National Labor Relations Council to allow a postal vote. While the vote is likely to proceed as scheduled, the decision to unionize could lead to years of negotiations over the first contract, labor experts say.

The company is holding frequent meetings at the 855,000 square foot facility, about 15 miles southwest of Birmingham, to combat the union’s effort, officials say. It also hired a law firm that specializes in countering organizational efforts and set up a website stating that employees already receive the benefits and wages that a union would negotiate and should vote no to avoid the cost of dues.

An Amazon spokeswoman said the company does not “believe that RWDSU represents the majority of our employees’ opinions. Our employees choose to work at Amazon because we offer some of the best jobs available everywhere we hire, and we encourage anyone to compare our total compensation package, health benefits and work environment with any other company with similar jobs. “

If workers vote in favor of the union, Alabama’s “right to work” rules mean that employees are not automatically part of the union. Workers would not be required to join the union or pay fees, potentially hampering the expansion of membership. Some workers interviewed by The Wall Street Journal said they did not support it because they did not believe that union representation would substantially improve their conditions.

Amazon has opposed several previous union efforts. An effort supported by RWDSU in 2018 to organize employees of Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market failed to gain momentum. About four years earlier, a small number of maintenance and repair technicians rejected an attempted unionization at a Middletown, Del. Facility,

To defend their case this time, local organizers gathered near Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama, facility with red signs and suits, talking to employees at a traffic light and handing out pamphlets. “Don’t let Amazon scare you!” a reading.

Organizers are not allowed to enter the warehouse, and the union recently received contact information from facility workers, according to Joshua Brewer, an organizer for the union’s South Central Council.

The union has local ties in Bessemer, disseminating information through family members of workers and with the support of local unions. Since many of the employees at Amazon’s warehouse are black and some were involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, the union addressed issues related to racial empowerment, Brewer said.

“It is coming here and being present not for an event or a day, but to make a presence outside the premises that says that we are here and we are not leaving,” he said. “They are seeing us every day.”

A group of employees at the Bessemer facility, which opened last spring, contacted the union for the first time last summer. Workers were frustrated by what they say are Amazon’s strenuous workload demands and monitoring of company employees, according to the union.

Amazon uses cameras and an internal system that tracks employee movements and productivity per second, an issue that has been a concern for employees for years. Some workers criticized the use of techniques during the pandemic, when they rushed to meet a drastic increase in orders and felt that their essential work should have earned them a suspension of such methods.

RWDSU representatives; members of the union of warehouses, aviaries and nursing homes nearby; and Amazon workers began to gather in restaurants and hotels and began their outreach campaign in October.

Organizers collected thousands of employee signatures showing support for an election. In December, the Labor Council decided to allow the election to proceed and, subsequently, to define the voting period from February to March.

RWDSU was successful in the southern states, mainly in the poultry industry. The union said it represents about 15,000 poultry workers across the South, including Alabama. Early in the pandemic, he reported fatal outbreaks of Covid-19 in poultry facilities, while urging employers to improve working conditions. Large poultry companies have implemented temperature checks, increased cleaning and issued protective equipment, among other measures.

Founded in the late 1930s, RWDSU now represents thousands of employees in retail chains including Macy’s Inc.

and Bloomingdale’s, as well as workers in storage and the service industry.

The union was among a group of critics at the center of a violent backlash when Amazon announced plans to locate a part of a second headquarters in New York City in late 2018.

Amazon selected the city as part of its so-called “HQ2” development at the same time that RWDSU was gathering support for workers to unionize at a facility on Staten Island, an effort that ultimately failed. The union opposed the nearly $ 3 billion in government incentives that Amazon would have received to create 25,000 jobs in the city.

The union was involved in a last-minute meeting with company executives organized by Governor Andrew Cuomo to save the planned expansion. At the meeting, executives and union leaders provisionally agreed to continue discussions related to the union effort, according to people familiar with the talks.

Amazon ended up rejecting its expansion plans in New York, but the company recently announced plans to hire thousands of new employees in several major cities in the United States, including New York.

“We saw that they were big, big and powerful, but they were also arrogant,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of RWDSU, in an interview. “’You can face Amazon’ was an important lesson from HQ2.”

Write to Sebastian Herrera at [email protected]