Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama overcame an obstacle this week in their quest for unionization, approaching a potential vote next year that poses a challenge to the e-commerce giant that has resisted most efforts to unionize in the U.S.
In November, Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU).
After three days of hearings that ended on Tuesday, the union and Amazon reached an agreement on which workers can participate in the next vote.
The NLRB has not yet set a date for voting, but it should take place early next year.
If the momentum in Alabama is successful, it will establish the first union representation at an Amazon facility in the United States.
In the petition, the union said the bargaining unit would cover 1,500 workers at the facility, but Amazon argued that additional workers should be allowed to vote, since the facility employs more than 5,000 people.
The agreement between the union and Amazon Tuesday would expand the range of employees in the proposed negotiation unit and include all seasonal workers that the tech giant brought in to achieve increased seasonal demand.
In response to the impulse to join a union, Heather Knox, an Amazon spokeswoman, said: “We do not believe that this group represents the majority of our employees’ opinions.”
Knox said the average wage at the warehouse, which opened in March, is $ 15.30 an hour and the company offers a “safe, innovative and inclusive” environment.
“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 overall salary, benefits and work environment with any other company with similar jobs,” added Knox.
The NLRB will also decide how the vote will be conducted.
Amazon is pushing for an in-person vote, although the NLRB has held about 90 percent of its representative elections by mail since March due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The council announced regulations last month regarding elections held during the pandemic. Standards suggest that a postal election is preferred when a county where a facility is located is experiencing a two-week increase in confirmed cases, or when the county is reporting a 14-day positivity rate of 5 percent or more.
Jefferson County, where the Bessemer facility is located, reported a weekly positivity rate of over 16 percent for the entire month of December.
Amazon has shied away from efforts to get its American workers to unionize in the past. In 2014, a group of technical workers at a warehouse in Delaware voted against forming a union.
But the company has faced further scrutiny amid the coronavirus pandemic, with workers protesting earlier this year and pushing for more security protocols.
The technology giant has repeatedly defended its policies that it has implemented to protect its workers during the pandemic.
In addition, Amazon is facing scrutiny from lawmakers seeking to crack down on Amazon’s market power as part of a broader effort to address the concentration of market power among US-based technology giants.