For weeks, tension grew in this warehouse in a small town in central Alabama, before an important vote, starting this week, on forming what would be the first U.S. union in Amazon’s nearly 27-year history.
The fact that the pressure for unionization has come this far is unlikely for several reasons. Not only are workers hiring the second largest employer in the United States, whose business has skyrocketed in the face of the global pandemic, but these workers are based in the South, where union representation is less than in other parts of the country. This effort was galvanized not only by a group of employees at the Amazon Bessemer facility, but also by union workers from other local factories and facilities, including poultry farmers, who are already represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, who defended their safety. because the birds were hit hard by the virus.
Jennifer Bates, an employee organizer at Bessemer’s facilities who has been working at Amazon since the warehouse opened last spring, said that reaching this point is a great feat in itself. “We didn’t know how we would reach so many people,” Bates, a learning ambassador who helps train other workers on the premises, told CNN Business. “Amazon is so big. We have four floors and thousands of people there. But we realized that there were enough voices and problems. You can have complaints at any job, but it’s screaming.”
Bates, who said she was represented by a union in a previous job, listed a list of issues that workers hope to improve with the help of union representation, including adequate break time, better procedures for registering and receiving complaints, more wages seniors, as well as protection against Amazon’s misapplication of policies such as social detachment to discipline workers.
In a statement to CNN Business in January about the union effort, Amazon spokeswoman Heather Knox said: “We opened this site in March and have since created more than 5,000 full-time jobs in Bessemer, with an average salary of US $ 15.30 per hour, including full health, vision and dental insurance, 50% 401 (K) compatible from day one at work; in safe, innovative and inclusive environments with training, continuing education and long-term career growth deadline. “
“We work hard to support our teams and more than 90% of members on our website Bessemer say they would recommend Amazon as a good place to work for their friends,” added Knox. Last year, Amazon said repeatedly that security is a priority, as well as that it has “zero tolerance for retaliation against employees who raise questions”.
While the pandemic was a boon to Amazon’s business, it was also a factor behind a more general uprising of employees. Workers at other facilities expressed concern about reconciling the company’s obsession with productivity, maintaining social distance and other precautions related to the pandemic. Meanwhile, Amazon has been slowly withdrawing some of its pandemic security policies. The company interrupted its unlimited unpaid time off in May, as well as its $ 2 hourly increase and double overtime pay in June; it has reinstated its “task slack” metric to track worker productivity this fall. It is also reestablishing daily standing meetings, which had been interrupted since the start of the pandemic, but
soon resume as “standing meetings of small socially distant groups”.
Amazon said it has made more than 150 process updates to ensure the health and safety of its employees. The company, which continues to provide up to two weeks paid time off for employees diagnosed with coronavirus, has also granted two special bonuses to frontline employees since the elimination of pandemic-related salary increases.
“The pandemic has shown many people that workers really need a voice in their workplace to protect themselves,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of RWDSU. “People are concerned about their lives.”
At the same time, Bessemer workers were motivated by the ongoing racial justice movement, according to Appelbaum, who said that about 85% of the workforce is black. “People were inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement to defend their own rights and dignity,” said Appelbaum. “This campaign has been both a campaign for civil rights and a labor campaign. We are talking about basic dignity for working women and men ”.
It is not clear whether the union pressure will succeed. The Washington Post previously reported that more than 3,000 Amazon workers signed cards indicating support for the union, although due to the company’s high turnover rate and the fact that some employees are seasonal, not all are still with the company.
“The most aggressive anti-union campaign I have ever seen”
Although some Amazon workers are unionized in Europe, the company has so far rejected unions in the United States. A much smaller union election was held in 2014 at a Delaware warehouse, but it resulted in workers rejecting the effort.
To contain the current effort at Bessemer, Amazon hired a former Republican member of the NLRB to assist in their struggle. He launched an anti-union website that warns against paying fees: “Don’t buy that dinner, don’t buy that school supplies, don’t buy those gifts because you won’t have those nearly $ 500 that you paid in fees.” And it conveyed its position on the unions by sending several text messages to workers, taking them to individual meetings on the warehouse floor and demanding that they attend group meetings every few shifts, workers and the union told CNN Business. (In a statement this week, Knox told CNN Business that Amazon “has provided education that helps employees understand the facts of union membership.”)
Group meetings, also known as “captive audience” meetings, must cease 24 hours before an election; a company spokesman previously told the Post he would comply. According to Hirsch, Amazon’s insistence on holding a face-to-face election may have been due, at least in part, to the fact that the company is unable to hold such meetings during the longer period of the postal election, potentially making it more difficult for the company to contain the union’s efforts to mobilize workers during this period.
Amazon spokeswoman Maria Boschetti said in a statement to CNN Business last week that the company’s “goal” in pushing for a personal election was to provide “the most fair and effective format for achieving maximum employee participation” .
Together, Appelbaum called it “the most aggressive anti-union campaign I have ever seen”.
Workers now need to sort out confused messages. A Bessemer worker, who asked for his name to be withheld for fear of retaliation, said they are intrigued by the financial impact of fees and the potential benefits of union representation.
The worker, who has not yet decided which side to vote for, was initially attracted to work because of the set time and schedule, but is now concerned about security measures against a pandemic inside the facility. “If you don’t want the people to have a union, you need to do everything [to address the concerns], or at least piece by piece, “said the worker.
Another Bessemer employee, Dawn Hoag, is adamant about how she will vote: “No.” She said she didn’t think Amazon hid any of the conditions at work when it was hired. “Not everyone is going to like having to work hard,” said Hoag, a seasonal process assistant who said she would request the transfer to a different facility if the union was successful. “I see no purpose in paying someone else to fight my battles. I have always been told to fight your own battles.”
Workers at other Amazon warehouses in the United States are paying attention to the result. At a Baltimore facility, Amazon associate Andre Goodin said that he and several of his colleagues talk about Alabama’s union vote “quite often, believe it or not.” Goodin, who also previously worked at a union, said he believed there were a number of things that could be improved with the support of a union.
“We are listening to workers in the Amazon across the country. I think what has happened so far is significant, regardless of the outcome of the election, ”said Appelbaum of RWDSU. “It opens the door for more organization in the future. It opens the door and shows that you are capable of facing Amazon.”
