- Amazon workers in Alabama are currently voting whether or not to join a union.
- Unions represent workers’ interests and can help promote better wages and benefits.
- Companies are often opposed to unions because they can interfere with their autonomy or affect them economically.
- See more stories on the Insider business page.
Between now and March 30, some 6,000 Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, will vote to form the company’s first union.
The campaign has been controversial since the beginning: Amazon is opposed to the union and has placed anti-union ads, placed signs in the bathrooms and exchanged traffic signs outside the distribution center where the workers campaigned. (An Amazon spokesman told Insider that the traffic lights were changed to reduce traffic congestion near the site during its peak season.)
Union advocates say the boost is motivated by difficult working conditions, long hours and a lack of job security. A recent Insider survey found that four out of ten Amazon employees support the idea of organization.
“Amazon boasts of paying workers above the minimum wage,” said Jennifer Bates, an employee at Bessemer’s warehouse, during her testimony at a recent Senate hearing. “What they don’t say is what these jobs are like. And they certainly don’t say how much they can afford.”
See how unions work and why many companies are so opposed to their formation.
What is a union?
Simply put, a union is a group of workers who come together to represent the interests of workers and guarantee certain conditions such as hours, wages and working conditions. Unions are formed through the vote of an employee sanctioned by the NLRB or by a company that voluntarily recognizes the union.
Union membership is an activity protected by the federal government under the National Labor Relations Law, a law passed in 1935 that gives employees the right to form or join a union. The law, also known as the Wagner Law, protects employees’ right to discuss their working conditions with co-workers and to come together in an attempt to improve those conditions. The law also guarantees workers the right to organize and bargain collectively, as well as the right to strike under certain conditions.
The Wagner Law also makes it illegal for employers to retaliate against workers who try to organize.
According to a 2020 report by the Economic Policy Institute, union members earn on average 11.2% more than their non-union peers.
Those who oppose unions point out that members are obliged to pay fees, either as a percentage of their salary or as a flat fee. The United Auto Workers union, for example, charges as little as 0.805% of an employee’s gross monthly salary and up to 1.44%, depending on things like a specific union’s strike level and defense fund, used to provide the Worker’s pay during work stoppages.
In contrast, a union like Teamsters, best known for representing cargo drivers and warehouse workers, charges 2.5 times the worker’s base work wage each month.
Experts also point out that unions can lead to less collaborative relationships between employees and their supervisors and can favor senior employees over younger employees.
Read More: Joe Biden’s statement about unions is a warning to Amazon and other employers to take labor laws seriously
Why are unions no longer common?
Unionization efforts in the United States have fallen out of favor since the mid-twentieth century. In 1983, 20.1% of employees were union members. But in 2020, that number dropped to 10.8%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unionization is greater among public sector workers, such as teachers, police and firefighters, than among private sector workers – 34.8% of public sector employees are unionized, against 6.3% of those in the private sector.
The decades-long decline is due to a combination of factors. The opposition of government leaders and companies has weakened the power of unions and a higher level of jobs in the industry has moved abroad, where labor is cheaper.
The unions’ popularity also declined after the Vietnam War, according to an article published in the American Journal of Public Health. The AFL-CIO, a union federation representing millions of workers, supported US intervention in Vietnam, angering anti-Vietnam activists.
And in many states, “right to work” laws have hampered unions’ ability to organize. These regulations mean that not only can employees choose to leave the union, but they require that the union still cover those employees, even when they do not pay dues. The emergence of the right to work laws began in 1947 with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which allowed individual states to pass these types of restrictions.
Right-to-work states are more common in the South, resulting in stronger anti-union sentiment. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the southern states are four of the five states with the lowest share of unionized workers.
A bill known as the PRO Act, introduced in 2020, would create more protections for unions than the Taft-Hartley Act and would allow for more severe penalties for companies that violate labor laws.
Why do companies normally oppose unions?
The business community usually has a “total allergy to unionization,” Wilma Liebman, who served on the National Labor Relations Council of Presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton, told Insider last year.
Union critics warn that companies could suffer an economic blow if their employees join the union, forcing those companies to outsource jobs or force layoffs.
Nor do companies want an outside organization to interfere with their autonomy or ability to act unilaterally, Liebman said, adding that companies fear that unions “cost them more than they can afford”. Organizers often respond with the fact that a union is a group of employees within the company itself and therefore is not the threat that companies perceive them to be.
Companies argue that a union may not have the best interests of employees in mind, which has been Amazon’s argument to oppose unionization in Alabama: Amazon workers would be represented by the Union of Retail, Wholesale and Warehouse, a union which acts on behalf of thousands of workers worldwide.
“We do not believe that RDWSU represents the majority of the opinions of our employees,” an Amazon spokesman told Insider earlier this year. “Our employees choose to work at Amazon because we offer some of the best jobs available everywhere we hire, and we encourage everyone to compare our total compensation package, health benefits and work environment with any other company with similar jobs.”