For about a year, Chris Smalls stood almost daily at Amazon’s largest warehouse in Staten Island, New York, struggling to establish the first union in all of the tech giant’s extensive operations. As a former facility worker, Smalls made small encounters with supporters, barbecue days , And spoke with employees on their way to work to promote his initiative.
Stubbornness paid off, and workers there this week voted to form the union, a surprise to the U.S.’s second-largest private employer. Behind a workers’ effort that has so far borne no fruit, the campaign also demonstrated the challenges that are likely to continue to make similar organizing efforts difficult in the future.
Smalls and his group, called the Amazon Labor Union, are trying to form an association at another Amazon facility on Staten Island, and the group says it wants to expand its efforts and has heard from employees interested in it across the country. “I learned something new every day because there is no rulebook when you get organized in front of a trillion-dollar company,” Smalls said in a recent interview.
Amazon declined to comment regarding Smalls. The company has increased wages – it says the minimum wage in the US now stands at about $ 18 an hour – has increased benefits and announced new safety measures to attract workers and reassure existing workers. Make such improvements.
On Friday, the company announced that it was disappointed with the results of the vote on Staten Island and sought to find out the possibility of filing conduct to the National Labor Relations Member (NLRB) that conducted the vote. Amazon and several business groups have claimed that the NLRB tried to influence employee sentiment against the company through legal complaints related to incidents related to its employment procedures. The NLRB said that it is an independent body that works to maintain compliance with the employment laws.
The immediate impact of Friday’s voting results on Amazon is limited. Union organizers can face a lengthy process of reaching a first contract with the company. And while the facility, named JFK8, is important – and employs more than 7,500 people in one of Amazon’s busiest markets – it’s one of more than 1,000 facilities operated by Amazon in the US, a company that employs about a million people.
“From that moment on, I said, ‘I’m going to fight them.’
Dealers say the results could lead to further incorporation efforts at Amazon, which is facing a close vote in Alabama, in addition to another vote on Staten Island, the results of which are expected later this month.
Extensive union success, or Amazon’s other major steps to reconcile them, could increase the company’s employment costs and hurt its glorious fast delivery mechanism.
“Their operating cost can go up in large part because part of what these unions do is allow for more breaks and reduce the pressure on the number of items that need to be collected at any given hour,” said Socrita Kudali, an analyst at research firm Forrester.
Amazon declined to comment on the question of what effect the incorporation could have on costs.
Smalls, a 33-year-old former New Jersey rapper, was a storekeeper for years before joining Amazon in 2015, saying he was attracted to the company because of its technology and innovation. He says he began to think that the company treated workers as perishable parts – an opinion that was strengthened by him when the corona plague began.
In March 2020, Smalls helped organize a workers’ demonstration at JFK8, building on the sentiment of some of the workers that the company had not done enough to protect them from the severe plague. The company fired him after the demonstration, and Smalls said he was fired in retaliation for organizing the demonstration.
Amazon said it worked hard to keep workers safe during the epidemic, providing them with protective equipment and corona tests, as well as being more considerate of sick days. The company says it fired Smalls because it violated rules of social alienation that were in effect at the time.
Shortly after the dismissal, a memo leaked from a meeting of senior executives at the company and showed that the company had decided to take an aggressive stance against Smalls.
In the memorandum, David Zapolski, senior vice president at Amazon and general counsel, wrote that Smalls was “neither smart nor articulate” and presented a public relations strategy designed to make him the face of the incorporation movement. Zapolski later wrote that “I let my emotions dictate my words and take over me.” “From that moment on, I said ‘I’m going to fight them,'” Smalls said in an interview last year.
“I felt it was our one chance to do it”
Smalls believed that if he demonstrated a permanent presence in JFK8 he would prove to employees that the small organization he founded was committed to employees. He signed on to the workers ’effort today and in the past, and the organization became a regular presence, sometimes handing out food, water and even marijuana to workers. The group also posted a lot on social media and gained tens of thousands of followers. They raised tens of thousands of dollars through GoFundMe pages.
Smalls and his supporters said they intend to improve wages, benefits and working conditions at the company. U.S. employment data shows that Amazon has a higher-than-average national injury rate, and workers say the company can easily fire those who do not meet the tough performance targets.
The message resonated with some of the employees. “I felt it was our one chance to do it,” said John Sam, a JFK8 employee who says he voted to form the union. Sam opposes policies that he says cause workers to sort and pack hundreds of items every hour.
Amazon says the company’s average starting salary is more than double the national minimum wage of $ 7.25 an hour, and the company offers benefits that include health care, a 401 (k) pension and higher education funding. The company has set itself goals to reduce the amount of injuries in the workplace, and says it is monitoring employee injuries more closely and this may be why the reported rate is higher. Amazon also said that less than 1% of layoffs are due to inadequate performance.
At workers’ meetings inside the JFK8 facility, Amazon talked about the disadvantages of the union, including the possibility of paying membership fees, workers said. The company also hung messages condemning labor movement throughout the facility. In Staten Island, as in other Amazon facilities, there is a large turnover of workers that also makes it difficult to get organized, the Wall Street Journal previously reported.
“They basically told us: Do your research before you sign something you have no idea what you are signing.”
There are employees who are not convinced by the efforts of Smalls and his organization. Christine Valenta, 28, who arranges products on the shelves at JFK8, said she voted against the association, in part because she did not believe in the union because of its unusual name and lack of experience.
Valenta said she went to meetings at Amazon that discussed the issue. “They basically told us, like, do your research before you sign something that you have no idea what you’re signing,” she said.
She said she appreciates the benefits at Amazon and noted that the company gives her training in information analysis. “This is probably the best job I’ve had in a long time,” said Valenta, who has been working at Amazon for three and a half years.
In the end, about 57% of JFK8 employees allowed to vote cast kosher votes counted in the union election. Of these, 55% voted to form an association, according to NLRB data. By comparison, about 43 percent of workers who voted kosher and allowed to vote joined the Alabama union last year. The NLRB ordered a re-election in Alabama after deciding that Amazon had acted improperly during the pre-voting campaign. The company denied having acted improperly.
After the countdown on Friday, Smalls opened a bottle of champagne outside the NLRB offices in Brooklyn, where the votes were counted. He jumped again and again with his supporters shouting the acronym ALU, an abbreviation of the name of the union he founded.
In Staten Island, it was quieter. The workers came in and out of JFK8. Thousands of items were waiting to be packed and shipped – as on any other day.
Alison Frang participated in the preparation of the article.