Christian Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), failed to convince workers at Amazon’s LDJ5 logistics center in New York’s Staten Island borough to follow his neighbor’s example, the JFK8 center. LDJ5 employees voted 62% against the arrival of the organization on their site.
According to a count broadcast online, 618 voted no to the question of whether they wanted to be represented by ALU, against 380 who voted yes. Of the approximately 1,633 employees called upon to vote – during a ballot held from April 25 to 29 – 998 voted, which represents a participation rate of 61%.
A long-distance race
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint. We all know that there are going to be victories and defeats., reacted shortly after the count Christian Smalls, the president of ALU. For him, the difference was mainly due to the fact that the trade unionists leading the campaign at JFK8 had been working there for several years, while those who led the fight at LDJ5 “We’ve only been there a few months”. Next, the team “Go take a break, reassess the situation, regain strength (…) and return to the fight”he assured.
ALU created a surprise in early April by becoming the company’s first union in the United States, in the JFK8 warehouse. The country’s second largest employer after the retail giant Walmart, the group founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 had so far succeeded in repelling the desires of American employees wishing to regroup.
In the wake of its first success, ALU generated excitement, its members claiming to have been contacted by representatives of warehouses across the country. The organization thus hoped to score a new victory at the LDJ5 sorting centre, located across the street.
“I’m quite upset”underlined Michael Aguilar, employee at LDJ5. “Many workers were openly saying they were against the union (…) but there were also a lot of undecided people”, he explained. They obviously have “was convinced by Amazon’s propaganda” who has “Used all the dirty tricks so we don’t win on another site”.
Support from Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
US President Joe Biden made a strong case for unions in early April, declaring during his speech: “By the way, Amazon, we’re coming…” Two stars of the Democratic left – Vermont senator and former White House candidate Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – also came to support the movement in front of the LDJ5 sorting center on the eve of the start of the ballot.
The company, for its part, lodged an appeal against the result of the vote at JFK8, considering in particular that members of the ALU had “intimidated” employees and accusing the New York branch of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) – an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for conducting union elections – of being biased. An NLRB official from another branch where the case was relocated, in Phoenix, agreed to hold a hearing on the group objections on May 23, believing that they could “constitute a reason for annulment of the election”.
Motivated by the attitude of their company during the pandemic, in particular on health protections, and more recently by inflation, several groups of employees in different companies are currently trying to organize themselves.
At Starbucks in particular, in the wake of a first symbolic victory in December 2021, employees of more than 250 cafes have submitted a file for the organization of a vote and more than forty have, so far, voted for the creation of a union within their establishment.