Amazon workers are mixed about the benefits of unionizing, preliminary results released Thursday night from elections held in Alabama and New York revealed.
Early votes from the election in Bessemer, Alabama, showed that 993 votes had been cast against forming a union, while 85 “yes” votes had been cast, according to the Washington Post. Roughly 416 votes deemed problematic were challenged ahead of the election.
“I feel like history’s already been made, anyway it goes,” said Chris Smalls, the interim president for Amazon’s Staten Island, New York, labor union.
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But in the New York City borough, where workers also participated in a unionization vote, the results were flipped, though hundreds of votes had yet to be counted. The union had received roughly 1,518 “yes” votes as opposed to 1,154 “no” votes so far.
“I’m certain we would not have been here two years ago,” John Logan, chairman of the labor and employment studies department at San Francisco State University, said, according to the outlet. “I think it shows that unions are having a ‘moment’ and may even mean that the labor landscape has fundamentally changed after two years of the pandemic.”
Bessemer’s vote, which was organized by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union as a redo of last year’s election, showed a lower voter turnout, according to the outlet. Roughly 38% of eligible voters showed up, compared to 52% from the previous year.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The National Labor Relations Board said Aug. 3, 2021, that Amazon had been in violation of labor laws by illegally interfering and influencing workers’ votes, moving the company toward unionization elections.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Amazon for comment but did not receive a response back.
