The unionization effort at an Amazon facility in Alabama has a shot at a rerun election after the union lodged election objections with the federal labor board.
The Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union filed the complaints with the National Labor Relations Board on Friday, which was the deadline to do so. The complaints trigger a process that could take months to resolve. The union announced the Friday night filing on Monday morning, and it included details about its 23 complaints in a news release.
“The RWDSU has requested that the NLRB Regional Director schedule a hearing on its Objections to determine if the results of the election should be set aside because conduct by the employer created an atmosphere of confusion, coercion and/or fear of reprisals and thus interfered with the employees’ freedom of choice,” the RWDSU said.
In its filing about the election in Bessemer, Alabama, the union alleged improprieties with a ballot collection box installation, threats of layoffs and pay cuts by Amazon to the employees, and intimidation.
END OF ALABAMA UNIONIZATION BATTLE COULD BE MONTHS AWAY AS UNION PLOTS AMAZON CHALLENGE
The union has also claimed that Amazon held staff meetings with the workers in an attempt to convince them to vote against unionization and blasted out anti-union emails, messages, and phone calls, even to workers while they were at home.
“During the critical period and throughout the election, the Employer’s agents engaged in an extensive campaign of polling employees and/or interrogating them with respect to their support for the Union thereby interfering with their rights to an election free of coercion and interference,” one complaint said.
Amazon has shot down the accusations and said the union has misrepresented the facts of the election. Alternatively, the company said RWDSU sought to sway workers more than Amazon did during the seven-week slugfest of an election.
“Our employees heard far more anti-Amazon messages from the union, policymakers, and media outlets than they heard from us. And Amazon didn’t win — our employees made the choice to vote against joining a union,” Amazon said.
The retail giant, which is run by CEO Jeff Bezos, pushed back on the mailbox allegations in a Thursday statement to the Washington Examiner. It argued that it did so because it “wanted all employees to vote and proposed many different options to try and make it easy.”
“The RWDSU fought those at every turn and pushed for a mail-only election, which the NLRB’s own data showed would reduce turnout,” a spokesperson said. “This mailbox — which only the USPS had access to — was a simple, secure, and completely optional way to make it easy for employees to vote, no more and no less.”
Friday’s filing comes after the company soundly defeated the union in the much-publicized election. Amazon took in 1,798 votes, and the RWDSU only captured 738 votes. Just over 3,000 of the workers voted at all in the election despite there being 5,876 employees eligible to do so, according to the labor board.
The NLRB’s regional director will now evaluate whether the evidence presented by the RWDSU is enough to trigger a hearing on the matter. The hearing, expected to be held in the coming weeks, could be lengthy and might result in the regional director declaring a rerun election, although Amazon does have the ability to appeal that ruling to the national board.
A rerun election could also be triggered through the unfair labor practice charges. The case could be brought before an administrative law judge and then appealed to the NLRB’s five-member national board, which could rule that a new election must take place.
“We’re talking about several weeks, if not months,” Chelsea Connor, director of communications for the RWDSU, told the Washington Examiner of the time frame. She added that the union has a “very strong case” against Amazon.
“We hope that the board will swiftly investigate the wrongdoing here and ensure that the workers’ voices can truly be heard at this facility,” Connors said.
Amazon reacted to the move on Monday by pointing out how soundly it defeated the union during the first election.
“The fact is that less than 16% of employees at BHM1 voted to join a union,” Amazon said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner. “Rather than accepting these employees’ choice, the union seems determined to continue misrepresenting the facts in order to drive its own agenda. We look forward to the next steps in the legal process.”
The initial vote itself gained outsize attention from lawmakers and celebrities who championed the cause of the workers. It has also made for odd bedfellows. Both Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a socialist, and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida threw their support behind the workers and against Amazon.
Sanders recently called one of the Bessemer employees to testify before the Senate Budget Committee to discuss why workers there were pushing to unionize. The employee, Jennifer Bates, said that it was less about wages as Amazon provides a companywide $15 minimum wage but more about how the company treats its workers and workplace conditions.
“Amazon brags it pays workers above the minimum wage. What they don’t tell you is what those jobs are really like,” she said during a March hearing. “And they certainly don’t tell you that they can afford to do much better for the workers. Working at Amazon [warehouses] is no easy thing. The shifts are long. The pace is superfast. You’re constantly being watched and monitored. They seem to think you are another machine.”
While the union vote was not successful the first time around, it did generate interest in the process among Amazon employees at other facilities, according to Connor, who said the RWDSU has fielded calls from more than 1,000 Amazon employees across the country about the unionization process.
Amazon was fearful that if the union had won the election, other warehouses and facilities might also decide to organize. Bezos, who is stepping down as CEO later this year to take on an executive chairman role, on Thursday addressed the situation in Bessemer as part of a lengthy letter to shareholders.
“Does your Chair take comfort in the outcome of the recent union vote in Bessemer? No, he doesn’t,” Bezos said. “I think we need to do a better job for our employees. While the voting results were lopsided and our direct relationship with employees is strong, it’s clear to me that we need a better vision for how we create value for employees — a vision for their success.”
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Bezos defended the company’s treatment of workers and said that while news reports might portray them as “desperate souls and treated as robots,” that is not the case. He described his employees as “sophisticated and thoughtful people” and pointed out that the company conducted a survey of fulfillment center workers that found that 94% would recommend working at Amazon to friends.
