On Staten Island, Amazon supervisors often refer to them as “training.” At an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, supervisors ambiguously refer to them as “meetings.” Amazon says it’s officially “small group gatherings.”
Whatever Amazon calls them, the company’s anti-union sessions for employees this year were part of an effort to fend off unions in two contentious elections.
Staten Island employees will vote in their warehouse Friday through Wednesday to join the Amazon Labor Union, an independent union led by current and former employees. The National Labor Relations Board will announce the results in the coming days.
Employees at the warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., vote on their representation by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The ballots for the mail-in election, which the Labor Council broadcast in early February, are due to be counted Friday and will be counted shortly after.
A union victory at both sites — each with more than 5,000 employees — would be the first in Amazon’s history in the United States and would almost certainly change the labor model that allows for same-day delivery. But the opportunities for the unions remain long.
The Amazon Labor Union did not qualify for the Staten Island election until its second attempt, after failing to sign the 30 percent of workers it needed in its first petition to NLRB organizers. elections because exhaustion is common once a union campaign begins.
The retail workers union is in its second election to the Amazon warehouse in Alabama, after losing by more than 2 to 1 last year. The labor council later ordered a re-vote after it concluded that Amazon had violated election rules, but unions tend to lose in so-called repeat elections.
Union supporters in both warehouses say they want to raise wages, improve health and safety conditions and receive more humane treatment from supervisors. “I went to the bathroom and had two managers chase me to see where we were,” said Michelle Valentin Nieves, a Staten Island employee. “I feel like we’re in the Twilight Zone.”
Amazon has used its regular meetings, which typically involve several dozen employees and last about 30 minutes, to give the wrong impression of what unionization entails, union supporters said.
In a video message played to employees at a recent meeting on Staten Island, the company said of the union: “From their Twitter handle to their chants, their answer to most things is to shut down Amazon. How would that solve anything?”
Amazon says it’s up to employees whether or not to join a union and that the mandatory meetings are meant to educate employees about what a union could do for them. The company cites its competitive pay — just under $16 an hour for a full-time entry-level employee in Alabama and over $18 an hour in Staten Island — and benefits, including health benefits for full-time employees once they join the company.
“We are committed to creating an environment where our employees can thrive and feel valued and respected,” said Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, adding that the company has spent $300 million on security projects in 2021.
Companies are allowed to hold anti-union sessions, known as “captive audience” rallies, until a ban goes into effect shortly before the ballots are mailed to employees or the personal voting begins. Amazon has typically held more than 20 meetings a day before those deadlines in the two warehouses.
During hearings on last year’s union election in Alabama, a senior Amazon employee relations officer said the company had brought in up to 29 employee relations officers from elsewhere, many of whom chaired the meetings, and up to nine outside consultants. A consultant testified that he usually attended the meetings and answered questions from employees.
Labor Department files showed that one consultancy had charged Amazon $3,200 per day per consultant, after expenses, and Amazon had paid more than $350,000 to another consultancy.
The Amazon official testified that the meetings lasted four weeks and explored a variety of topics, including contracts negotiated with other companies by the retail workers’ union, which took Amazon to claim that the union “has failed to supply its members.” “. At other meetings, the company told workers it “could get more wages and benefits than they had before the union, the same amount they had, or possibly less,” the testimony said.
Union workers typically earn more than comparable non-union workers, and it’s extremely rare for workers to see their pay drop as a result of union negotiations, said Jake Rosenfeld, a professor with union expertise at Washington University in St. Louis.
Workers at both warehouses say the company has highlighted similar themes at its meetings this year. “When a union is voted, everything is negotiable and the Amazon Labor Union has never negotiated a contract,” said the video message shown to workers at the Staten Island warehouse.
The video later added: “Under each of their proposals, you would pay hundreds of dollars a year in membership dues, and Amazon Labor Union would take millions. And remember, the ALU has no experience managing this massive amount of money.”
Perry Connelly, an Alabama warehouse worker, said he attended a meeting where company officials showed a recent budget from the local retail workers’ union and pointed out that there was no money in the union’s strike fund — suggesting workers should only if there was a work stoppage. A union spokeswoman said the money would be transferred from the national union in the event of a strike.
Several employees of both warehouses indicated that Amazon had adapted its approach to the meetings over time. In the run-up to last year’s Alabama election, for example, some employees complained that company officials had asked for their badges after asking questions or making skeptical comments, giving the impression that Amazon was following them. Company officials have generally failed to do this in recent months.
But workers at both warehouses said supervisors at times seemed to avoid inviting employees to meetings this year if they were candid about supporting the union, a way of potentially excluding those who could push back the company’s discussion points. Amazon said all employees normally attend one meeting a week and it had not excluded anyone.
The meetings appear to reflect a broader shift in Amazon’s approach to union campaigning: Following a nationwide settlement with the labor council, the company appears to have relaxed in some respects, giving union members greater access to break rooms to defend their cases, for example to colleagues (although the union for retail employees has filed suit accusing the company of falsely restricting that access).
But Amazon has become more aggressive in other ways.
In February, police officers in Staten Island arrested Christian Smalls, a former employee of the facility that now runs the Amazon Labor Union, after warehouse officials said he was trespassing while delivering food to workers.
Police also arrested two current Amazon employees, Jason Anthony and Brett Daniels, for obstructing government administration during the incident. The three men spent several hours in a cell before being released. Amazon has said it will only police Mr. Smalls called.
In an interview, Mr. Daniels that he, too, was sometimes barred from anti-union meetings for more than a week. When he recently learned about a meeting his colleagues were attending, he said he wanted to attend, but upon arrival was told he was not scheduled for it.
Mr Daniels said he had persisted and that a manager had told him he could attend a meeting at 4:30 am, towards the end of his night shift. But that didn’t get off the ground either. “I show up and they say, ‘Oh no, you’re the only one scheduled,'” recalled Mr. Daniels himself. “‘We have to cancel.'”
Karen Weise† Jodi Kantor and Coral Murphy Marcos reporting contributed.
