Bradley Moss is have a busy year. Moss, an adviser to union-avoiding company The Burke Group, has been paid by Amazon to cross the US from Bessemer, Alabama, to Staten Island, New York, where he holds meetings and scours warehouse floors to try to convince 12,000 employees of two warehouses to vote against unions.
Friday marks the end of the election vote in BHM1, the Bessemer warehouse where the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) is getting a makeover after Amazon breached labor law in last year’s election. In the first vote last March, the union lost by more than two to one. Meanwhile, a new election will run through March 30 from Friday through March 30 at the JFK8 facility on Staten Island, where the independent Amazon Labor Union (ALU), made up of current and former employees, will face for the first time. the first challenge to represent Amazon warehouse workers.
Both are struggling, in part due to weak US labor laws that favor employers. Amazon has poured millions of dollars into an anti-union campaign by flying in anti-union consultants like Moss, who was paid $375 an hour last year, according to his National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) testimony. Union organizers say the company has held mandatory 24-hour anti-union meetings, sent advisors to talk one-on-one with employees, papered the warehouse with anti-union leaflets and bought up anti-union Facebook ads. The unions have filed dozens of unfair labor charges during their campaigns, accusing the company of activities ranging from illegally removing union members to retaliating against union workers.
“Our employees have a choice whether or not to join a union,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement. “They always have. As a company, we do not think unions are the best solution for our employees. Our focus remains to work directly with our team to continue to make Amazon a great place to work.”
Workers in both warehouses complain about low wages, job insecurity, high turnover and insufficient breaks during physically demanding shifts of more than 10 hours. The minimum hourly wage at JFK8 is about $18, which some workers say is a pittance considering the cost of living in New York. ALU organizers say some workers sleep in their cars in the parking garage, while others work multiple jobs to make ends meet. “The first thing I would like to change is the fundamental recognition that we are human beings, not just a means of making them more money and getting as many packages out the door as possible,” said Isaiah Thomas, one of the staff members. at BHM1. “Because it is at the expense of people. People died there.” In May, an employee died after reportedly collapsing at the facility.
ALU organizers on Staten Island, who made their union public last April, say they saw what happened in Bessemer and learned from it, building a union that Amazon would have a hard time fighting. They noted that one of the company’s strategies during the BHM1 elections, common in anti-union campaigns, was to characterize the union as outside invaders rather than a worker-driven group. “That’s why we chose to organize ourselves independently,” said Connor Spence, an ALU employee organizer. “Because when you bring in an established union, Amazon paints them as a greedy third party preying on Amazon employees. But if the union is made up of Amazon workers, who just organize themselves at the base in the warehouse, it’s harder for them to attack us. They’re still trying. But they lose credibility when people find out we’re just workers.”
While both unions include the same giant corporation in successive elections, they are not equal. Some in the labor movement wrote off the ALU when it first started, notes John Logan, a professor of labor studies at San Francisco State University. As a new union with a fully volunteer workforce and no income from dues-paying members, they had fewer resources than an established union, allowing them to do less labour-intensive work, such as knocking on the door. Their main source of funding was a GoFundMe page. Organizers had to withdraw their original election petition in November when it fell below the 30 percent signature threshold because so many signatories had left the company. (Amazon’s company-wide annual revenue rate is reportedly 150 percent, a major challenge for organizers. Nantel, the Amazon spokesperson, attributes some of this to short-term employees signing up for additional revenue.) They had yet to organize a single workspace, let alone.” the richest and most advanced anti-union company in the world,” said Logan.
While Logan thinks the win is a bull’s eye, “I think anyone who thinks he doesn’t know what he’s doing is completely wrong,” he says. “I think there is a strategy, which involves quite sophisticated use of media and social media to generate an atmosphere of excitement and energy around the campaign.”
In recent months, organizers have covered Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok with images of swagger, combativeness and camaraderie. They call out union busters by: name† They’re posting videos from the alleged labor law warehouse violations† The crow about closing anti-union meetings† They advertise their celebrity support. “If they say something that’s optically super gruesome, we leak it online,” Spence says.
