Amazon employees voted overwhelming an attempt to unite their warehouse in North Carolina, said the National Labor Relations Board on Saturday the last setback in the efforts of the labor organization at the e-commerce Gigant.
Employees of the RDU1 Fulfillment Center in Garner, outside of Raleigh, voted 2,447 to 829 against unionization with Carolina Amazonians United for solidarity and empowerment, or cause, an Upstart trade union founded by warehouse workers in 2022.
Organizers in the warehouse, with more than 4,000 people, were looking for a start -up wage of $ 30 per hour. The current wage range is around $ 18 to $ 24, Amazon said. The trade union also demanded longer lunch breaks and an elevated vacation time.
In a statement, leaders of the cause said that the election result was the result of Amazon's “ruthless and illegal efforts to intimidate us.” They did not say if they would challenge the outcome, but promised to try to continue to organize.
Eileen Hards, a spokeswoman for Amazon, wrote: “We are happy that our team could make their voice heard in Garner and that they chose to retain a direct relationship with Amazon.”
In the run -up to the elections, the trade union led by employees has sued the Labor Relations Board that accused Amazon of interfering with the protected trade union activity of employees. The company gave the preferred treatment to employees who did not support the trade union, according to the charges submitted by reason. Amazon also unfairly dismissed the co-founder of the Union a week before employees submitted a trade union election in December, Cause said in an application.
Amazon denied every election interference. Employees have the choice to become a member of a trade union, and the company talks “openly, frankly and respectfully” about trade union, Mrs. Hards said before the mood. She said that the co-founder of the cause was dismissed for “repeated misconduct, including rejecting derogatory and racist remarks to his colleagues.”
Mrs. Hards, who expressed by the trade union, said that the company already offered safe workplaces, competitive wages, leading benefits and consistent planning. The Cause Union, she added, “has no experience in representing employees or their interests.”
On top of what they characterized as resistance of the company, the organizers in the warehouse were confronted with an environment in the south that traditionally stood hostile to trade unions. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, membership of the Union in North Carolina was 2.4 percent last year, the lowest percentage in the country and far below the national average of 9.9 percent.
Amazon has aggressively torn out the trade union campaigns and blocked the negotiation process in several segments of its activities, including warehouses, delivery activities and supermarkets.
In 2022, employees voted in a warehouse of Staten Island in New York to form the first union of Amazon in the United States; It is now affiliated with the Teamsters Union. Amazon has challenged the election result before the court and has refused to acknowledge the trade union or bargain. Delivery drivers, who work for third-party parcel delivery companies that serve Amazon, have also set up campaigns with the teamsters.
The movements of the Trump government in the Labor Relations Board since the inauguration – including the replacement of the general counselor who was appointed in the Biden -Administration, which was considered friendly to work – employers can further encourage employers to clamp on organizing And refuse to negotiate, experts in the field of employment law, said employment law.
Employees at a location in Philadelphia van Whole Foods Market voted in January to be connected to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which set up the first Union Beachhead on the Amazon messenger chain. In an application to the Labor Board that disputed the elections, the company called President Trump by firing a Democratic Board member, who has stripped the Board of Directors of a quorum needed to make decisions.
In January, Amazon said that it was his warehouse and logistics activities in the Canadian province of Quebec, where trade unions had gained a foothold with some Amazon employees, and that it would dismiss 1,700 employees.
The elections of North Carolina is not the first failed trade union bid among employees of Amazon Warehouse. In 2021, workers voted in a warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., Open the trade union, but work officers later ruled that Amazon had an illegal influence on the elections. Employees voted a second time in 2022, but the result was too close to call, so that a labor judge ordered a third election. That vote has yet to be held and Amazon has denied misconduct.
“Ultimately, the greatest we fight for are dignity,” said Italo Medelius-Marsano, a member of the Cause Organizing Committee who works at the RDU1-Schip Dock, before the mood. “We ensure that Amazon knows that we are people,” he said, referring to the catch of the movement, “I'm not a robot.”
