An effort to unionize a second New York Metropolis Amazon facility failed on Monday.
The vote rely stood at 380 in favor of unionization and 618 in opposition to it, based on a Nationwide Labor Relations Board tally. The Staten Island facility, codenamed LDJ5, employs about 1,600 individuals.
The result’s a tricky setback for the Amazon Labor Union, an upstart labor group that won a resounding victory at a larger Staten Island Amazon facility in April. That facility’s roughly 8,300 staff are set to be the primary unionized Amazon staff within the nation — though Amazon has vowed to battle the results of the election by way of an appeal with the National Labor Relations Board.
The Amazon Labor Union, which is led by ex-employee Chris Smalls, nonetheless vowed to maintain organizing.
“The organizing will proceed at this facility and past,” the group wrote on Twitter. “The battle has simply begun.”
Additionally on Monday, the NLRB revealed it might switch the attraction of the JFK8 vote to a NLRB workplace in Arizona after Amazon efficiently argued that the company’s Brooklyn workplace seemed to be biased in favor of the union organizers. Within the coming weeks, the Arizona NLRB workplace will resolve whether or not to certify the Amazon Labor Union’s victory or order a brand new vote.
Progressives together with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had rallied with union activists in Staten Island forward of the LDJ5 vote, with Sanders accusing the corporate of making “horrible working circumstances.”
“I say to Jeff Bezos, who owns a $500 million yacht — I say, ‘Jeff, while you’re out in your yacht, I need you to consider the employees,’” Sanders stated at an April rally. “They need housing that’s inexpensive. They need to have the ability to put away a couple of dollars to ship their youngsters to varsity.”
The Amazon Labor Union didn’t instantly reply to a request for additional remark.
“We’re glad that our staff at LDJ5 have been in a position to have their voices heard,” an Amazon spokesperson stated. “We stay up for persevering with to work immediately collectively as we try to make every single day higher for our staff.”
In the meantime, the end result of a separate Amazon union vote in Bessemer, Ala. is hanging within the stability because the NLRB decides deal with 416 votes have been contested by Amazon and the union spearheading that marketing campaign, the Retail, Wholesale and Division Retailer Union.
Further reporting by Lisa Fickenscher
