The US National Labor Relations Board has given Amazon until April 22 to substantiate its objections to last week’s election in New York.
The US National Labor Relations Board has given Amazon until April 22 to substantiate its objections to last week’s election in New York.
Amazon.com accused the new union at a New York warehouse of threatening workers if they didn’t vote to organize, an allegation that a lawyer for the workers’ group called “really absurd.”
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A second union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which lost a bid to set up an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, also objected to that union election Thursday.
The US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has given Amazon until April 22 to substantiate its objections to last week’s election in New York in which Staten Island workers voted to create the company’s first US union . Amazon asked for additional time to present evidence because its objections were “substantial,” according to a filing filed Wednesday.
A confirmed election result would give organized labor a foothold at the second largest private employer in the United States, with the potential to change the way Amazon manages its finely tuned operations.
About 55% of workers who voted in the election at Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse in New York’s Staten Island neighborhood chose to join the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which demands higher wages and job security. Since the finding, US workers from an additional 50 Amazon locations have contacted the union, the group’s chairman said.
Amazon’s planned objections to the result include that ALU disrupted employees in the queue and that long waits depressed turnout, Amazon’s filing said. Around 58% of those entitled to vote cast their votes in person over a period of several days.
Eric Milner, an attorney at law firm Simon & Milner representing ALU, dismissed Amazon’s claims as false and said they would be overruled.
“To say that the Amazon Union threatened workers is really absurd,” he said. “The Amazon Labor Union are Amazon employees.”
Separately, RWDSU on Thursday objected to the election in Bessemer, Alabama, in which Amazon workers voted against unionization. It was the second election in Bessemer after the NLRB found that Amazon had improperly interfered in the first campaign there last year. The latest result is still pending amid hundreds of contested ballots and now objections from RWDSU that could delay a result for months.
Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said, “We want our employees’ voices to be heard, and we hope the NLRB will count every valid vote.”
In a filing, RWDSU said Amazon unlawfully removed pro-union literature from non-work areas and fired an employee who, among other objections, spoke out for the union at mandatory work meetings. RWDSU said these were reasons for the NLRB to overturn the finding.
Amazon itself criticized RWDSU’s behavior, such as the union’s communication with workers about the use of a mailbox on the warehouse premises, adding that filing objections is a standard procedure.
The retailer faces a high bar when it shows the New York union violated rules on working with employees that influenced the outcome, said John Logan, a labor professor at San Francisco State University.
In addition, the NLRB usually treats alleged employer abuses more seriously than alleged union misconduct because companies have greater power over workers, he said.
“It’s going to be really tough” for Amazon, he said.
