Amazon warehouse staff working at a fulfillment center in Albany, New York have submitted to the National Labor Relations Board a petition for a union election, according to a report from The Verge. The application is for a union unit that will impact 400 workers at the Albany facility.
In order to file a union petition, more than 30% of the proposed unit must sign union authorisation cards, a move which the NLRB says has been taken. It is expected to verify the petition and will formalise an election in the next few days.
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This is the latest Amazon warehouse to organise itself into a union. The workers at the Albany facility have been organised by the Amazon Labor Union. The ALU has previously helped other Amazon workers unionize, albeit with mixed results. The Staten Island facility called JFK8 successfully voted to unionize in April, a historic first for the massive company’s workers. However, soon after, it lost a union vote in May at the LDJ5 facility, also in Staten Island. Warehouse workers who work for Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama had a union election in March, but the race was too close to call, leaving them in limbo.
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Amazon on its own has long been opposed to worker-led unions, especially in its warehouse facilities. In a leaked audio clip accessed by The Verge in April, the CEO of the company, Andy Jassy had addressed the mounting efforts from workers to unionise. In it, Jassy claimed that Amazon was unique in that employees have “unusual empowerment”. He went on to say that unions were “much slower and much more bureaucratic”.
In a statement to The Verge, the company’s spokesperson Paul Flanigan said that joining a union is an employees choice and that Amazon’s “focus remains on working directly with our team to continue making Amazon a great place to work.”