Greater than two years after ALU’s victory, Amazon has not acknowledged the labor union at its Staten Island warehouse and continues to enchantment the results of the election there in a authorized course of that might draw out for years. ALU leaders say they’re annoyed that federal labor regulators haven’t ordered Amazon to start negotiating with the union.
Amazon didn’t instantly return a request for remark. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Submit.
Since its huge win, the management of ALU, which impressed dozens of follow-on campaigns throughout the nation, has skilled a schism. Some union leaders alleged that the president and face of the marketing campaign, Chris Smalls, wasted union assets on a press tour whereas ignoring essential organizing work, leading to a break up between the 2 teams and an ongoing lawsuit.
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Smalls known as the swimsuit “ridiculous” and mentioned ALU is “worker-led … not Chris led.”
Following a interval of overexpansion in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon slowed its progress, canceling the opening of some warehouses, and this week confirmed the closure of warehouses in Washington state and California. It’s below investigation by federal office well being and security regulators, a congressional committee chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of New York, which is investigating claims that Amazon allegedly hid employee accidents.
The trouble to unionize Amazon coincides with a interval of heightened enthusiasm amongst Individuals for labor unions, which received historic positive factors final yr after strikes disrupted elements of the financial system. The United Auto Staff below its new president Shawn Fain, received giant raises and different perks by means of an acrimonious strike in opposition to Detroit automakers final fall. Then the union held a landslide vote in favor of the union at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee in April. In the meantime, Hollywood actors and Kaiser Permanente nurses have walked out by the tens of 1000’s demanding larger pay.
The labor motion nonetheless faces an uphill climb. Final yr, solely 10 p.c of U.S. employees have been in a union, a report low, partly because of the explosive progress of the nation’s workforce. And a wave of high-profile victories at beforehand nonunion corporations, similar to Starbucks, Dealer Joe’s and REI, have but to realize first union contracts for employees.
Smalls instructed The Submit that the transfer to affiliate with the Teamsters “made sense versus engaged on separate campaigns” to arrange Amazon.
“The Teamsters have probably the most experience in terms of logistics on this nation so far as supply drivers,” Smalls mentioned. “They’ve cash, volunteers and locals everywhere in the nation.”
The Teamsters, who traditionally signify drivers and supply employees, introduced their intent to arrange Amazon employees in 2021, appointing Randy Korgan director of its Amazon Division.
The Teamsters, which final yr threatened UPS with a nationwide shutdown, may deliver recent momentum and organizing heft to the hassle to unionize Amazon. The narrowly averted strike received UPS’s 340,000 union members the strongest contract in many years, forcing the delivery large to abolish a lower-paid tier of employees and securing 48 p.c common raises for part-time employees over 5 years.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien has mentioned that he hopes the union can use the positive factors in the uscontract to encourage Amazon employees to hitch the Teamsters. A replica of the affiliation settlement between the events obtained by The Submit states that ALU will kind an autonomous native comprised of Amazon warehouse staff in New York Metropolis with the privileges and duties of ordinary Teamsters membership. It didn’t specify whether or not members can pay union dues to the Teamsters.
ALU board members from the Staten Island warehouse, in addition to associates from Amazon warehouses in California, Kentucky, and North Carolina, traveled final month to Washington to satisfy with O’Brien and different Teamsters management on the union’s headquarters, the place they mentioned a possible affiliation, Smalls mentioned.
ALU’s reform caucus and the Teamsters didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The transfer so as to add Amazon warehouse employees to its ranks builds on Teamsters President O’Brien’s pledge to take a extra aggressive method to organizing Amazon. O’Brien ascended to the union’s prime job in 2022, with the help of inner reformers, ending many years of Hoffa household management.
When ALU received the primary election at an Amazon warehouse, organized labor teams such because the American Postal Staff Union and the American Federation of Lecturers lined as much as again the group. Sen. Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez additionally confirmed their help.
However as Amazon has mounted steady authorized challenges to the union’s victory, and infighting between factions of the union have been made public, public and monetary help for the group has withered. Union elections held by ALU at close by warehouses in New York Metropolis and Albany failed. The Teamsters provide ALU monetary, authorized and structural help.
To date this month, the Teamsters have filed three unfair labor apply prices in opposition to Amazon on behalf of employees in Kentucky, Illinois, and Michigan.
