Amazon union lurches toward leadership election
Two years after clinching a historic victory at a warehouse in New York City, the first labor union for Amazon workers in the United States is divided, running out of money and fighting over an election that could determine who will lead the group in the near future.
Despite campaigns at several facilities in the past few years, the warehouse on Staten Island still is the only site in the US where the retail giant’s workers have voted in favor of union representation. Cracks emerged within the Amazon Labor Union ranks after it lost the votes at a second Staten Island warehouse and at one in upstate New York, spurring disagreements about the group’s organizing strategy.
Some felt Chris Smalls, the union’s president, spent too much time traveling and giving speeches instead of focusing on Staten Island, where the union still does not have a contract with Amazon. Prominent members resigned quietly or left to form a dissident labor group, which sued the union in federal court last summer to force an election for new leadership.
Although many of the union’s problems are internal, it also continues to face roadblocks from Amazon, which has resisted efforts to come to the bargaining table despite pressure from federal labor regulators to do so.
The company, for its part, has accused the National Labor Relations Board and the ALU of improperly influencing the outcome of the successful unionization vote. Amazon also claims the results — 2,654 in favor and 2,131 against — do not represent what the majority of employees want. About 8,300 people worked at the JFK8 Fulfillment Center at the time of the April 2022 vote.
“When the law allows management to drag out negotiations over years, and to use legal arguments to delay the progress that the workers have begun, it’s just an enormous hurdle,” said Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard University.
In January, months after the splinter group called ALU Democratic Reform Caucus filed its lawsuit, the union agreed to a court-brokered plan to allow rank-and-file members to vote on whether to hold an election for a slate of new officers. For five days that ended in early March, tables with ballots were set up outside the doors of the massive Staten Island warehouse.