Amazon union facing internal strife
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 A.L.U. 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. Smalls and other union leaders campaigned against the election, but the vote didn’t go their way.
In court documents, Arthur Schwartz, an attorney who represents the dissident caucus, said that of the roughly 350 union members who voted, 60% favored having an officer election in June or July.
The referendum, which had a low turnout rate, didn’t settle the legal backand-forth and internal power plays. Last week, Jeanne Mirer, an attorney for the union, argued in a legal filing that the federal court in New York should reopen the court-brokered plan. She called it a “flawed” agreement that violated the union’s constitution.
According to Mirer, the current ALU governing document requires members to pass an amendment or arrange a constitutional convention if they want to hold an officer election before a collective bargaining agreement is negotiated with Amazon. The current leaders also say the union has run out of money, which makes it challenging for them to conduct an election.
“It doesn’t matter who’s in the chair,” Mirer said during an interview. “Anybody who is a leader has to get Amazon to the table, and working against each other isn’t going to do it.”
Schwartz, the attorney for the dissidents, called the union’s legal claims “totally baseless,” arguing that the constitution at issue was imposed by Smalls — without a vote — in late 2022. He noted that the neutral monitor overseeing the implementation of the court-brokered plan - labor attorney Richard Levy - has scheduled candidate nomination meetings for May, which could allow an internal election to be held as early as June 11.
Smalls, a former Amazon worker who co-founded the union during the coronavirus pandemic, did not respond to multiple requests for an interview. Last year, he told the New York Times that he traveled to help raise money for the union. He also told financial news website Business Insider in December that he would not seek reelection as ALU president.
Meanwhile, two other prominent organizers, Connor Spence, the union’s co-founder and former treasurer, and Michelle Valentin Nieves, the union’s former vice president, have thrown their hats in the ring. Amazon fired Spence last year for violating a company policy that forbids workers from accessing company buildings or outdoor work areas when they’re off the clock, a policy critics say is designed to hinder organizing. He’s leading the A.L.U. Democratic Reform Caucus, while Valentin Nieves is running her own independent campaign.
Valentin Nieves, who helps run the conveyor belts at the warehouse that unionized, said she felt frustrated during her time as an ALU officer by how much Smalls traveled, alleging that he missed weekly financial meetings for five months straight. She said she spoke with him about reducing his time away and encouraged him to periodically go to public bus stop near the warehouse, where many workers gathered after their shifts ended. But she said Smalls didn’t take her advice.
“We need someone that is here. We need a contract and we need to organize the building,” Valentin Nieves said. “If we’re not able to do this, it’s going to have a domino effect, and a lot of Amazon workers are going to lose hope.”
One Amazon worker on Staten Island, Keanu Rivera, 28, said he voted in favor of the union two years ago and sometimes reads the emails he receives from the labor group. Rivera said he used to see organizers talking to workers all the time before the representation vote two years ago.
These days, he says there’s not much of that, a problem exacerbated by the Amazon policy restricting off-duty activity in work areas.
“It’s all Amazon,” Rivera said. “Amazon got the money to stall them.”