Why Amazon workers sided with company over union
When Graham Brooks received his ballot in early February asking whether he wanted to form a union at the Amazon warehouse in Alabama where he works, he did not hesitate. He marked the NO box and mailed the ballot in.
After almost six years of working at nearby newspapers, Brooks, 29, makes about $1.55 more an hour at Amazon and is optimistic he can move up.
“I personally didn’t see the need for a union,” he said. “If I was being treated differently, I may have voted differently.”
Brooks is one of almost 1,800 employees who handed Amazon a runaway victory in the company’s hardest-fought battle to keep unions out of its warehouses. The result — announced last week, with 738 workers voting to form a union — dealt a crushing blow to labor and Democrats when conditions appeared ripe for them to make advances.
For some workers at the warehouse, like Brooks, the minimum wage of $15 an hour is more than they made in previous jobs and provided a powerful incentive to side with the company. Amazon’s health insurance, which kicks in on the first day of employment, also encouraged loyalty, workers said.
Carla Johnson, 44, said she had learned she had brain cancer just a few months after starting work last year at the warehouse, which is in Bessemer, Ala. Amazon’s health care covered her treatment.
“I was able to come in day one with benefits, and that could have possibly made the difference in life or death,” Johnson said at a press event that Amazon organized after the vote.
Patricia Rivera, who worked at the Bessemer warehouse from September until January, said many of her co-workers in their 20s or younger had opposed the union because they felt pressured by Amazon’s anti-union campaign and felt that the wages and benefits were solid.
“For a younger person, it’s the most money they ever made,” said Rivera, who would have voted in favor of the union had she stayed. “I give them credit. They start you out and you get insurance right away.”
Rivera left Amazon because she felt she was not adequately compensated for time she had to take off while quarantining after exposure to COVID-19 at work, she said.
Amazon, in a statement after the election, said, “We’re not perfect, but we’re proud of our team and what we offer, and will keep working to get better every day.”
Other workers said in interviews that they or their co-workers did not trust unions or had confidence in Amazon’s antiunion message that the workers could change the company from within. Often, in explaining their position, they echoed the arguments that Amazon had made in mandatory meetings, where it stressed its pay, raised doubts about what a union could guarantee and said benefits could be reduced if workers unionized.
Pastor George Matthews of New Life Interfaith Ministries said numerous members of his congregation worked at the warehouse, just a few miles away, and had expressed gratitude for the job. But he was still surprised and disappointed that more did not vote to unionize, even in the traditionally anti-union South, given how hard they described the work as being.
In talking with congregants, Matthews said, he has come to believe that workers were too scared to push for more and risk what they have.
“You don’t want to turn over the proverbial apple cart because those apples are sweet — larger than the apples I had before — so you don’t mess with it,” he said.