Amazon’s win is latest victory in struggle between tech giants, workers

Amazon’s defeat of a union organizing effort in Alabama on Friday was the latest setback for workers who have been clamoring to assert more control over the technology companies that depend on them — one that showed how Silicon Valley giants still have a major edge in determining where power resides in the modern economy.

Labor advocates expressed dismay after a push to organize Amazon’s Bessemer, Ala., warehouse was rejected by a surprisingly large margin amid fierce opposition from the Seattle-based e-commerce giant. The advocates, who have complained for years about worker treatment at Amazon warehouses, came to see the Bessemer warehouse as a top prospect for gaining a foothold in one of America’s biggest and most powerful companies.

The defeat comes amid a series of clashes between the nation’s major technology companies and workers who say they are not reaping the rewards of the digital economy, at a time when the share prices of many tech giants have reached all time highs and created hundreds of billions of dollars in new wealth.

California voters approved a ballot initiative in November, Proposition 22, exempting Uber and Lyft from classifying millions of drivers as employees — in essence denying those gig workers a minimum wage and other benefits.

Similar fights have emerged at Facebook and Google, where large numbers of workers employed by third-party contractors complained they were not getting fair treatment by the tech behemoths.

After the Bessemer vote, labor advocates say they will argue their case that Amazon acted illegally to squash the vote — and, more broadly, are placing their hopes in a new administration in Washington led by avowedly pro-union President Joe Biden, who gave his blessing to the Bessemer effort.

“Once workers understand that historically the work has had better working conditions and pays much better than what Amazon thinks they’re worth, then you’re going to have this upheaval,” said Randy Korgan, who leads efforts to unionize Amazon for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who was not involved in the Bessemer drive.

Companies like Amazon and Uber say they are already at the leading edge of providing strong compensation, benefits and flexibility to workers. Amazon routinely notes it pays a $15 minimum wage to workers — which liberals have pushed for the national standard. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.)

“We hope that with this election now over, there’s an opportunity to move from talk to action across the country,” the company said in a statement Friday. “While our team is more than a million people around the world and we’ve created 500,000 new jobs since Covid began, we’re still a tiny fraction of the workforce. There are 40 million Americans who make less than the starting wage at Amazon, and many more who don’t get health care through their employers, and we think that should be fixed.”

Still, the prospect of a pro-labor president — at a time when bashing technology companies has become a bipartisan pastime on Capitol Hill as well — threatens to tilt the policy battleground against Silicon Valley. The companies are facing a new threat of regulation that could limit their power and upend their business models. And unions are hoping Democrats pass legislation that would drastically strengthen workers’ ability to organize.