The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Amazon’s first union overcomes hurdles, but faces new ones
When a scrappy group of former and current warehouse workers on Staten Island, New York went headto-head with Amazon in a union election, many compared it to a David and Goliath battle.
David won. And the stunning upset on Friday brought sudden exposure to the organizers and worker advocates who realized victory for the nascent Amazon Labor Union when so many other more established labor groups had failed before them, including most recently in Bessemer, Ala.
Initial results in that election show the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union down by 118 votes, with the majority of Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer rejecting a bid to form a union. The final outcome is still up in the air with 416 outstanding challenged ballots hanging in the balance. A hearing to review the ballots is expected to begin in the coming weeks.
Chris Smalls, a fired Amazon worker who heads the ALU, has been critical of the RWDSU's campaign, saying it didn't have enough local support. Instead, he chose an independent path, believing workers organizing themselves
would be more effective and undercut Amazon's narrative that “third party” groups were driving union efforts.
While the odds were stacked against both union drives, with organizers facing off against a deep-pocketed retailer with an uninterrupted track record of keeping unions out of its U.S. operations, ALU was decidedly underfunded and understaffed compared with the RWDSU. Smalls said as of early March, ALU had raised and spent about $100,000 and was operating on a week-to-week budget. The group doesn't have its own office space, and was relying on community groups and two unions to lend a hand.
Legal help came from a lawyer offering pro-bono assistance.
Meanwhile, Amazon exercised all its might to fend off the organizing efforts, routinely holding mandatory meetings with workers to argue why unions are a bad idea. In a filing released last week, the company disclosed it spent about $4.2 million last year on labor consultants, who organizers say Amazon hired to persuade workers not to unionize.
Outmatched financially, Smalls and others relied on their ability to reach workers more personally by making TikTok videos, giving out free marijuana and holding barbecues and cookouts. A few weeks before the election, Smalls' aunt cooked up soul food for a union potluck, including macaroni and cheese, collard greens, ham and baked chicken. Another pro-union worker got her neighbor to prepare Jollof rice, a West African dish organizers believed would help them make inroads with immigrant employees at the warehouse.
Kate Andrias, professor of law at Columbia University and an expert in labor law, noted a successful union — whether it is local or national — always has to be built by the workers themselves.
“This was a clearer illustration of this,” Andrias said. “The workers did this on their own.”
Amazon's own missteps may have also contributed to the election outcome on Staten Island. Bert Flickinger III, a managing director at the consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, said derogatory comments by a company executive leaked from an internal meeting calling Smalls “not smart or articulate” and wanting to make him “the face of the entire union/organizing movement” backfired.
“It came out as condescending and it helped to galvanize workers,” said Flickinger, who consults with big labor unions.