Greater than two years after ALU’s victory, Amazon has not acknowledged the labor union at its Staten Island warehouse and continues to enchantment the results of the election there in a authorized course of that might draw out for years. ALU leaders say they’re annoyed that federal labor regulators haven’t ordered Amazon to start negotiating with the union.
Amazon didn’t instantly return a request for remark. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Submit.
Since its large win, the management of ALU, which impressed dozens of follow-on campaigns throughout the nation, has skilled a schism. Some union leaders alleged that the president and face of the marketing campaign, Chris Smalls, wasted union sources on a press tour whereas ignoring necessary organizing work, leading to a break up between the 2 teams and an ongoing lawsuit.
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Smalls known as the go well with “ridiculous” and stated ALU is “worker-led … not Chris led.”
Following a interval of overexpansion in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon slowed its development, canceling the opening of some warehouses, and this week confirmed the closure of warehouses in Washington state and California. It’s beneath investigation by federal office well being and security regulators, a congressional committee chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the U.S. lawyer for the Southern District of New York, which is investigating claims that Amazon allegedly hid employee accidents.
The hassle to unionize Amazon coincides with a interval of heightened enthusiasm amongst Individuals for labor unions, which received historic good points final 12 months after strikes disrupted components of the financial system. The United Auto Employees beneath its new president Shawn Fain received giant raises and different perks via an acrimonious strike towards Detroit automakers final fall. Then the union held a landslide vote in favor of the union at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee in April. In the meantime, Hollywood actors and Kaiser Permanente nurses have walked out by the tens of hundreds demanding increased pay.
The labor motion nonetheless faces an uphill climb. Final 12 months, solely 10 p.c of U.S. staff had been in a union, a document low, partially because of the explosive development of the nation’s workforce. And a wave of high-profile victories at beforehand nonunion corporations, similar to Starbucks, Dealer Joe’s and REI, has but to attain first union contracts for staff.
Smalls instructed The Submit that the transfer to affiliate with the Teamsters “made sense versus engaged on separate campaigns” to arrange Amazon.
“The Teamsters have probably the most experience in relation to logistics on this nation so far as supply drivers,” Smalls stated. “They’ve cash, volunteers and locals everywhere in the nation.”
The Teamsters, who traditionally characterize drivers and supply staff, introduced their intent to arrange Amazon staff in 2021, appointing Randy Korgan as director of its Amazon Division.
The Teamsters, which final 12 months threatened UPS with a nationwide shutdown, may convey contemporary momentum and organizing heft to the hassle to unionize Amazon. The narrowly averted strike received UPS’s 340,000 union members the strongest contract in many years, forcing the delivery large to abolish a lower-paid tier of staff and securing 48 p.c common raises for part-time staff over 5 years.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien has stated that he hopes the union can use the good points in the uscontract to encourage Amazon staff to hitch the Teamsters. A duplicate of the affiliation settlement between the events obtained by The Submit states that ALU will kind an autonomous native made up of Amazon warehouse workers in New York Metropolis with the privileges and duties of ordinary Teamsters membership. It didn’t specify whether or not members pays union dues to the Teamsters.
ALU board members from the Staten Island warehouse, in addition to associates from Amazon warehouses in California, Kentucky and North Carolina, traveled final month to Washington to satisfy with O’Brien and different Teamsters management on the union’s headquarters, the place they mentioned a possible affiliation, Smalls stated.
ALU’s reform caucus and the Teamsters didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The transfer so as to add Amazon warehouse staff to its ranks builds on O’Brien’s pledge to take a extra aggressive strategy to organizing Amazon. O’Brien ascended to the union’s high job in 2022, with the help of inside reformers, ending many years of Hoffa household management.
When ALU received the primary election at an Amazon warehouse, organized labor teams such because the American Postal Employees Union and the American Federation of Academics lined as much as again the group. Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) additionally confirmed their help.
However as Amazon has mounted steady authorized challenges to the union’s victory, and infighting between factions of the union has been made public, public and monetary help for the group has withered. Union elections held by ALU at close by warehouses in New York Metropolis and Albany failed. The Teamsters provide ALU monetary, authorized and structural help.
To date this month, the Teamsters have filed three unfair labor apply fees towards Amazon on behalf of staff in Kentucky, Illinois and Michigan.
