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Amazon Warehouse Workers Decide Not to Unionize Following Contentious Campaign

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Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, voted against a bid to unionize.

Although hundreds of the ballots were challenged, Amazon’s margin of victory was large enough to render the contested votes irrelevant.

The National Labor Relations Board counted the vote on a live teleconference that began Thursday and resumed Friday morning with a small group of observers including representatives of both Amazon and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

The NLRB received 3,215 total ballots, meaning just 55 percent of the warehouse’s workers voted in the election.

The labor board only needed to count about 2,300 ballots before Amazon reached the 50 percent threshold of 1,608 “no” votes.

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Amazon’s 5,805 Bessemer workers would’ve joined the RWDSU if the vote had succeeded.

“Our system is broken, Amazon took full advantage of that, and we will be calling on the labor board to hold Amazon accountable for its illegal and egregious behavior during the campaign,” RWDSU president Stuart Appelbaum said in a statement on Thursday night.

“But make no mistake about it; this still represents an important moment for working people and their voices will be heard.”

The RWDSU may file a challenge to the election within seven days, according to NLRB rules.

Critics had accused Amazon of attempting to improperly interfere in the union vote with tactics such as posting anti-union posters in the facility’s bathrooms.

The company introduced an initiative to pay unhappy workers $1,000 to quit, which critics said was an attempt to bribe pro-union workers to leave, The Washington Post reported.

But Amazon defended its actions in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation last week, saying it regularly posts fliers in bathrooms to ensure its workers know about important information.

Additionally, the company said its program to pay workers to quit is nothing new and has been in place since 2014.

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In February, the NLRB rejected Amazon’s bid to delay the election because the vote was set to take place via mail due to the pandemic. Amazon argued that some workers would be disenfranchised as a result.

Pro-union workers demanded better treatment, higher wages, improved training and safety standards, job security, less surveillance, additional hazard pay, more breaks and added benefits, according to the RWDSU.

“Amazon presents a threat to the very fabric of society and the social contract we work to uphold for all working people,” the RWDSU said in a statement on its website.

Do you think these Amazon workers should have unionized?

“Corporations like Amazon have built decades of increasingly bold and aggressive attacks on workers’ rights that have dramatically eroded union density.”

Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer are paid $15.30 per hour at minimum, receive health and dental insurance, are able to have their 401(k) plans matched and may receive college tuition reimbursement, spokeswoman Heather Knox recently told the DCNF.

The Bessemer Amazon workers first filed a notice of a vote to form a union in November 2020. The vote began on Feb. 8 and ended March 29.

The unionization effort garnered nationwide attention, with multiple congressional delegations and union activists visiting the Bessemer warehouse to endorse the effort. President Joe Biden and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio both supported the effort.

“The choice is easy — I support the workers,” Rubio wrote in a March USA Today editorial.

Amazon attacked Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on Twitter last month after the pair slammed the company.

In 2000, the company defeated attempts by the Communications Workers of America and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union to unionize thousands of employees.

In 2014, a group of Amazon workers in Middletown, Delaware, voted overwhelmingly against unionization, according to The Seattle Times.

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A version of this article appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation website.

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