Alu had created the surprise in early April by becoming the first union of the company in the United States, within the JFK8 warehouse in the Quarten Island district in New York.
Le Monde with AFP
Christian Smalls, the president of Amazon Labor Union (Alu), failed to convince employees of the Amazon LDJ5 Logistics Center in the Staten Island district, in New York, to follow the example of sound neighbor, the JFK8 center. LDJ5 employees voted 62 % against the arrival of the organization on their site.
According to a statement transmitted online, 618 employees voted no to the question of whether they wanted to be represented by Alu, against 380 having voted yes. On the approximately 1,633 employees called to rule last week, during a spread out of April 25 to 29, 998 expressed themselves, which represents a participation rate of 61 %.
a Background
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint. We all know that there will be victories and defeats,” reacted shortly after the count Christian Smalls, the president of Alu. For him, the difference mainly kept to the fact that the unionists leading the campaign in JFK8 have been working there for several years, while those who animated the fight at LDJ5 “were only there for a few months”. For the rest, the team “will do a cut, reassess the situation, regain strength […] and return to combat,” he assured.
Alu had created the surprise in early April by becoming the first union of the company in the United States, within the JFK8 warehouse. Second employer in the United States after the Walmart distribution giant, Amazon had hitherto managed to repel the inclinations of employees wishing to come together in the country since its creation in 1994.
In the wake of its first success, ALU aroused the enthusiasm, its members ensuring that it has been contacted by warehouse representatives all over the country. The organization hoped to garner a new victory at the LDJ5 sorting center, located on the other side of the street.
“I am quite upset,” said Michael Aguilar, an employee at LDJ5. “Many workers openly said they were against the union (…) but there were also a lot of indecisive,” he said. They were obviously “convinced by Amazon’s propaganda” which “used all the low blows so that we do not win on another site”.
support by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
The American president, Joe Biden, himself had delivered an energetic plea in favor of the unions in early April, declaring during his intervention: “Besides, Amazon, we arrive …” Two stars of the left Democrats, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also came to support the movement in front of the sorting center LDJ5 on the eve of the start of the ballot.
The company, for its part, has filed an appeal against the result of the vote at JFK8, considering in particular that members of the aluminum had “intimidated” the employees and accusing the New York Antenna of the National Labor Relations BOARD – Independent agency of the American federal government responsible for leading the union elections – for being biased. An NLRB official of another antenna where the file was relocated to Phoenix, agreed to hold an audience on group objections, on May 23, believing that they could “constitute a reason for cancellation of the election “.
Motivated by the attitude of their company during the pandemic, in particular on health protections, and more recently by inflation, several groups of employees in different companies are currently trying to organize.
At Starbucks in particular, in the wake of a first symbolic victory in December, employees of more than 250 cafes filed a file for the organization of a vote and more than forty A, until now , voted for the creation of a union within their establishment.