(Bloomberg) — A federal regulator certified the election victory of a budding labor union at an Amazon.com Inc. facility in New York last year — a decision the company plans to continue to fight.
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In Wednesday’s decision, National Labor Relations Board regional director Cornele Overstreet dismissed a number of objections by the e-commerce company that had sought to overturn the Amazon Labor Union victory at a Staten Island location last April .
The Amazon Labor Union won the angry victory among about 8,000 workers at the JFK8 logistics center. Amazon had appealed the result, arguing that the labor authority had violated its rules in a way that implied state approval of the ALU.
Despite the union’s recent victory, the battle with Amazon is not over. The Seattle-based company can now appeal the verdict to members of the working committee in Washington, where Democrats hold the majority. If it loses that appeal, it could simply refuse to negotiate with the union, setting in motion another series of grievances and appeals that could last for months or years.
“We’re thrilled at the moment,” said ALU interim president Chris Smalls on Wednesday. “It’s very historic for workers.”
The ALU leader called on Amazon to start negotiations with the union, as required by the regional director’s order. “If they are a good company and they are in good faith and they listen to their workers and their workers ask them to come to the table, then they should come to the table,” he said. “But that still needs to be clarified. Whatever they do, we have to make a countermove.”
In a statement, Amazon said it would appeal. “As we have said from the beginning, we do not believe this voting process was fair, legitimate, or representative of the majority of what our team wants,” the company said.
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Even without a collective agreement, official certification offers workers protections like the ability to bring a witness to meetings that could lead to disciplinary action and prevents the company from unilaterally changing working conditions, ALU attorney Seth Goldstein said.
The Amazon Labor Union — a grassroots initiative co-founded by Smalls, a fired employee — has lost some of its momentum since the Staten Island win. The group was defeated by a wide margin in two consecutive elections, one at a smaller facility across from the original warehouse and a second at a location outside of Albany, New York.
The retail, wholesale and department store union, meanwhile, is trying to represent workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Federal officials noted that Amazon’s conduct during a 2021 vote there made a fair election impossible, but a rerun of the election depends on disputed ballots.
–Assisted by Spencer Soper.
(Updates with Amazon comment in seventh paragraph.)
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