(New York) The US labor law agency (NLRB) on Monday ordered a new vote on whether or not to create a union in an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, saying the giant online business broke the rules in a poll earlier this year.
This decision, transmitted to AFP by a spokesperson for the agency, follows several appeals filed by the union RWDSU, which had accused Amazon of “illegal behavior” following the failure of a first attempt at unionization. in the spring at the Bessemer site.
The local NLRB official ruled that several union objections were admissible, including the installation of a letterbox on the warehouse parking lot by Amazon.
It therefore ordered the cancellation of the vote concluded in April and the organization of a new election, without however determining the date or the conditions of the new ballot.
The ruling “confirms what we have been saying from the start – that Amazon’s intimidation and interference has kept workers from having a say in whether they want a union in their workplace,” Union president Stuart Appelbaum said in a statement.
“As (the NLRB regional official) said, this is both unacceptable and illegal,” he added.
Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer rejected the creation of a union, believed to have been the first to emerge at a company site in the United States, after an intense campaign .
The small town of Alabama had received much attention at the time, with the vote seeing support for union workers – artists, Democratic and Republican parliamentarians, and even President Joe Biden – and Amazon, whose business flourished during the pandemic.
The group did not respond immediately to a request from AFP on Monday. Amazon is currently facing a group of workers in a New York warehouse also seeking to form a union.
The NLRB move also comes as another large American company, the Starbucks coffeehouse chain, is also engaged in a bitter fight over the unionization of three coffee shops in Buffalo, in the north of the country.
The management deployed significant resources to convince the employees of these three establishments to vote against the creation of a union. They have until December 8 to return their ballot, the count will take place on the 9th.