(New York) Employees of an Amazon sorting center in New York begin voting on Monday to decide whether or not to join Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which recently created a surprise by becoming the first union within the giant online sales in the United States.
Posted at 10:52
About 1,800 employees are called upon to vote until Friday in a tent set up for the occasion near the site, with a count scheduled for next Monday.
The building, called LDJ5, is located in an industrial area in the Staten Island neighborhood across the street from the JFK8 warehouse, where 55% of workers voted in late March to be represented by ALU.
Second largest employer in the United States after the distribution giant Walmart, Amazon had until then succeeded in repelling the desires of employees wishing to regroup in the country since its creation in 1994.
Christian Smalls, president of ALU, said he was confident on Sunday about the vote at the sorting center. “We have positive vibes, we take advantage of the momentum,” he told AFP.
Two figures from the left wing of the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had come to support the movement during a rally in front of the building.
“This battle is not just about Amazon in Staten Island,” said Bernie Sanders. “Workers are sick and tired of sinking a little bit lower while billionaires like (Jeff) Bezos (the company’s founder, editor’s note) get richer,” he said.
“You have become an inspiration to millions of workers across the country,” he also noted, addressing union members.
If ALU’s win at JFK8 is bolstered by a second win, it could inspire other warehouses to jump in.
Members of the organization claim to have already been contacted by representatives of several dozen warehouses from all over the United States.
Motivated by the attitude of their company during the pandemic and more recently by inflation, several groups of employees of multinationals such as Amazon, Starbucks or Apple are currently trying to organize themselves.
Amazon for its part filed an appeal against the result of the vote at JFK8, considering in particular that members of the ALU had “intimidated” the employees and accusing the agency responsible for supervising the ballot, NLRB, of being biased.