Amazon Union Scores Unexpected Win in New York Election, a First in the US:
In a first for the Amazon's US facilities, warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York, have voted in favor of joining a union. The union's win, if certified by the federal labor board, adds momentum an organizing movement that's been gaining steam around the country.
The tally of of 2,654 yes votes to 2,131 no votes came after six days of in-person voting at the warehouse and an intense campaign. In the lead up to the vote, the union filed complaints to the National Labor Relations Board alleging that Amazon engaged in unfair labor practices.
The Amazon Labor Union, a new group that was formed by current and former Amazon workers, emerged from workers' efforts to demand better COVID-19 protections in 2020. The group eventually began an organizing bid after some workers involved in planning walkouts were disciplined or fired. That included worker Chris Smalls, who went on to become the face of the organizing movement after his firing.
Separately, a vote on unionization at an Amazon facility in Alabama failed on Thursday, though the result could be affected when hundreds of challenged ballots are resolved.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Saturday April 02 2022, @10:57AM (11 children)
Anything stopping Amazon from shutting it down and moving it to say New Jersey? If the center is all about service the city of New York and surrounding state then they can just as well do that from NJ can't they? After all it's not like the customers are going to start shopping online someplace else ...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday April 02 2022, @11:10AM (8 children)
1. Packing up and moving is going to have a significant cost.
2. There's ongoing efforts to unionize other Amazon warehouses right now. As mentioned, Alabama is t he one that's been most active, but there have been organizing efforts in other places, which means that moving would pretty much only delay things a little bit.
I'm with the union on this one, since their main demands are "Hey, can we slow down the pace enough that people can take bathroom breaks when they need them?" and "Hey, could we arrange things so people aren't dropping dead on the job or routinely being sent to the hospital due to work-related injuries and illnesses?" Like, they aren't asking for ridiculously high pay (although Amazon could totally afford that), they aren't asking for a massive uptick in benefits, they're asking for a real effort to ensure that they're alive at the end of their shift.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 02 2022, @11:52AM
Anarcho-syndicalism, ftw.
MAGA!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Saturday April 02 2022, @12:24PM (6 children)
I'm not saying their demands are unreasonable, at least not yet. Question is how significant the cost is. After all on their scale it might be better to just pick it all up and ship it to a new location/warehouse complex. It's a warehouse complex so the cost is probably not as significant as one would assume. Just pack all the stuff down and ship it to the new place. The building in that regard is probably not very expensive.
As far as I know, mostly from the news here actually, there have been multiple votes for unionization and so far this is the only one that have succeeded. I guess this could be the one that opens the floodgate, or whatever analogy you would like to use, but it might also not be. As far as I know NYC is fairly lefty and liberal in that regard so it could be that there is support for it in a place like that but in other locations that are more conservative there might not just be as fertile ground. So for Amazon there might be some kind of benefit in moving to locations that are more inline with their desires and where the peons don't get uppity and keep making reasonable demands of their overlords. I'm not sure how they pick their locations but I gather it's probably from logistics and service points of view. In that regard I don't think it would matter all that much if the warehouse is in Staten island or across the river in New Jersey. That said it would probably more or less be the same workers, but they would now be even angrier so perhaps not such a great idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 02 2022, @12:42PM (2 children)
Maybe they could have a gig economy, where unemployed college students and homeless drug addicts with smartphones could deliver packages on a pro rata ad hoc fuck you basis? It would be like being a busker, or a barista, but with packages, and no health insurance?
(Score: 3, Touché) by looorg on Saturday April 02 2022, @12:51PM
Are they not already doing that?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday April 02 2022, @02:17PM
So, roughly the profile of the average Microsoft worker then?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 02 2022, @01:44PM
Amazon has been caught engaging in illegal tactics like installing it's own collection box and having traffic lights adjusted in order to make voting against them harder. This isn't a case where the workers didn't want a union. Bessemer is likely to unionize in their do over election because Amazon cheated to the extent that it couldn't count on the results at all.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Thexalon on Saturday April 02 2022, @04:05PM
I guess if your goal is to maximize shareholder revenue at all costs, that makes sense. Or, y'know, we could do the other thing where we start from the idea that there shouldn't be a class of people we're fine with working to death for basically no reason.
The fact is that Amazon brought the unionizing effort on themselves. If they had made working in an Amazon warehouse a decent job that you could do for 8 hours and then go home a bit richer and not much worse for wear, they wouldn't have had anybody talking about risking their jobs and being willing to shell out money for dues to make some changes. And don't tell me management couldn't afford to do that, not when they're reporting $33 billion in profit [aboutamazon.com]. With approximately 1 million warehouse employees, that's about $33,000 per warehouse employee. And each full-time warehouse employee, maybe getting $15 an hour, costs them about $29,000 a year, which means they could double warehouse staffing and cut the per-employee pace in half and still be profitable. And I'm guessing they could fix the problems at their warehouses a lot more cheaply than that.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Sunday April 03 2022, @02:21AM
"Question is how significant the cost is."
So, you saving a few pennies is worth the harm and death of others?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Saturday April 02 2022, @02:15PM
There are a couple reasons to not move operations to New Jersey. First, bridge tolls to New Jersey are significant, as is the traffic to cross by bridge or tunnel. Second, New Jersey is not really less likely to unionize than New York.
Other than that, there's no real barrier to moving a warehouse. Amazon just built a new warehouse around the corner from our house in Long Island. It took about 3 months from start to finish. But there's sure to be some decent algorithms determining optimal logistical locations; the new one they built is right next to the onramp for the Long Island Expressway and several significant arterial roads. Coincidentally it's next to a Tesla supercharger; Tesla has teased the idea of EV delivery vans so perhaps there's something in the works there.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2022, @12:06AM
More likely Amazon will continue to add more automation to their warehouses, cutting the head count. Eventually the union won't have any members left...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 02 2022, @06:34PM (1 child)
I hear that in other, European, countries a specific store may have both union and non-union employees and different employees may be from different unions. It's also illegal to fire someone for being part of a union.
So if someone doesn't want to be part of a union they don't have to. If they do they can join. If they later change their mind they can quit. If they don't like their union they can switch.
Doesn't that make more sense?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2022, @12:49AM
In the US that's also the case. There are tons of places where different unions work at the same site. It's just that they're usually doing things that are significantly different from each other.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 02 2022, @09:33PM
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