David won. And the stunning upset on Friday
brought sudden exposure to the organizers and worker advocates who realized
victory for the nascent Amazon Labor Union when so many other more established
labour groups had failed before them, including most recently in Bessemer,
Alabama.
Initial results in that election show the
Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union down by 118 votes, with the
majority of Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer rejecting a bid to form a
union. The outcome is still up in the air with 416 outstanding challenged
ballots hanging in the balance. A hearing to review the ballots is expected to
begin in the coming weeks.
Chris Smalls, a fired Amazon worker who
heads the ALU, has been critical of the RWDSU's campaign, saying it didn't have
enough local support. Instead, he chose an independent path, believing workers
organizing themselves would be more effective and undercut Amazon's narrative
that “third party” groups were driving union efforts.
“They were not perceived as outsiders, so
that's important,” said Ruth Milkman, a sociologist of labour and labour
movements at the City University of New York.
While the odds were stacked against both
union drives, with organizers facing off against a deep-pocketed retailer with
an uninterrupted track record of keeping unions out of its U.S. operations, ALU
was decidedly underfunded and understaffed compared with the RWDSU. Smalls said
as of early March, ALU had raised and spent about $1,00,000 (roughly Rs. 75
lakh) and was operating on a week-to-week budget. The group doesn't have its
own office space, and was relying on community groups and two unions to lend a
hand. Legal help came from a lawyer offering pro-bono assistance.
Meanwhile, Amazon exercised all its might
to fend off the organizing efforts, routinely holding mandatory meetings with
workers to argue why unions are a bad idea. In a filing released last week, the
company disclosed it spent about $4.2 million (roughly Rs. 30 crore) last year
on labour consultants, who organizers say Amazon hired to persuade workers not
to unionize.
Outmatched financially, Smalls and others
relied on their ability to reach workers more personally by making TikTok
videos, giving out free marijuana and holding barbecues and cookouts. A few
weeks before the election, Smalls' aunt cooked up soul food for a union
potluck, including macaroni and cheese, collard greens, ham and baked chicken.
Another pro-union worker got her neighbour to prepare Jollof rice, a West
African dish organizers believed would help them make inroads with immigrant
employees at the warehouse.
Kate Andrias, professor of law at Columbia
University and an expert in labour law, noted a successful union — whether it
is local or national — always must be built by the workers themselves.
“This was a clearer illustration of
this," Andrias said. "The workers did this on their own.”
Amazon's own missteps may have also
contributed to the election outcome on Staten Island. Bert Flickinger III, a
managing director at the consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, said
derogatory comments by a company executive leaked from an internal meeting
calling Smalls “not smart or articulate” and wanting to make him “the face of
the entire union/organizing movement” backfired.
“It came out as condescending and it helped
to galvanize workers,” said Flickinger, who consults with big labour unions.
In another example, Smalls and two
organizers were arrested in February after authorities got a complaint about
him trespassing at the Staten Island warehouse. The ALU used the arrests to its
advantage days before the union election, teaming up with an art collective to
project “THEY ARRESTED YOUR CO-WORKERS” in white letters on top of the
warehouse. “THEY FIRED SOMEONE YOU KNOW,” another projection said.
“A lot of workers that were on the fence,
or even against the union, flipped because of that situation,” Smalls said.
Experts note it's difficult to know how
much of ALU's grassroots nature contributed to its victory when compared with
the RWDSU. Unlike New York, Alabama is a right-to-work state that prohibits a
company and a union from signing a contract that requires workers to pay dues
to the union that represents them.
There was also a grassroots element to the
union drive in Bessemer, which began when a group of Amazon workers there
approached the RWDSU about organizing.
At a virtual press conference Thursday held
by the RWDSU following the preliminary results in Alabama, president Stuart
Appelbaum said he believed the election in New York benefited because it was
held in a union-friendly state and Amazon workers on Staten Island voted in
person, not by mail as was done in Alabama.
Despite some friction in the leadup to the
elections, the two labour groups have had a friendlier public relationship in
the past few days Appelbaum praised Smalls during Thursday's press conference,
calling him a “charismatic, smart, dedicated leader.” Likewise, Smalls offered
the RWDSU words of encouragement after their initial election loss.
For now, ALU is focusing on its win.
Organizers say Amazon workers from more than 20 states have reached out to them
to ask about organizing their warehouses. But they have their hands full with
their own warehouse, and a neighbouring facility slated to have a separate
union election later this month.
Organizers are also preparing for a
challenging negotiation process for a labour contract. The group has demanded
Amazon officials to come to the table in early May. But experts say the retail
giant, which has signalled plans to challenge the election results, will likely
drag its feet.
“The number one thing is going to be
fighting for the contract,” Smalls said. “We have to start that process right
away because we know the longer drawn out the contract is, workers will lose
hope and interest.”
Meanwhile, some workers are waiting to see
what happens.
Tinea Greenway, a warehouse worker from
Brooklyn, said before the election, she felt pressured by the messages she kept
hearing both from Amazon and ALU organizers, and just wanted to make the
decision herself. When the time came, she voted against the union because of a
bad experience she's had in the past with another union who she says didn't
fight for her.
“They won,” she said of the ALU. “So let's
see if they live up to the agreement of what they said they were going to do.”