Judge orders third union election at Amazon warehouse in Bessemer

In a mixed victory for the retail, wholesale and department store union, administrative law judge Michael Silverstein ruled Wednesday that a third union election must be held at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer.

Following a a spirited trade union movement inspired by Black Lives Matter and the circumstances during COVID, the first elections were held April 2021. The initial vote count showed the union receiving significantly less than a majority, but they successfully argued that Amazon had illegally interfered in the election. Most notably, Amazon installed a mailbox asking employees to submit their ballots, then surrounded the mailbox with anti-union propaganda.

After investigating Amazon’s practices during and leading up to the election, the National Labor Relations Board agreed with the RWDSU ruled a second election was necessary. That election took place in early 2022, and hundreds of disputed and uncounted ballots have prevented any clear picture of who won.

Now, more than three years after the first election, and more than two years since the second, it is entirely possible that no one who worked at the Bessemer location during the first election is still an employee there. A New York Times investigation in 2021, Amazon warehouses were found to have an annual turnover rate of 150 percent.

The second election was also hardly less contentious than the first. Both Amazon and the union have filed several grievances against the other, including a total of nine counts of unfair labor practices.

“The choice to hold them accountable in this way is one we made to ensure they cannot do this in another warehouse,” Chelsea Connor, the RSDWU’s national communications director, told APR. “Otherwise we’ll let a company with limitless power and limitless money get away with anything.”

On Wednesday, Silverstein ruled that Amazon violated the National Labor Relations Act by seizing union materials, especially from breakroom tables and bathrooms. In addition, it was also found that “monitoring employees’ trade union activities” and “threatening employees with factory closure” were violations.

“We have never doubted that Amazon would take any opportunity, legal or not, to deny free and fair elections to its workers at its Bessemer warehouse,” RSDWU President Stuart Appelbaum said in a speech. public statement respond to Wednesday’s ruling.

All of Amazon’s objections to the union were dropped or deemed “non-objectionable” by Silverstein. However, the company already plans to appeal the ruling. An Amazon spokesperson accused the ruling and the RSDWU of “trying to force a third round of voting instead of accepting the facts and the will of our team members.”

Amazon is one of many companies, including Trader Joe’s and Starbucks, currently arguing in court that the NLRB is unconstitutional. Conservatives have largely done that Welcome this development, in hopes that a sympathetic Supreme Court will severely limit or dismantle the agency and accuse the NLRB of exceeding its authority.

However, the RSDWU believes that the NLRB may have acted too late, and not done enough, to protect the rights of Amazon workers to organize and bargain collectively.

“There is no reason to expect a different outcome in a third election – unless there are additional solutions,” Applebaum’s statement read. “Otherwise, Amazon will continue to repeat its past behavior and the board will continue to order new elections.”

Silverstein has ordered Amazon to post notices saying the company has violated labor law, but the union hoped the judge would also grant the union access to talk directly to workers.

During both elections, Amazon made extensive use of so-called ‘captive audience meetings’, anti-union sessions where employee attendance is mandatory. By comparison, unions’ ability to talk to the workers they are trying to organize is severely limited.

NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo did that repeatedly argued that private public meetings are illegal, but the board has not yet changed its interpretation of the NLRA. Similar meetings were also a major factor in the United Auto Workers’ inability to unionize Mercedes factory in Vance.

Because of this imbalance, the RSDWU will appeal Judge Silverstein’s decision in an effort to obtain those “additional remedies” that it believes are critical to a truly fair third election.

However, if the union’s appeal is rejected and a third election is held without measures to level the playing field, the RSDWU still intends to do its best to win the third and hopefully final election.

But if that third election happens, it will be quite a way out.

It will likely take months or years for the calls from Amazon and the RSDWU to get through overloaded NLRB system. And given the recent re-election of President Donald Trump, whose first-term NLRB appointees were markedly friendlier to employers than President Biden’s, the shape of labor law in the coming years is still up in the air.