Historic vote for Amazon workers in the United States. Employees at the New York office voted in favor of the first union in the ecommerce giant’s 27-year history. It was not a landslide victory, 2,654 votes to 2,131, but from tomorrow the approximately 8,000 workers of the Staten Island warehouse will be able to register for the first Amazon Labour Union. The outcome of another referendum on the union at the plant in Bessemer, Alabama, will instead be decided by a judge due to over 400 disputed votes. The battle to create the first union of the second private employer in the United States was launched by Chris Smalls, a former Amazon employee who was fired on the spot in March 2020 for organizing a protest against the absence of anti-Covid measures in the Staten Island warehouse. Few believed that the 32-year-old African American would succeed in his fight, which began with a few dollars raised on the GoFundMe website in April last year. But after the pandemic, more and more workers in the United States are moving towards a union. One for all is the sensational case of the employees of a Starbucks coffee in Buffalo who, in December, created the first confederation in the company’s 50-year history.
While also in Italy the confrontation between national unions and Amazon continues to guarantee protection and humane working conditions for employees, in the United States the eyes are now on Alabama. The preliminary results of the vote show a no-win with 993 votes compared to 875 in favor of the union. However, there are 416 disputed votes. The hypothesis of a union had already been rejected by employees in 2021, but the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union had appealed on the outcome of the vote influenced by Amazon’s pressure on employees to say no. In New York, the shipping giant was also accused of using threats and surveillance tactics to stop its employees’ attempts to organize themselves into a union. Big boss Jeff Bezos is silent for now. A few months ago, in a letter to shareholders, he spoke of the need to create an environment suitable for “worker success” by labeling as “inaccurate” the allegations of inadequate and unsafe conditions in many of the company’s plants and yet promising solutions for reduce accidents at work which, for 40%, concern musculoskeletal disorders. He who knows if after the historic vote in New York he got the message.