Amazon materially interfered with the carrying out of a unionization push at its BHM1 fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, earlier this year, according to a National Labor Relations Board hearing officer. The federal labor board has recommended a re-vote, according to statements published by both Amazon and the plaintiff Retail, Warehouse, and Department Store Union.
The RWDSU's bid to be designated as the negotiating representative for over 5,800 Amazon warehouse employees was defeated in a landslide last spring. Despite widespread media coverage and public backing from national Democratic and Republican Party officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, just 738 Amazon employees voted in favor of the RWDSU, accounting for around 13% of the total workforce.
The RWDSU filed an appeal, arguing that Amazon employed deceptive tactics to influence the election. Its main grievance was that Amazon had ordered a vote-collection mailbox to be erected on the company's property. This behavior, according to the RWDSU, conveyed the appearance that the corporation would be participating in ballot counting.
Amazon's "conduct in causing this generic mail receptacle to be installed usurped the National Labor Relations Board's... exclusive role in administering Union elections," according to NLRB official Kerstin Meyers. “Despite the union's significant margin of defeat, the employer's unilateral decision to create, for all intents and purposes, an onsite collection box for NLRB ballots destroyed the laboratory conditions and justifies a second election,” the official stated.
According to the NLRB officer, Amazon also staged captive audience meetings and exposed workers to anti-union material, perhaps further slanting the outcome in the company's favor.
While Amazon management campaigned against the RWDSU, despite widespread dissatisfaction with salaries and conditions, the union was unable to attract any significant support from workers. The RWDSU leaders did not make any demands on corporate management to improve workers' circumstances during the campaign to unionize the Bessemer facility, which was a top-down operation combining big business politicians, celebrities, and union bureaucrats. Furthermore, the RWDSU's lengthy history of betrayals in Alabama and Georgia poultry industries, as well as the United Steelworkers, United Mine Workers, and other unions in the economically downtrodden Birmingham area, has utterly alienated workers from corporatist trade unions.
RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum, predictably, applauded the NLRB decision. “We heard compelling evidence how Amazon tried to illegally interfere with and intimidate workers as they sought to exercise their right to form a union throughout the NLRB hearing,” Appelbaum said, indicating that he intends to relaunch the campaign.
The judgment is now in the hands of an adjudicator in the NLRB's regional office in Atlanta, Georgia, who is expected to make a judgment in the coming weeks. If the judge rules in the RWDSU's favor, a fresh election may be held.
Despite the RWDSU's assertions that it was the victim of a corporate onslaught, the organization had bipartisan support from some of the most influential establishment politicians and corporations in the United States. The RWDSU ran a months-long public relations effort that included public endorsements from Biden and Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, among others. Early in March, the Democratic president released a video in which he called the Alabama election "vital." “The National Labor Relations Act [of 1935] didn't just say unions are allowed to exist,” Biden said. It stated that we should support labor unions.”
Despite broad opposition to the famously exploitative corporate titan, Bessemer workers rejected the RWDSU. Workers at the warehouse spoke to the World Socialist Web Site about the harsh working conditions, with several passing out on the premises owing to weariness.
The RWDSU, which declined to cite a single condition it wanted to alleviate, was viewed with suspicion by the employees in Bessemer. Even after being informed by WSWS reporters about a worker who collapsed and later died at the BHM1 facility, the RWDSU made no statements or requests.
The NLRB's decision to intervene on behalf of the RWDSU and push for a re-vote has nothing to do with preserving Amazon workers' democratic rights. Instead, the US president is attempting to elevate the pro-corporate RWDSU and other unions in order to contain rising class tensions in the US and avoid a surge of working-class opposition to social inequality, austerity, and the sacrifice of human life for corporate profit. These circumstances, which have been exacerbated by the global pandemic, are resulting in a growing wave of strikes and other struggles that are threatening to elude the trade union bureaucracy's grasp.
The White House announced the formation of a task team to help labor unions in April. The committee's goal, according to a White House labor consultant, is to "have more skilled, more experienced workers" while avoiding "labor strife."
While Biden has publicly complained that Amazon violated workers' rights in order to promote unions, the Democrats' true attitude toward companies' dictatorial powers was revealed this week at his public appearance at a Mack-Volvo assembly plant in Macungie, Pennsylvania. Biden sat for photos with Volvo bosses and United Auto Workers union officials, who collaborated to defeat Volvo workers in Dublin, Virginia's democratic vote to reject three UAW-backed concessions contracts. Biden has been silent on the Swedish multinational corporation, which unilaterally enforced its "last, best, and final" offer after workers voted to reject it, replaced striking workers with strikebreakers, and threatened to eliminate striking workers jobs. Rather than opposing this flagrant strikebreaking, the UAW forced workers to vote on the same contract they had previously rejected, claiming it had been approved by 17 votes.
If the RWDSU were to win a re-vote in Bessemer, Amazon workers would face a war on two fronts: against the company and against the union, similar to the Volvo workers in Virginia. That is why Volvo employees organized their own, independent rank-and-file committee to connect with workers at Mack Trucks, in Detroit and other cities' auto plants, and with Volvo employees in Belgium and other countries. Whether the RWDSU enters the Bessemer warehouse or not, Amazon workers, like Volvo workers, Amazon workers in Baltimore, and an increasing number of workers across the US and globally, will have to form rank-and-file committees.
The RWDSU's efforts to rerun an election were met with scorn by a worker at Amazon's BWI2 site in Baltimore, who is also a member of the Baltimore Amazon Workers Rank-and-File Committee. He said that the RWDSU was employing a "deceptive tactic" to "control workers" at the firm. The worker referred to an incident during the Volvo strike in which Amazon executives traveled down to the NRV facility, which manufactures the company's delivery trucks, to end the strike.
The worker stated, "They tried to intervene and influence contract negotiations." Despite this, “Volvo employees voted against all three versions of the contract” provided to them. Despite this, “the UAW eventually forced them to accept a fraudulent and unreasonable contract with the support of Volvo executives.”
What happens at Volvo affects what can happen at Amazon warehouses, according to a recent statement from the Baltimore Amazon Workers Rank-and-File Committee. Efforts to limit the working class's struggles to a single workplace must be met with equal and opposite force by the working class. Do the bosses want to keep these conflicts local? Then we have to release them into the global sphere.”
