NEW YORK (WCBS 880) – Thousands of workers from Amazon’s Staten Island warehouses are pushing for a vote to unionize.
The Amazon Labor Union, an independent group of about 2,000 employees from four Amazon facilities in the borough, plans to seek an election by filing with the National Labor Relations Board next Monday.
The group’s plan for a unionization vote would require signatures from at least 30% of the workers at the four facilities.
“Workers are demanding Amazon to stop their union busting practices and allow workers to use their rights to organize towards collective bargaining without interference,” the Amazon Labor Union said in a statement Thursday.
“We intend to fight for higher wages, job security, safer working conditions, more paid time off, better medical leave options and longer breaks,” they said.
The group is being led by Chris Smalls, a former Amazon employee who made headlines last year when he organized a walkout at one of the company’s Staten Island facilities over pandemic working conditions.
An Amazon spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal that unionization isn’t the best option for employees of the company, which is the second-largest private employer in the U.S.
“Every day we empower people to find ways to improve their jobs, and when they do that we want to make those changes—quickly,” spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said. “That type of continuous improvement is harder to do quickly and nimbly with unions in the middle.”
Nantel added that the company has “made great progress in recent years and months in important areas like pay and safety.”
“There are plenty of things that we can keep doing better, and that’s our focus—to keep getting better every day,” she said.
Even if the workers get an election, unionization is no done deal, as Amazon could legally take a number of steps to discourage the move, like holding meetings to dissuade workers from voting in favor of it.
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