Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionise in landmark win for US labour

NEW YORK (NYTIMES, REUTERS) - It was a union organising campaign that few expected to have a chance. A handful of employees at Amazon's massive warehouse on Staten Island, operating without support from United States labour organisations, took on one of the most powerful companies in the world.

And, somehow, they won.

Workers at the facility voted by a wide margin to form a union, according to results released Friday (April 1), in one of the biggest victories for organised labour in a generation.

Employees cast 2,654 votes to be represented by Amazon Labour Union and 2,131 against, giving the union a win by more than 10 percentage points, according to the National Labour Relations Board. More than 8,300 workers at the warehouse, which is the only Amazon fulfilment centre in New York City, were eligible to vote.

The win on Staten Island comes at a perilous moment for labour unions in the US, which saw the portion of workers in unions drop last year to 10.3 per cent, the lowest rate in decades, despite high demand for workers, pockets of successful labour activity and rising public approval.

Critics - including some labour officials - say that traditional unions have not spent enough money or shown enough imagination in organising campaigns and that they have often bet on the wrong fights. Some point to tawdry corruption scandals.

The union victory at Amazon, the first at the company in the US after years of worker activism there, offers an enormous opportunity to change that trajectory and build on recent wins. Many union leaders regard Amazon as an existential threat to labour standards because it touches so many industries and frequently dominates them.

But the win by a little-known, independent union with few ties to existing groups appears to raise as many questions for the labour movement as it answers: not least, whether there is something fundamentally broken with the traditional bureaucratic union model that can be solved only by replacing it with grassroots organisations like the one on Staten Island.

Amazon is likely to aggressively contest the union's win. An unsigned statement on its corporate blog said, "We're disappointed with the outcome of the election in Staten Island because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees."

The company added that it is evaluating options including filing objections based on what it called inappropriate and undue influence by the National Labour Relations Board.

A spokesman for the National Labour Relations Board noted that it is an independent federal agency and said its actions have been consistent with its congressional mandate.

The new Amazon union demanded the company start bargaining in early May and cease any changes to employment terms at their warehouse in the interim, according to a letter the group issued Saturday on Twitter.

The Amazon Labour Union also demanded the retailer respect workers' rights to union representation during disciplinary meetings, the letter said.

Amazon did not immediately comment on this.