Amazon Warehouse workers in Alabama to vote to unionize

Amazon workers can break through in a company that is doing everything in its power to trample unions. Almost 6,000 employees in a Bessemer, Alabama, the distribution center will soon be able to vote on the advisability of unionizing; mailed ballots must be submitted by March 29and the National Labor Relations Board will count them the next day.

Someone, however, is not happy with the organizing efforts.

A person or entity created a crass and cartoonish anti-union website, Doitwithoutdues.com. “HEY BHM1 DOERS, why pay close to $ 500 in dues?” Reads a startup photo of a warehouse worker giving a thumbs up. (BHM1 is the name of the Bessemer warehouse.) “We’ve got you covered * with high wages, healthcare, vision and dental care, plus a safety committee and appeals process. You can do a lot more for your career and your family without paying membership fees. “

Amid cheerful decorations – an Amazon bundle with hearts and a GIF of a corgi spinning a disc – the site falsely claims workers will be locked in pay the contributions. (This is not true: Nobody is forced to become a member of the paying union, even if workers vote to unionize.) The site offers a portal for workers to return cards they have signed in order to apply for an election to the National Labor Relations Board.

At the footer, the site displays an Amazon logo. In an email, an Amazon spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied that the site is affiliated with the company.

The BHM1 warehouse open at the start of the pandemic, when Amazon hiring frenzy. The pandemic has also been correlated with a nationwide wave of worker organizing, including protests against dangerous conditions and fair wage; meanwhile, increased public scrutiny and growing demand gave them a little more leverage. Amazon workers have been fighting to organize for years, and Amazon has met them with union opponents Propaganda and surveillance, as good as dismissal. (Although it is illegal to fire an organization worker, Amazon workers in Alabama can be fired at any time for any reason without a union.)

If workers vote to organize, they will be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Stores Union (RWDSU). The RWDSU declined to comment, but previously supported Whole Foods Employeesattempted to organize and represented a Staten Island warehouse worker who was fired after speaking out for better working conditions.

In a statement email to Gizmodo, Amazon did not say it was anti-union in itself, but that “we don’t think the RDWSU represents the majority of our employees’ opinions.” It is unclear where the RDWSU’s “views” diverge from that of the employees, but Amazon has claimed it offers “some of the best jobs available anywhere we hire.”

This may still be true, but workers may also wish for things like job stability and a grievance process so they don’t have to choose their extraordinary jobs over things like go to the bathroom. Workers could also negotiate a risk premium, which the company granted then revoked a few months after the start of the pandemic. (In October, before the worst of the winter wave, the company said that nearly 20,000 workers had contracted covid-19.) Adding to years of reports of brutally long shifts under surveillance, recent reports have revealed overwhelming rates injuries in the company’s warehouses.

Amazon, The New York Times has stressed, did not approach a union since 2014, when the vast majority of 27 technical workers voted against unionization. A representative of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers then said the workers had “come under intense pressure from anti-union managers and consultants.”