After years of efforts, labor organizers have still been unable to convince employees at Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) to vote to join a union. The lack of success is not for lack of trying. Amazon has successfully fended off U.S. labor unions since its founding in 1994. Union officials and warehouse workers blame the lack of progress partly on the high turnover rate in Amazon’s fulfillment centers. The unions are also fighting against Amazon’s decidedly anti-union activities.
The International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers has been trying to organize Amazon fulfillment center workers in Delaware and several nearby states for years now. In 2014, the machinists union helped organize a union vote by a small number of technicians and mechanics who worked on order-fulfillment equipment at the fulfillment center in Middletown, Delaware. It was the first vote of its kind at an Amazon warehouse.
John Carr, a spokesperson for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, wrote in an e-mail, “The workers at Amazon faced intense pressure from managers and anti-union consultants hired to suppress this organizing drive.” Amazon reportedly brought in a law firm that specializes in fighting off organized labor and held employee meetings where management tried to discourage votes in favor of the union.
That was not the first time Amazon had successfully sidestepped unionization within its ranks. In 2000, the Communication Workers of America started a campaign to unionize 400 customer service employees. Soon after, Amazon closed the call center where they worked, saying the action was part of a broader scale of cuts.
Union officials think Amazon was fighting so hard to avoid unionization to prevent a domino effect among its warehouses. If organized labor gained a toehold within its operations, it could be used to recruit tens of thousands more fulfillment center workers across the country. Amazon’s workplace practices in the U.S. have come under fire in recent years, as workers have detailed a litany of abuses, including ambulances waiting outside a facility to collect workers who overheated because of a lack of air conditioning.
Unions have seen a bit more success fighting Amazon overseas. A labor union in Germany has organized frequent strikes over pay and workplace conditions by some of the workers at Amazon fulfillment centers in the country. However, those workers do not have a union contract with the company. Some of those German workers have also traveled to the U.S. to picket in front of Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle for better benefits and working conditions.
