A federal labor board on Monday will count ballots cast by warehouse workers in a second Amazon union election on Staten Island.
The National Labor Relations Board is overseeing the election and expects to finish tallying the votes by Monday evening.
A separate election held last month gave a nascent group of organizers known as the Amazon Labor Union a surprise victory when workers at a different Staten Island facility voted in favor of unionizing. That was a first for Amazon in the U.S.
But it’s unclear whether the ALU can replicate its success. There are fewer workers eligible to vote this time around – about 1,500 compared with 8,300 – and turnover at the facility is high. There are also fewer organizers involved in the latest election than the one before it.
The same obstacles that plagued the effort the first time, including Amazon’s aggressive anti-union tactics, are at play again. In the lead-up to the election, Amazon continued to hold mandatory meetings to persuade its workers to reject the union effort, posted anti-union flyers and launched a website urging workers to “vote NO.”