Amazon appears to have enough votes to block a union effort at a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, proving the might of the online shopping giant and cutting off a path that labor activists had hoped would lead to similar efforts throughout the company and beyond.
The company crossed the threshold to secure a majority of votes, with 1,798 warehouse workers rejecting the union and 738 voting in favor.
The National Labor Relations Board, which is overseeing the process, was close to finishing the final count on Friday. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which is organizing the Amazon workers in Bessemer, said that 3,215 votes were sent in – about 55% of the nearly 6,000 workers who were eligible to vote. The union says hundreds of those votes are being contested, mostly by Amazon, but did not specify a number.
The union push was the biggest in Amazon’s 26-year history and only the second time that an organizing effort from within the company had come to a vote. But Bessemer was always viewed as a long shot since it pitted the country’s second-largest employer against nearly 6,000 workers in a state where laws don’t favor unions.
That the labor movement in Bessemer even got this far was unexpected. Amazon has an undefeated record of snuffing out union efforts before they can spread. And at a time when the economy is still trying to recover and companies have been eliminating jobs, it is one of the few places still hiring during the pandemic, adding 500,000 workers last year alone.