With about 80% of ballots counted, some 71% of Bessemer, Ala., Amazon Warehouse Workers Reject Joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union
The National Labor Relations Board has finished counting all votes that weren’t challenged by either side, and the number of votes against a union exceeds 1,608, the total needed to reach a majority of the 3,215 mail-in ballots workers submitted. The NLRB hasn’t declared an official winner.
The Bessemer facility employs fewer than 1% of the roughly 950,000 Amazon employees in the U.S., but the vote emerged as a watershed moment for a company that hired faster than almost any private corporation in history last year.
Amazon has long opposed labor organizing and told its workers in Alabama that unionizing isn’t necessary, saying it pays double the state’s minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which is also the federal minimum. The company warned of the cost of union dues and highlighted what it says are the generous healthcare benefits it offers employees.
“A lot of us are in agreement that we don’t need anybody there to speak for us and take our money,” said Cori Jennings, 40 years old, who works at the Bessemer facility and voted against unionizing. Ms. Jennings said she and many of her colleagues were also eager for the national attention to fade: “We want our lives to go back to normal.”
Congratulations to Alabama workers and Amazon for the vote.
Why I Hate Unions
For a discussion of issues on public and private unions please see my take Why I Hate Unions
Mish
So Amazon is a company that doesn’t make many products but just shovels them around the country and copies the good products and puts them lower on the search results after they have made an Amazon copy. You would think the people doing most of shoveling would want more than $15/hr.
Not so sure. Parochial/Private schools from 1-8 have been open in my town since day 1: no covid/no disease/no problem
Forget the union. Jeff Bezos is getting his ass handed to him by Musk. Blue Origin is way behind SpaceX. I would like to see them neck to neck in the space race. Bezos is at the age where he should be concentrating on more important things than retailing. He needs to become a spaceman.
Hilarious! If Bezos is behind Musk (whose rockets keep crashing and burning every other day)… 🙂
You are way behind. His Falcon rockets work very well. The ones crashing are the Starship prototypes he is building for the really big projects. To give you a bit of informaton from the wiki of the Space Launce Market.
‘In the first quarter of 2020, SpaceX launched over 61,000 kg (134,000 lb) of payload mass to orbit while all Chinese, European, and Russian launchers placed approximately 21,000 kg (46,000 lb), 16,000 kg (35,000 lb) and 13,000 kg (29,000 lb) in orbit, respectively, with all other launch providers launching approximately 15,000 kg (33,000 lb).”
SpaceX owns that market now.
And what about Starlink which is now starting to be operational and will give high-speed internet by satellite to everywhere in the world.
Yes I read them but I haven’t had time to view the documentary but I will see it tonight. I have been following Space since sixth grade, lived next to the Kennedy Space Center and even had a couple of low level summer jobs there. I was disappointed that Bezos seems to have put it on the back burner. He has the motor which is good but Musk built a system and that is starting to make good money. Which of your comments specifically do you want me to comment on?
Amazon employees are smarter than I thought.
Apparently some more pain is needed for them to realize what’s going on. Some 50 percent of Americans cannot even afford a $500 emergency without going (further) into debt. Unprecedented in US history. It is a safe bet that almost all of these Amazon employees would be in that category.
I expect the outcome might have been different if the union was trying to organize in CA or NY. In the Southland, most working class people, having been abandoned completely by the liberal party, tend to look very askance at anything they might perceive as being liberal or from “the left”.
Joe Bageant’s people, I call ‘em. Read “Dear Hunting With Jesus” to get a great insight into how these people think. Joe’s been dead a few years now, but he’s stil well worth reading.
I will have to read this one.
I have not seen any explanation as to why only 2,536 people out of ~5900 workers cast votes. Why didn’t the remainder participate?
And of course, sore losers always turn to the lawyers in our USA:
“The union is now filing a legal challenge to the election and charges of unfair labor practices against Amazon. It’s requesting a hearing by the National Labor Relations Board, “to determine if the results of the election should be set aside because conduct by the employer created an atmosphere of confusion, coercion and/or fear of reprisals and thus interfered with the employees’ freedom of choice.””
Henry S. Farber studied union elections from 1970 thru 2010. Per his data, turnout averages were always higher than 80% historically. As@Eddie_T has speculated, the geographic location (Alabama) may have played a role in such low turnout due to a historical distrust of unions in the area. My speculation: the workers may not love Amazon, but they also didn’t see the need to have the RWDSU representing them. In other words, the employees weighed the “cost” of union membership (including dues, possibility of greater automation, etc) versus the “benefits” of membership & found the benefits lacking.
“A lot of us are in agreement that we don’t need anybody there to speak for us and take our money,” said Cori Jennings…”
“The union is now filing a legal challenge to the election…”
It sounds like the union is interfering with the employees freedom of choice.
When organizations begin prioritizing litigation over operations, it’s not a good sign. RWDSU’s money would probabably be better spent in other organizing endeavors in lieu of paying attorney legal fees.
Sigh of relief from the FED. They have a serious concern re wage push inflation.
Correction: you say you hate unions but then say your gripe is really about public sector unions. I’m left thinking its not well grounded logic. I agree on public unions.
I think I understand where Mish is coming from. I dislike private unions, but if employees want to unionize, they have the right. I think public unions should be prohibited.
You expected the capitalist mouthpieces to tell the truth??!! LOL.
I’m surprised by the margin of victory. I had expected it to be closer, given the efforts that the RWDSU put into this election.
You say you hate unions but you cite the private union example.
disregard, i reposte this corrected
“Congratulations to Alabama workers and Amazon for the vote.” ~ YES! I, too, Hate unions: twice a Teamster trucker, once a Longshoreman by affiliation (a story of entrapment). I then lived in a non-right-to-work State (is that an oxymoron?).