Two years after winning a historic victory in a New York City warehouse, the first union for Amazon workers in the United States is divided, running out of money and battling elections that could determine who the group will lead in the near future. to lead. .
Despite campaigns at several factories in recent years, the Staten Island warehouse remains the only U.S. location where the retail giant’s employees have voted in favor of union representation. Fissures emerged within the ranks of the Amazon Labor Union after it lost votes at a second warehouse on Staten Island and at a warehouse in upstate New York, leading to disagreements over the group’s organizing strategy.
Some said Chris Smalls, the union’s president, spent too much time traveling and giving speeches instead of focusing on Staten Island, where the union still does not have a contract with Amazon. Prominent members quietly resigned or left to form a dissident labor group, which sued the union in federal court last summer to force elections for new leadership.
While many of the union’s problems are internal, it also continues to face roadblocks from Amazon, which has resisted efforts to come to the bargaining table despite pressure from federal labor regulators to do so.
The company, in turn, has accused the National Labor Relations Board and the ALU of improperly influencing the outcome of the successful union vote. Amazon also claims that the results – 2,654 in favor and 2,131 against – do not represent what the majority of employees want. At the time of the vote in April 2022, approximately 8,300 people worked at the JFK8 Fulfillment Center.
“If the law allows management to delay negotiations for years and use legal arguments to slow the progress that workers have started, that’s just a huge hurdle,” said Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard University.
In January, months after the splinter group called ALU Democratic Reform Caucus filed its lawsuit, the union agreed to a court-mediated plan to let rank-and-file members vote on whether to hold elections for a slate of new officers. For five days ending in early March, tables of ballots were set up outside the doors of the massive warehouse on Staten Island. Smalls and other union leaders campaigned against the election, but the vote did not go in their favor.
In court documents, Arthur Schwartz, an attorney representing the dissident group, said that of the roughly 350 union members who voted, 60% favored an election of officers in June or July.
The referendum, which had a low turnout, did not resolve the legal back-and-forth fight and internal power games. Last week, Jeanne Mirer, an attorney for the union, argued in a legal filing that the federal court in New York should reopen the court-mediated plan. She called it a “flawed” agreement that violated the union’s constitution.
According to Mirer, the current ALU governing document requires members to pass an amendment or arrange a constitutional convention if they want to hold an election of officers before negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with Amazon. Current leaders also say the union has run out of money, making it challenging for them to organize elections.
“It doesn’t matter who’s in the chair,” Mirer said during an interview. “Anyone who is a leader needs to bring Amazon to the table, and antagonizing each other is not the intention.”
Schwartz, the dissidents’ lawyer, called the union’s legal claims “completely baseless,” arguing that the constitution in question was imposed by Smalls — without a vote — in late 2022. brokered plan – labor lawyer Richard Levy – has scheduled candidate nomination meetings for May, which could see internal elections held as early as June 11.
Smalls, a former Amazon worker who co-founded the union during the coronavirus pandemic, did not respond to multiple requests for an interview. Last year he told the New York Times that he was traveling to raise money for the union. He also told financial news website Business Insider in December that he would not seek re-election as ALU president.
Meanwhile, two other prominent organizers, Connor Spence, co-founder and former treasurer of the union, and Michelle Valentin Nieves, former vice president of the union, have thrown their hats into the ring. Amazon fired Spence last year for violating a company policy that bars employees from entering company buildings or outdoor work areas when off-duty. According to critics, this policy is intended to hinder the organization. He heads the ALU Democratic Reform Caucus, while Valentin Nieves runs her own independent campaign.
Valentin Nieves, who helps run the assembly lines at the unionized warehouse, said she felt frustrated by the amount of travel Smalls made during her time as an ALU officer, claiming he spent five months had long missed weekly financial meetings. She said she talked to him about shortening the time he was away and encouraged him to occasionally go to the bus stop near the warehouse, where many workers congregated after their shifts ended. But she said Smalls had not followed her advice.
“We need someone here. We need a contract and we need to organize the building,” said Valentin Nieves. “If we can’t do this, it will have a domino effect and many Amazon workers will lose hope.”
An Amazon worker on Staten Island, Keanu Rivera, 28, said he voted for the union two years ago and sometimes reads the emails he receives from the union. Rivera said he saw organizers constantly talking to workers before the representation vote two years ago.
These days, he says, there isn’t much of that anymore, a problem exacerbated by Amazon policies restricting off-duty activities in work areas.
“It’s all Amazon,” Rivera said. “Amazon got the money to stop them.”
In addition to the vigorous legal opposition to the union’s victory, the company has continued to spend millions on labor consultants who often try to convince workers not to unionize. In 2023 alone, Amazon spent more than $3 million on such consultants for its delivery network, a target of the Teamsters union.
Last month, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Amazon, alleging that the company illegally attempted to disrupt the organizing efforts of an independent union associated with the ALU at an air hub in Kentucky. Amazon spokesperson Mary Kate Paradis said the complaint was “baseless.”
“We will continue to defend our position as the legal process continues,” Paradis said.
Back in New York, organizers pushing for internal elections have a lot of work to do. They still need to secure a new mailing list for all employees at the Staten Island warehouse, which has a high turnover rate. Schwartz, the dissidents’ attorney, has asked the court to intervene so that candidates the NLRB has found to have been illegally fired, like Spence, can campaign in non-work areas of Amazon’s property.
“The hope of the caucus,” he said, “is that we really use the election process to energize the people in the factory.”