by
New York
CNN
–
North Carolina is a state that is generally hostile to trade unions. Amazon is a company that is historically enormously hostile to trade unions. Now an UpStart Union is trying to represent more than 4,000 Amazon employees at one of the facilities of the online retailer there.
The National Labor Relations Board supervises a six -day vote from Monday, with voices that will be counted on Saturday. A victory of the Union, Carolina Amazonians United for solidarity and empowerment, or cause, in the city of Garner Would only be the second Amazon facility to see a trade union win a representation voice, after an election of 2022 in one of the most important sorting and distribution centers of the company in Staten Island, New York.
Amazon, the second largest employer of the private sector, has had to deal with increasing pressure from trade unions in recent months. And despite the fact that North Carolina has the lowest percentage of membership of the trade union among employees of a State-Slechts 2.4% of employees in general, which less than a quarter of the national average IS meaning leaders of the Union’s efforts that they have faith in the outcome of the vote.
“As you think that Amazon did everything to ensure that we don’t win,” Italo Medelius-Marsano, an Amazon employee and one of the leaders of the campaign, told CNN. “The amount of money that Amazon flows into this, the people they are flying inside to hire us, the propaganda – that tells us all that they are afraid. That fear tells us that they know that we are about to do something big. ”
The company said it is convinced that employees in Garner, a city of 35,000 just outside Raleigh, want to keep the sorting and distribution warehouse vocational union.
“We believe that our employees prefer opportunities to make their unique voice heard by working directly with our team,” said a statement by Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards. “The fact is that Amazon already offers what many trade unions request: safe, inclusive workplaces, competitive wages, leading benefits in the industry.”
The company said that employees in the facility pays a start -up wage of $ 18.50 per hour and a top wage of $ 23.80 per hour. The organizers of the Union said they will insist $ 30 per hour.
“I would challenge everyone to say that $ 20 per hour here is a livable wage,” said Medelius-Marsano. “In the Raleigh area that is a blow to the face. Given the win at Amazon and what it is worth, $ 30 per hour is incredibly reasonable. ”
Amazon has a market capitalization of $ 2.4 trillion and earned $ 59 Billon from net result in 2024, almost double what it made the year before.
But even if the trade union wins, it can take years to negotiate a first contract. Amazon has continued to dispute the vote of the Union Representation that lost it in the States of Island facility before the court, almost three years after the NLRB had certified the voting results. And it has refused to negotiate with the Amazon Willing Union, the Upstart Union who has won the mood, or the teamsters Union, with which Alu -members voted at Affiliate last year.
“As we have shared before, we strongly disagree with the outcome of the elections at (Staten Island),” Hards said. “Both the NLRB and the Alu have wrongly influenced the outcome and that is why we do not believe that this represents what the majority of our team want.” The official total showed that 55% of employees who voted the trade union.
Organizers in Garner said they have received support from other trade unions that try to organize other Amazon facilities and who learned it from earlier defeats at the company. Amazon has reported the trade union of organizing voices twice in a facility in Bessemer, Alabama, as well as in a second States Island facility alongside those who voted for the Union, as well as a just outside Albany, New York.
But the organizers in North Carolina said that the fact that they are an independent union is an advantage.
“Amazon paints us as an external group,” said Ryan Brown, an organizer of the Union who was fired by Amazon in December, After five years at the company. “But the employees here know that we are not outsiders. Those of us who have lived in the south of our lives know our culture, namely that we are skeptical about strangers, from outsiders. ”
Brown and the trade union claim that his resignation was due to his trade union activity. The company denies this and said it was due to “repeated and well -documented incidents of misconduct.”
But even though Amazon tries to stop the trade union representation, it is confronted with more pressure than ever before from the efforts of the trade union.
Employees at a Whole Foods in Philadelphia just became the first at the supermarket chain of Amazon to vote for a trade union.
And the teamsters announced a six -day strike just before Christmas.
In addition to the employees on Staten Island, that strike was mainly with drivers who only deliver packages for Amazon, but who, according to the company, are not his employees, because they officially work for ‘independent contractors’.
Cause complaints submitted about unfair work practices against Amazon on Thursday, which is not unusual, because the company has already submitted several such complaints to the NLRB. The staff of the Labor Agency and the administrative judges have found in many things against Amazon.
One of those judges has made a decision that contains the accusations of unfair work practices against Amazon.“ The court requires that he sets aside the repeat elections of 2022 in Alabama and order a third election there. But before that can happen, that case must be considered by the full administration of the agency, and at his AID President Donald Trump has fired a sitting NLRB board member for the first time in history, which means that there is no longer the quorum that It is needed to hear that. The dismissed board member disputes her resignation before the court.
So even if a trade union has to win the mood, it will experience a tough fight to win the contract from which its members earn, given Amazon’s track record fighting trade union efforts in the rest of the country. The leaders of the Union said they are ready for that.
“If you look at the civil rights movement, it was years and years to get the righteousness that some Americans didn’t get,” said Brown. “I am dedicated to this fight for the rest of my life.”
“The employees want Amazon to recognize their humanity and not treat them as a robots,” said Medelius-Marsano. “Our cheap work has helped to produce so much wealth. But they will not even meet us halfway. ”
