BESSEMER, Ala. — Amazon workers and organizers in Bessemer, Alabama, are making door-to-door house calls, sporting pro-union t-shirts and challenging anti-union messaging by Amazon-hired consultants as they try to convince their peers for the second time to unionize their warehouse.
The union election started Friday by secret ballot.
The new organizing tactics come two months after the National Labor Relations Board ordered a do-over election upon determining that Amazon unfairly influenced the first election last year. Amazon reached a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board to allow its employees to freely organize — and without retaliation.
According to the settlement, the Amazon said it would reach out to its warehouse workers — former and current — via email who were on the job anytime from March 22 to now to notify them of their organizing rights. The settlement outlines that Amazon workers, which number 750,000 in the U.S., have more room to organize within the buildings. For example, Amazon pledged it will not threaten workers with discipline or call the police when they are engaging in union activity in exterior non-work areas during non-work time.
According to the terms of the settlement, the labor board will be able to more easily sue Amazon— without going through a laborious process of administrative hearings — if it found that the online company reneged on its agreement.
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union estimates more than half of the 6,000 workers who voted last time around remain eligible this time. But the RWDSU still faces an uphill battle from Amazon, which doesn’t seem to have let up its aggressive anti-union stance.