The position of trade unions is weak in the United States, with only about ten percent of the total workforce. The share was about one-fifth in 1983, but since then the number has been steadily declining.
Ecommerce giant Amazon employees at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York, have clearly decided to join a union, U.S. media reports.
The voting result for the JFK8 stock was considered a surprise, as Amazon has struggled with its fingernails and teeth to block unions from accessing its locations in its home market in the United States.
Proponents of the organization gathered about 55 percent of the vote, the National Employment Agency (NLRB) said.
The position of trade unions is weak in the United States, with only about ten percent of the total workforce. The share was about one-fifth in 1983, but since then the number has been steadily declining.
The JFK8 warehouse will be the first Amazon warehouse where the union will be able to negotiate working conditions with the giant company. The organization has also been voted on at the Bessemer depot in Alabama, but the results of the re-vote there have not yet been determined.
Amazon warned before the vote that employees would support unionization because the company said the formation of the union would be detrimental to the relationship between employees and employer without guaranteeing better pay or working conditions. Mandatory awareness-raising meetings on the disadvantages of trade unions were held in the workplace, and anti-union information material was distributed on the premises.
The JFK8 stockpile will be organized into the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which was only established last year. Founder Chris Smalls was fired from the warehouse early after the start of the corona pandemic when he took a stand on occupational health deficiencies.
The organization of the Amazon workforce has been hampered by the very high turnover. Working in warehouses is notoriously very labor intensive, and Amazon is demanding that strict production quotas be met.
Coronavirus pandemic The upheavals in the U.S. labor market and widespread labor shortages appear to have sparked growing interest in trade unions. The coffee chain Starbucks has also made every effort to prevent unions from accessing its cafes, but organization is already underway in 150 restaurants across the country.
On social media, the union’s good news is spread, somewhat surprisingly, in the orange coin Jorts, whose adversity in the area of getting stuck in rubbish began to spread late last year through the community service Reddit. Jorts ’toil gathered a lot of fans for the cat, and a Twitter account was also set up for it. Jorts soon revealed his union-like hair and is now spreading the good news of organizing on Twitter to nearly 170,000 followers.
The Jorts campaign has even been featured on the U.S. Department of Labor website.
Campaigns are also underway in museums, NGOs, media companies and universities, among others. However, the movement focuses on the more prosperous and better educated parts of the country. In the southern and midwestern states of the country, organization has received much less attention.