Union Files Objections In Bessemer Amazon Center Vote

BESSEMER, AL — The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union filed objections Friday to the conduct of Amazon during the union election with the National Labor Relations Board. Workers at Amazon's fulfillment center in Bessemer voted against joining the RWDSU earlier in April.

The union alleges that Amazon "interfered with the right of its Bessemer employees to vote in a free and fair election, a right protected under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act."

Related: Amazon Union Vote In Bessemer Suffers Defeat

The RWDSU has requested that the NLRB Regional Director schedule a hearing on its objections 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."

The RWDSU filed 23 objections, which include:

• Collection Box Installation: The appearance that Amazon and not the NLRB controls the mechanics of the election:
• Surveillance: Security cameras monitoring the collection box in the Amazon parking lot.
• Electioneering: Messaging on the collection box in the Amazon parking lot.
• Coercion and Ballot Harvesting: The company’s pressure campaign to get workers to bring their ballots to work and use the collection box the employer had installed.
• Threatening Workplace Layoffs and Facility Closure: The company sent multiple messages to workers unlawfully threatening loss of business at the facility if workers voted for the union, which would incur significant layoffs or full facility closure.
• Loss of Pay and Benefits: The company threatened workers with losing their pay rate, health insurance, time off and retirement benefits if the union was voted in.
• Intimidation: the company identified and removed workers from mandatory captive-audience trainings who supported the union.

Amazon issued a statement regarding the union's objections, citing the overwhelming number of workers who voted against unionization.

"The fact is that less than 16 percent of employees at BHM1 voted to join a union," Amazon spokesperson Heather Knox said. "Rather than accepting these employees’ choice, the union seems determined to continue misrepresenting the facts in order to drive its own agenda. We look forward to the next steps in the legal process."

After the vote was tallied April 11, RWDSU president Stuart Appelbaum said the union would eventually file formal objections to the vote.

Amazon has left no stone unturned in its efforts to gaslight its own employees," Applebaum said. "We won’t let Amazon’s lies, deception and illegal activities go unchallenged, which is why we are formally filing charges against all of the egregious and blatantly illegal actions taken by Amazon during the union vote today."

Applebaum said Amazon workers would have approved unionization had they not been subject to "illegal activity" by Amazon.

"That’s why they required all their employees to attend lecture after lecture, filled with mistruths and lies, where workers had to listen to the company demand they oppose the union. That’s why they flooded the internet, the airwaves and social media with ads spreading misinformation. That’s why they brought in dozens of outsiders and union-busters to walk the floor of the warehouse. That’s why they bombarded people with signs throughout the facility and with text messages and calls at home. And that’s why they have been lying about union dues in a right to work state. Amazon’s conduct has been despicable."

Amazon workers in Bessemer voted overwhelmingly against unionization, with ,798 votes against unionizing and 738 votes in favor.

Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the US, with more than 800,000 employees, and it has successfully resisted previous attempts at worker unionization. Only one other Amazon unionization effort has even made it to a vote — a small group of repair technicians in Delaware in 2014 — and the attempt failed.