- Amazon faces another union vote this month after high-profile elections in Alabama and New York.
- The vote begins Monday at Amazon's LDJ5 warehouse, across the street from the Staten Island facility where workers recently voted to unionize.
- The Amazon Labor Union appears likely to win in this vote too, given its strong showing at JFK8.
The Amazon Labor Union prevailed in a historic union vote at a Staten Island warehouse last month. Now, the group hopes to replicate its success at another Amazon facility just across the street.
The roughly 1,500 workers at a Staten Island Amazon sorting center known as LDJ5 will be able to vote on unionization during April 25-29. The counting of votes in the election will begin on May 2.
The vote comes on the heels of two high-profile union elections at other Amazon facilities, and amid a rising tide of interest in unionizing at Amazon.
Workers at the neighboring Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, known as JFK8, voted in recent weeks to be represented by the Amazon Labor Union, with 2,654 votes in favor of unionization and 2,131 opposed. Roughly 8,000 people work at the facility. The Amazon warehouse is the first in the US to successfully unionize.
The upstart ALU was founded last year by former Amazon employee Christian Smalls.
In Bessemer, Alabama, workers at a facility known as BHM1 began voting in February on whether to be represented by the 85-year-old Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The union vote lost, 993-875. However, more than 400 ballots remain contested which, if opened, could tip the scales in favor of unionization. The warehouse employs roughly 6,000 people.
This wasn't the first time workers at the Bessemer warehouse have had a union election. They voted against unionization in 2021, but the National Labor Relations Board ordered that a second election take place this year after finding that Amazon interfered in the first vote.
Amazon, once thought to be impenetrable to unionization, is seeing an upswell in labor activism.
An Amazon warehouse near Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley is gearing up to unionize with the Teamsters, according to tweets from that facility's union organizing committee. The Teamsters last year announced a campaign to organize Amazon warehouses.
Workers from nearly 100 other Amazon facilities have contacted the ALU to ask for help organizing their warehouses, Smalls says. That union is in the early stages of organizing two other Amazon warehouses in the same Staten Island complex as JFK8 and LDJ5.
Jennifer De Jesus, who works at the LDJ5 facility, told Insider that during Amazon's meetings, the company is "trying to scare you."
'They're talking about how the benefits we have before the vote might vanish," she said. "I'm not saying that what they're giving isn't enough. But the union is there to give you more."
Amazon didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.