Amazon election: Union appears to be headed for defeat

The union that hopes to change U.S. labor history is far behind in a vote count in a union election at an Amazon warehouse, the ballot count for which resumed on Friday.

The vote count, that resumed 8:30 a.m. CT on Friday at the Amazon warehouse in Alabama saw workers voting to reject unionization by a more than 2-1 margin, with a majority of the 3,215 ballots counted. More than 1,400 voted against forming a union, with some 600 ballots in favour.

Regardless of results, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) has the same legal options like Amazon, to either challenge the eligibility of individual voters or allege that coercive conduct tainted the election.

In the latter case, the RWDSU, which is trying to organize the employees, would see the dispute play out before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and then likely in a federal appeals court.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unionizing Amazon would be a start to reverse long-running declines in union membership, which fell to 11% of the eligible workforce in 2020 from 20% in 1983.

Lawyers for Amazon, the second-largest private employer in America, and the union were allowed to question ballots on suspicion of tampering, a voter’s eligibility and other issues. The vote count, thus, followed more than a week of challenges to ballots during closed-door proceedings that could influence the final result.

With hundreds of contested ballots, the union says that the number of votes required to declare a winner has become unclear.