Posts tagged JFK8
Commentary: The tough fight to unionize Amazon
March 18, 2025 // Unionizing a gigantic 21st century warehouse with more than 4,000 workers is daunting. What economists call “the churn” of high worker turnover complicates solidarity-building. So does the heterogeneity of the work force at a place like RDU1 between its hip-hop princes, queer young Latinas and tractor-cap Trumpies along with migrants from more than thirty countries. The job’s grind makes mustering energy to raise labor’s flag tough too.
US labor board bans mandatory anti-union meetings in ruling against Amazon
November 13, 2024 // The decision could also be overturned by the board when it gains a Republican majority, as the agency often reverses itself after changes in leadership. President-elect Donald Trump could have a Republican-led board in place as soon as next year. At least 10 U.S. states including New York, California, and most recently Alaska have banned captive audience meetings or prohibited employers from disciplining workers who do not attend them. The NLRB said its decision would only be applied moving forward and not to pending cases.
A union for Amazon warehouse workers elects a new leader in wake of Teamsters affiliation
August 1, 2024 // Only 5% of the 5,312 workers employed in the warehouse voted by mail-in ballot, said Arthur Schwartz, an attorney who represents the dissident group. Spence received 137 out of 247 votes cast, Schwartz said, defeating a current ALU officer named Claudia Ashterman and another prominent organizer named Michelle Valentin.
US court nixes order barring Amazon from firing pro-union workers
June 14, 2024 // The labor board sought the order after Amazon in 2020 fired Gerald Bryson, a union organizer at a warehouse in Staten Island, for making profane comments to a coworker during a protest over an alleged lack of safety measures amid the COVID-19 pandemic. U.S. District Judge Diane Gujarati in Brooklyn ruled that Bryson's firing violated his rights under U.S. labor law and barred Amazon from terminating other union supporters. But the judge refused to order Amazon to reinstate Bryson, saying there was no evidence that his firing deterred other workers from unionizing. The 2nd Circuit on Wednesday said the requirement that Amazon not fire other workers was unnecessary if there was no evidence that Bryson's firing had a broader impact.
Judge Rules Amazon Engaged in Anti-Union Activities in New York
December 6, 2023 // The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has won a ruling against Amazon for harassing employees seeking to unionize its JFK8 and DYY6 fulfillment facilities in Staten Island, N.Y. In a Nov. 21 ruling, Administrative Law Judge Lauren Esposito found that Amazon had violated the National Labor Relations Act by dismissing employees early, altering employees’ work assignments and subjecting employees to closer supervision in retaliation for their support for the Amazon Labor Union. The decision also found that Amazon unlawfully interrogated employees, disparaged the union by using appeals to racial prejudice and derogatory racial stereotyping, and prohibited employees from distributing union literature and confiscating union literature from employees.
How the Amazon Labor Union helped shape modern workers’ rights
October 19, 2023 // For every 1% of Amazon's workforce that unionizes, analysts expect it to lead to an incremental $150 million in annual operating expenses.
‘War of attrition’: why union victories for US workers at Amazon have stalled
April 11, 2023 // The Athena Coalition, consisting of numerous worker centers and non-profits, has focused on supporting workers at Amazon and their efforts in garnering support for petitions and organizing walkouts supporting concrete demands at Amazon sites in Georgia, California, Illinois, Minnesota and elsewhere.
Amazon union faces division, delay a year after historic victory
April 3, 2023 // However, the visible presence of union support within the Staten Island warehouse has diminished significantly since the victory last year, according to three longtime workers at the facility. "Right after the election, there were about a dozen people I saw on the first floor wearing ALU t-shirts and yellow 'organizer' vests," Natalie Monarrez, a worker who considers herself pro-union and initially organized with the ALU but ultimately voted against unionization due to concerns regarding its leadership, told ABC News. "In the past few months, I haven't seen any ALU t-shirts or yellow vests," she added. Smalls, who has traveled nationwide over the past year to speaking engagements and meetings with Amazon workers at other warehouses, has received criticism from some union activists over a perceived lack of focus on organizing within the Staten Island facility, he said.
New York’s biggest labor actions of the past year
February 28, 2023 // Only one other state, Hawaii, has a unionization rate higher than New York’s 20.7%. In the public sector, just around two-thirds of New Yorkers are in a union. In 2022 alone, nearly 200 workplaces in the state filed for representation through the National Labor Relations Board. But, despite the hype and a 57-year high in Americans’ approval of labor unions, New York’s union participation (and the country’s as a whole) is still trending downward. In 2012, 23.2% of New York workers were union members, 2.5 points higher than it is today. CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies Labor Department Chair Ruth Milkman said that despite 2022’s historic union victories, many were with small firms. “So all this publicity and media attention to these iconic companies that have had some recent experience of successful unionization, it’s kind of a drop in the bucket in terms of the whole labor market in New York,” she said.
Amazon now has a legal obligation to bargain with the union, and can face serious penalties if it doesn’t.
January 17, 2023 // The Amazon Labor Union has officially been certified by the National Labor Relations Board, the union announced on Wednesday night. Amazon is now legally obligated to start bargaining a contract in good faith with the ALU, nine months after workers first won their union election at the company’s mammoth JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island.