During last year’s high-profile union vote, an Amazon-branded tent covered a mailbox outside the company’s warehouse in Bessemer, Ala.
Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Alliance
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Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Alliance
During last year’s high-profile union vote, an Amazon-branded tent covered a mailbox outside the company’s warehouse in Bessemer, Ala.
Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Alliance
A maelstrom circled a U.S. Postal Service mailbox located in the parking lot of an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala.
It was researched and reviewed, covered in an Amazon-branded tent, then opened and shipped. Now, about 6,100 warehouse workers prepare to re-elect their high-level unions by mail, the organizer wants the mailbox to disappear.
Bessemer warehouse worker Jennifer Bates said at a virtual press conference organized by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Alliance: “The mailbox that continues to exist on Amazon property is seen as a Clear material memorial to a contaminated election.
The group is pushing to form the first U.S. consolidated warehouse at Amazon, the country’s second-largest privately held company. And the gray USPS cluster box has become an unlikely main storyline in this consequential labor effort.
Next week, new ballots will be given to nearly 6,200 warehouse workers in Bessemer to run for their union re-election after US labor officials rule that Amazon improperly influence the original voting. Mailboxes are the main reason for discarding those results. Now, the union has also asked the National Labor Relations Board to remove the mailbox.
The USPS initially installed the gray cluster mailbox required by Amazon. The pandemic meant last year’s election was done by mail, and the company argued that the mailbox would make voting “convenient, secure and private”. Workers Bessemer overwhelming vote against solidarity.
The union then challenged the results, accusing Amazon of polluting the election with a variety of anti-union tactics, including letterboxing. Worker told reporters and then federal labor officials that their location inside the Amazon tent, right in front of a heavily surveyed facility, made them feel the company was monitoring the vote.
The United States Labor Council sided with the workers.
“Mailboxes have the potential to lead employees to believe that the Employer – not the Board – controls the election process,” NLRB Regional Director Lisa Henderson wrote in the post. judgment for a rerun of the Amazon union vote.
Henderson said that Amazon “used its considerable resources and undeniable influence to quickly install a postal box on its property”.
The NLRB directed the USPS to move the inbox to “a neutral location” on the Amazon property, away from the entrance. In this week request reviewThe union argued that a neutral site did not exist.
The mailbox was now further away from the building, somewhere else in a large parking lot. But union advocates say it remains within view of surveillance cameras, is regularly patrolled, and gives some employees the impression they have to vote there.
“This whole election has been turned upside down because of the mailbox,” Bessemer worker Darryl Richardson told reporters Wednesday. After “what we’ve been through due to this mailbox… I don’t understand why it’s still out there.”
Amazon and the NLRB did not comment on the union’s push to get rid of the mailbox. A USPS representative introduced NPR with an earlier statement:
“In the spirit of intergovernmental cooperation, the United States Postal Service has agreed to move the cluster box at the request of the National Labor Relations Board. Although we are under no legal obligation to do so, we do. please defer the Board’s request in this case, and moving the cluster box will not negatively impact Postal Service operations.”
Bessemer workers will begin receiving their new ballots on February 4, and their recount is scheduled for March 28. The union has not asked federal officials to delay the election. . The board said it allows requests for a review of the election process until ten days after the results are certified.
Editor’s Note: Amazon is one of NPR’s recent financial backers.
