Amazon Employees in North Carolina Reject the Opportunity to Join a Union.

Workers at a North Carolina Amazon facility have turned down a unionization proposal. They are therefore the most recent group of workers at the company to object to union participation.

Nearly three-quarters of the workers at an Amazon fulfilment centre in Garner, a town close to Raleigh, voted against joining a grassroots labour organization called Carolina United for Solidarity and Empowerment, the National Labour Relations Board announced on Saturday.

Near Raleigh, Garner is a community.

829 workers voted in support of joining the independent union, which is made up of both current and past Amazon employees, while 2,447 workers voted against union representation, according to the federal labour office.

Officials from Amazon and other companies are part of the independent union. During the Monday through Saturday election, 4,300 Amazon workers were eligible to cast ballots, according to the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB).

One of the charity’s co-founders and a former Amazon employee, Reverend Ryan Brown, said on Saturday: “We had already braced ourselves for a loss.” As Brown explained, we knew that the odds had been stacked against us in the past for a number of reasons. This was something we knew about.

First of all, we’re not in the northern area. The second problem is that the typical North Carolina worker has no idea that a union exists, what it can accomplish for them while they are employed, or the advantages of joining one.

The decision was made only a few weeks after workers at a Pennsylvania Whole Foods Market outlet made the decision to organise a union. Because of this choice, organised labour was able to successfully enter the Amazon-controlled grocery chain for the first time.

Whole Foods petitioned the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) to have the election results overturned after the union won. The petition claimed that there had been tampering with the voting process.

A Staten Island Amazon facility joined the Amazon Labour Union in 2022.

The Teamsters Labour Union and the Labour Union had previously worked together. Amazon, meanwhile, has expressed concerns regarding the election’s outcome and has refused to sign a deal as a result.

The business has, however, successfully defended itself against union victories at facilities in Albany, New York, Bessemer, Alabama, and a second warehouse on Staten Island. These victories have taken place in a number of contexts.

In November, an administrative law court of the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) ordered a third union election for Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer after it was found that the company had committed six infractions prior to a rerun election in March 2022.

Bessemer was to be the site of the election. The first survey was contested by the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, which works to represent Amazon workers in Bessemer. Consequently, the union’s efforts to obtain representation were unsuccessful. This directly led to a rerun of the election.

Since the start of 2022, workers who belong to the movement Carolina United for Solidarity and Empowerment, or CAUSE, have started organising in a North Carolina warehouse.

In an interview a month ago, Brown, one of the company’s co-founders, revealed that he started organising because he thought was not giving its employees adequate COVID-19 protections. Brown said that in order to gain a better understanding of the circumstances.

Amazon announced on Saturday that it already offers fair pay and a safe and friendly workplace, two things that numerous unions have asked for. These are the products offered by Amazon.

A written comment from representative Eileen Hards reads as follows: “We are pleased that our Garner team was able to have their voices heard, and that they chose to maintain a direct relationship with Amazon.”

SOURCE: USN