Bid to unionize Amazon workers in New York nears milestone

Bid to unionize Amazon workers in New York nears milestone

SeattlePI.com

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NEW YORK (AP) — A bid to unionize Amazon workers at a distribution facility in New York City neared an important milestone, as organizers prepared to deliver hundreds of signatures to the National Labor Relations Board as soon as Monday for authorization to hold a vote.

Organizers say they have collected signatures from more than 2,000 employees at four Amazon facilities in Staten Island.

The bid to establish the Amazon Labor Union in New York City is the second attempt in the past year to form a union at Amazon, the nation's largest online retailer. In April, workers at an Alabama facility overwhelmingly rejected forming a union in an effort led by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

The union drive in New York City is working without the help of a national sponsor and is led by a former Amazon employee, Christian Smalls, who said he was fired just hours after he organized a walkout to protest working conditions.

Organizers need to collect signatures from at least 30% of the workers — about 7,000 in four Staten Island warehouses — who would be covered by the resulting collective bargaining agreement.

“We’ll have it by Monday. I’m going out there today, going out there tomorrow, the next day — until we get it,” said Smalls, who was elected Sunday as the nascent union's president.

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said the company's employees have a choice of whether or not to join a union but “we don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees.”

“We’ve made great progress in recent years and months in important areas like pay and safety," Nantel said. “There are plenty of things that we can keep doing better, and that’s our focus — to keep getting better every day.”

If the NLRB approves the signatures in Staten Island, it would mark the second...

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