Amazon employees in the United States were the first to vote to form a union.

Image: thenews.com.pk

Workers at Amazon in New York voted on Friday to form the business's first US union, an underdog victory over a company that has long fought organized labor in its huge workforce.

Hundreds of supporters applauded the outcome, as union organizer Christian Smalls stood in front of a bank of TV cameras and photographers.

"We'd like to congratulate (Amazon founder) Jeff Bezos for flying to space because we were signing people up while he was up there," Smalls said after workers at the Staten Island JFK8 warehouse voted 2,654 to 2,131 in favor of the union.

Analysts believe Amazon's victory, which has been compared to a David against. Goliath victory and praised by President Joe Biden, might spark future unionization efforts at the country's second largest private business.

Amazon expressed "disappointment" with the results and said it was considering its options, including "filing objections based on the National Labor Relations Board's improper and undue influence" over the vote.

Amazon's right to stay union-free in its home market was at danger, a position it has jealously maintained since its founding in the 1990s by Jeff Bezos, who has subsequently launched a space tourism endeavour.

During a tumultuous campaign, Amazon claimed that joining a union would jeopardise the company's direct contact with employees and would be a leap into the unknown, with no assurance that workers would get higher pay or job security.

However, union representatives, who were made up of current and former Staten Island employees, interacted with employees on a regular basis, promoting the ability of a union to improve working conditions and assure more employee-friendly work schedules without putting them at risk of being dismissed.

Smalls, 33, started the campaign shortly after being dismissed from an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island in March 2020 for organizing a protest for personal protective equipment during the city's first significant Covid-19 outbreak.

"This is a genuinely historic day," Eric Milner, who represented the union organizers throughout the process, said. "I believe it will set off a chain reaction from warehouse to warehouse."

Biden, a self-described "union man," was among those celebrating.

"The president was pleased to see workers make their opinions known in crucial workplace choices," stated White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

Is there a chain reaction here?

The union's triumph in New York came while the outcome of a second election in Alabama remained uncertain.

The poll is a rerun of a ballot that was thrown down by federal officials in 2021, with 993 workers voting against the labor union and 875 voting in favor.

According to the National Labor Relations Board, there were 416 "challenged" ballots, indicating that the number of votes yet to be resolved is large enough to potentially determine the ultimate result.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Organization, a national union, had endorsed the Alabama campaign, and high-profile politicians such as progressive Senator Bernie Saunders had paid visits.

The New York campaign, on the other hand, was a grassroots effort with a shoestring budget, despite being headquartered in a typically union-friendly section of the country.

The outcome "stunned but thrilled" Ruth Milkman, a sociologist of labor movements at City University of New York, who claimed it will "inspire" new initiatives.

Despite recent triumphs for organized labor in the United States, the overall picture for organized labor in the United States is mixed, with total unionization numbers continuously declining.

"It appears that the majority of the attention has been focused on Alabama, and this one has been ignored because it was not an established union," Milkman said. "However, it ended up being a success story."

According to Neil Saunders, an analyst at GlobalData Retail, the triumph in New York will encourage others to join the labor movement.

"If Amazon has to deal with a union, it becomes much more difficult for them to function," Saunders added.

"They aren't going to have to spend a lot more money." It's just that they don't appreciate unions interfering."

Staten Island organizers were already preparing for their next battle, which would take place at the LDJ5 sorting center across the street from the JFK8 warehouse, where a vote would be held at the end of the month.

Smalls and other labor leaders will also begin to work on negotiating a contract with Amazon, which is likely to be a difficult task.

"There's still a lot of hard work to be done," Milkman remarked. "A lot of people win elections but never obtain a job." 

A contract will necessitate a "continued, if not enlarged" effort, according to Larry Mishel, a fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-backed think tank.