In an upset for which there are few parallels in the US labor movement’s post-Reagan history, Amazon warehouse workers in the United States have won recognition of a union for the first time ever. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)–supervised vote at JFK8, a fulfillment center in Staten Island, was 2,654 in favor of unionizing with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) and 2,131 against, at a facility with 8,325 eligible voters. The sixty-seven challenged and eleven voided ballots will not be determinative, given the union’s margin of victory.

The vote count began, incredibly, on the same day as that of the rerun election in Bessemer, Alabama, where the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) made up significant ground. There, the count stands at 875 votes in favor of unionizing and 993 votes against, but with 416 challenged ballots, the outcome is too close to call and will depend on the adjudication of those ballots by the NLRB sometime in the next few weeks.

“Every vote must be counted,” said RWDSU president Stuart Appelbaum in a statement yesterday. “Workers at Amazon endured a needlessly long and aggressive fight to unionize their workplace, with Amazon doing everything it could to spread misinformation and deceit.”