Amazon Workers Just Suffered a Defeat. But the Fight Is Far From Over.
Amazon defeated the Amazon Labor Union’s drive to make a Staten Island sorting center the US’s second unionized Amazon facility. But the Amazon union fight is just beginning — and workers still have winds at their back that were unimaginable not long ago.
Amazon focused its union-busting apparatus on the Staten Island LDJ5 sorting center following the successful union drive at the neighboring JFK8 facility. (Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)
It was never going to be easy.
When the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finished counting ballots cast by workers at LDJ5, Amazon’s Staten Island sorting center, the result was 380 votes for the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) and 618 against. There were two voided ballots and zero challenged ballots, with a total of 1,633 eligible voters, making for a 61 percent turnout.
It’s a setback for the independent ALU, which won an NLRB election on April 1 at JFK8, the 8,325-person fulfillment center that sits just a few hundred feet away from LDJ5, making the warehouse the first unionized Amazon facility in the United States.
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