More than 70 percent of the employees of Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama, facility voted against joining a union, but that’s not the last word by far, especially if the Democrats’ PRO Act becomes law.
A total of 3,215 of the Amazon warehouse’s 5,800 employees cast mail-in ballots in the April 9 election, with 1,798, or 70.9 percent, voting against unionizing under the banner of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The union needed 50 percent plus one to win.
The vote was closely watched by political observers as it represented an effort to achieve a union breakthrough in the Big Tech industry, which is largely nonunion.
Under current law, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) could order a new election if the RWDSU files an unfair labor practices charge against Amazon concerning the election.
But under the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO) that passed the House with vigorous support from President Joe Biden and is now before the Senate, the NLRB could unilaterally set the election results aside and impose the union on the Amazon employees regardless of how they voted.
“This maneuver spotlights one of the worst provisions of the [PRO Act], the massive expansion of union coercive power endorsed by the Biden administration and sitting before the Senate as of writing,” he wrote.
“But the PRO Act would allow this partisan body to simply declare a union organized if the employer committed a technical infraction, even if the union lost the vote. And the PRO Act would substantially increase the list of technical infractions.”
- Sent multiple messages to workers unlawfully threatening loss of business at the facility if workers voted for the union, which would incur significant layoffs or full facility closure.
- Threatened workers with losing their pay rate, health insurance, time off, and retirement benefits if the union was voted in.
- Identified and removed workers who supported the union from mandatory captive-audience trainings that made the case for a vote against unionization.
National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix told The Epoch Times on April 26 that the Alabama Amazon employees’ decisive vote against unionization is hugely significant.
“When you look at the metrics around that election, it’s fascinating. I mean, you had 5,800 people who were eligible to vote for unionization and of that 5,800, 12.7 percent voted for unionization,” Mix said.
“That 12.7 percent comes after a national, an international, campaign by union officials trying to convince the world that these workers were so overwhelmed and so abused that there was no other way than unionization.”
Mix said union efforts prompted discussion of the alleged plight of the Alabama Amazon workers across the nation and in Europe, and he pointed to Biden’s “craftily worded video, a craftily acted video, that basically was saying you’ve got to vote for a union at Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama.”
Mix said he expects union advocates now to use the Bessemer outcome as evidence for the PRO Act as the Senate considers the proposal.
“Now the narrative is that they have moved on from the vote results and the only way this could have happened is if there was abuse of the workers, so they are now going to launch a campaign that says the defeat at Bessemer is why we need the PRO Act,” Mix said.
The Senate version of the PRO Act was introduced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
