The National Labor Relations Board has rejected Amazon.com Inc.’s request to delay a unionization vote at the company’s Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse, clearing the way for the closely watched election to begin next week.
Amazon last month
“The public interest and safety of all involved in the election is best served, at this time, by avoiding the type of in-person gatherings that a manual election entails,” Marvin Kaplan and John Ring, the NLRB’s two Republican members, said in a brief order on Friday denying Amazon’s request. They were joined in the decision by Chairman Lauren McFerran, a Democrat.
The agency will mail ballots to some 5,800 workers at the warehouse next week, and they have to be returned
The company has been pulling Bessemer workers into
“Once again Amazon workers have won another fight in their effort to win a union voice,” RWDSU president Stuart Appelbaum said in an emailed statement. “Amazon’s blatant disregard for the health and safety of its own workforce was demonstrated yet again by its insistence for an in-person election in the middle of the pandemic. Today’s decision proves that it’s long past time that Amazon start respecting its own employees; and allow them to cast their votes without intimidation and interference.”
Amazon didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.