Workers at the facility, known as JFK8, started voting on whether to join the Amazon Labor Union, a group made up of current and former company employees. The results will carry significance well beyond New York City's smallest borough.
At an Amazon facility on Staten Island, thousands of workers began voting on Friday on whether to unionize.
The warehouse, known as JFK8, has been a center of Amazon worker activism since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.On Friday afternoon, a stream ofworkers exited a sprawling warehouse on New York's Staten Island after wrapping up the daytime shift. Many of them packed into city buses to head home. On their way, they walked past a large, white tent stretching across a chunk of the parking lot.
The buzz was palpable on Friday as employees at JFK8 milled around a nearby bus stop chatting about the election. Some sported yellow"vote yes" lanyards, while others wore blue"vote no" t-shirts. The election runs through March 30, and the National Labor Relations Board will begin counting votes the following day. ALU has called on Amazon to raise wages, along with other demands. Amazon recently raised its average starting pay to $18 an hour.
It's the second union vote at an Amazon warehouse in a year, a potentially concerning sign for a company that's long shunned organized labor. Employees at Amazon's facility in Bessemer, Alabama, were the first to try and unionize last spring. That effort failed, but workers there are at it again after the NLRB ordered a do-over because of improper interference in the prior union drive.
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