Amazon labor organizers push for second union victory in New York

theguardian.com:

Amazon workers in New York will go to the polls again as labor activists push to unionize a second facility in the US following their surprise recent victory over the tech giant.

About 1,500 eligible workers at an LDJ5 Amazon sorting center in Staten Island, New York, begin voting in a union election on Monday, in a process that will continue through 29 April. Ballot-counting starts on 2 May.

Amazon has aggressively opposed unionization among its workforce, which totals about 1.1 million people in the US alone. The fight comes as workers at other major corporations including Starbucks are fighting to unionize.

Amazon has spent millions hiring union avoidance consultants. Amazon Labor Union (ALU) organizers have alleged harassment and intimidation from management.

The company is vigorously contesting its first loss and has accused ALU of using “objectionable, coercive, and misleading behavior”, to convince workers to support them. Among other objections, Amazon claims the vote should be overturned because ALU “intentionally created hostile confrontations” and offered marijuana to workers in an “impermissible grant of support” for workers’ votes, according to filings obtained by the New York Times.

The sorting center is right across the street from the JFK8 warehouse where workers won a historic first union election at Amazon in the US on 1 April.

It is the second union election petition filed by the ALU, an independent group of current and former Amazon workers with no affiliation with established labor unions and led by the former Amazon worker Chris Smalls.