Over 3,200 Amazon.com Inc. employees from a warehouse in Alabama they voted to unionize, and the initial results should be announced in the coming days.
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union said late Wednesday that 3,215 of the 55,800 workers in the Bessemer, Alabama warehouse voted.
The public part of the vote is expected to be launched on Thursday or Friday, the union said.
Voting ended on March 29, and the counting began last week. The union said hundreds of ballots had been challenged by management, which could delay election results in the event of a tight race. The challenges will be solved by the National Council for Labor Relations.
Even if the union wins, it could take years of negotiations to reach an initial contract, and the process could be further delayed if Amazon disputes the election results.
Workers are demanding higher wages and better working conditions.
The vote has high stakes – the organizers hope that a victory will trigger more union impulses nationwide and not just on Amazon. Meanwhile, Amazon, the country’s second largest private employer, is worried that higher union wages could affect its results. Amazon made $ 21.3 billion in profits in 2020.
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they are close to a flat year so far, but have increased by 61% in the last year.