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Last week, Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama voted against unionizing by a strong margin. But the union effort still had an impact: In sparking an international conversation about working conditions at Amazon, organizers amped up the pressure on the e-commerce giant to improve its treatment of employees.
In his final annual shareholder letter, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote that regardless of the vote’s outcome, “we need to do a better job for our employees.” In his new role as executive chair, he said, he will focus on initiatives to make Amazon “Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work”—such as rolling out a new automated scheduling system that will rotate workers through different tasks in an effort to prevent repetitive motion injuries.
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