Workers in New York vote to form Amazon's first-ever union in US
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Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York won their election Friday to form the retail giant's first-ever union in the United States, a landmark victory for the labor movement in the face of aggressive union-busting efforts from one of the world's most powerful companies.
CNBC reported that "while the official vote tally hasn't been announced, the union's lead is large enough that remaining and contested ballots are unlikely to sway the outcome of the election."
"The latest tally, according to a union organizer, is 2,350 in favor of joining and 1,912 opposed," the outlet noted.
Bloomberg also reported the union's victory.
"In my 25 years writing about labor, the unionization victory at the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island is by far the biggest, beating-the-odds David-versus-Goliath unionization win I've seen," veteran reporter Steven Greenhouse wrote on Twitter as the vote count was completed.
The unionization drive was led by Amazon Labor Union (ALU), a worker-led group not affiliated with any established union. Christian Smalls, the president of ALU, was fired by Amazon in 2020 after he led a protest against the company's poor workplace safety standards in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.
"A fired Amazon worker took on Amazon's union busters and unionized a 5,000-worker warehouse," Greenhouse wrote.