By Andrea Hargraves 
Employees at Amazon’s distribution center in Staten Island, New York, voted to create the first technology consortium founded by Jeff Bezos. Specifically, 2,654 employees received a majority of votes in favor against 2,131 against the establishment of the union. The Amazon Workers Union (ALU) was created about a year ago, but its legalization was based on this vote.
The news is reported by Reuters, which cites a statistic released Friday by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the US authority on working conditions.
“People have spoken today, they want union,” said Christian Smalls, president of the ALU. Addressing Jeff Bezos, he joked, “While he was there, we managed to create a union,” referring to the visit of the multinational president to the building on voting day.
On the other hand, ALU’s attorney, Eric Milner, considered this a “historic day”, which “could lead to a chain reaction, from one branch to another”. Remember that Walmart, the largest private employer in the United States (with about 1.6 million workers), does not have a union.
But the war was not won. The union has yet to negotiate with the tech giant in order to achieve better conditions and compensation for workers.
Amazon, in turn, was disappointed with the result. “We are disappointed with the outcome of the Staten Island election, because we believe the direct impact on the company is best for our workers,” the company said in a statement. The multinational added that it was also weighing several options, including trying to challenge the creation of the union, based on what it considers the “improper influence” of US authority on working conditions – something that led an NLRB spokesperson to respond that it was an independent federal agency whose actions were compatible with its mandate.
But US President Joe Biden welcomed the result. Through White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, he said he was “glad that staff are able to ensure they are heard on important decisions.” He stressed that “all workers in every state should be able freely and impartially to choose the possibility of joining a union,” adding that Staten Island workers “made their choice to organize themselves into a union, and to negotiate for better jobs and a better life.”