Damn

A second Amazon warehouse on Long Island has voted against unionizing.

The fact that there have been credible unionizing efforts at Amazon at all is still remarkable, and to a significant degree, this is because of people and groups not affiliated with the traditional labor unions:

It was never going to be easy.

When the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finished counting ballots cast by workers at LDJ5, Amazon’s Staten Island sorting center, the result was 380 votes for the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) and 618 against. There were two voided ballots and zero challenged ballots, with a total of 1,633 eligible voters, making for a 61 percent turnout.

It’s a setback for the independent ALU, which won an NLRB election on April 1 at JFK8, the 8,325-person fulfillment center that sits just a few hundred feet away from LDJ5, making the warehouse the first unionized Amazon facility in the United States.

In the weeks since that vote was certified, the ALU says it has heard from workers at more than a hundred Amazon facilities across the country. Momentum is building when it comes to organizing the behemoth corporation, and today’s loss is unlikely to change that.

In light of the loss, it’s worth thinking about just how drastically things have changed in a few short years. Watching the results come in, I was reminded of my time at the Labor Notes conference in 2018. The left-labor gathering was packed with people newly won to socialist politics by the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, many of them in their teens and twenties, and conversation frequently turned to the idea of organizing Amazon.

At the time, sober minds, those with decades of rank-and-file union experience, generally warned against such a focus. They had good reason to do so: there are lots of warehouses with unions that have fallen into stagnation, and which could use the militancy and engagement socialists bring. And there are more feasible companies, smaller ones, where excited young organizers can make a difference and gain the experience they so desire.

I was hope that this is not whistling by the graveyard.