DOTHAN, Ala. – The first day of the public count in the Bessemer Amazon union vote is over, with results tilting heavily against the union effort.
As of 6 p.m. CST, workers with the National Labor Relations Board suspended the count for the evening. Currently, there are 1,100 “no” votes against the union, and 463 “yes” votes, unofficially.
The count will resume Friday at 8:30 a.m. CST.
A simple majority of votes will determine whether workers at Amazon’s Bessemer fulfillment center will be represented by the Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union.
The RWDSU has already telegraphed that it expects the majority to be no. Union president Stuart Appelbaum said this afternoon, “Our system is broken, Amazon took full advantage of that, and we will be calling on the labor board to hold Amazon accountable for its illegal and egregious behavior during the campaign. But make no mistake about it; this still represents an important moment for working people and their voices will be heard.”
The public portion of the count began after more than a week of preparations, as NLRB staffers went through each ballot with observers from Amazon and the RWDSU watching and contesting some ballots. About 5,800 ballots were sent out to workers in early February. According to the Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union, a total of 3,215 ballots were received by the National Labor Relations Board in the election, or about 55 percent of those that went out.
It’s unclear how many ballots were contested by the union and Amazon. Election terms stipulate that workers who quit or are discharged for cause after a payroll period ending Jan. 9 are ineligible to vote. It’s unclear how many of those workers received ballots. The union said in a statement last night that “hundreds of challenged ballots mostly by the employer” will be addressed after the public count.The media is able to view the count through a zoom link. There are three observers each for Amazon and the RWDSU, along with members of the NLRB staff who are conducting the vote count. Each individual ballot is displayed for observers, and “yes” or “no” is called out. When either side reaches 100 votes, the ballots are then recounted to verify the total, then counting continues.
As of 4:45 p.m., the counting took a 15 minute break, but both sides showed a willingness to let the count continue as long as the NLRB staff wanted to go. By 6 p.m., the counting ended for the day.
The union election is the largest overseen by the NLRB since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The NLRB chose a mail-in election because of COVID-19 levels back in January in the Jefferson County area.
