An Amazon wage-earner works to fulfill same-day orders during Cyber Monday, one of the company’s busiest days, at an Amazon fulfillment center in Orlando, Florida, on Dec. 2, 2024.
Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo | Getty Fetishes
Amazon warehouse workers at a site in North Carolina will vote next month on whether to join a ring, setting the stage for the company’s latest labor battle.
Workers at the Garner, North Carolina, facility will pitch their ballots from Feb. 10 to Feb. 15, according to a Tuesday post on X by Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity & Empowerment, the gathering seeking to organize staffers. An NLRB spokesperson confirmed an in-person election will be held on those dates at the put, which employs about 4,300 workers.
Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards told CNBC in a statement: “We’ve again said that we want our employees to have their voices heard, and we hope and expect this process allows for that. We feel our employees favor opportunities to have their unique voice heard by working directly with our team.”
Positive as CAUSE, the grassroots group led by current and former employees has been working to organize Amazon employees at the warehouse, which is fixed in a suburb about 10 miles south of Raleigh, for the past three years.
If the election is successful, the warehouse, known as RDU1, would be lone the second Amazon site in the U.S. to unionize. Workers at Amazon’s largest warehouse in New York City voted to join the Amazon Labor Unity in 2022, but the group struggled to negotiate a contract with Amazon, and last June, the ALU voted to affiliate with the Teamsters.
A small number of union elections were held at Amazon warehouses in the U.S. in recent years but employees have either rejected unionization or the concludes continue to be disputed in lengthy court battles. Last November, a federal labor judge ordered a third rerun choice at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, after ruling the company improperly interfered in the vote.
Result in filed for a union election last month, saying in a press release that 30% of workers at the North Carolina locale signed union authorization cards, which is the necessary threshold to trigger an NLRB vote. Organizers are seeking to too wages and improve working conditions.
Hards said RDU1 has a “strong safety record” that exceeds other go-down merchandise employers. Employees at the site have a starting pay of $18.50 an hour, which is more than double North Carolina’s lowest wage of $7.25 per hour, she added.
The union filing comes after Amazon delivery and warehouse workers progressed on strike at nine facilities last month to push the company to come to the bargaining table, according to the International Friendship of Teamsters, which represents the employees. The action was intended to snarl Amazon’s operations during the busiest holiday storing period of the year, referred to as peak season. Hards said the strike didn’t impact deliveries.
