BESSEMER, Ala.—The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union is using the rerun of the unionization vote at Amazon’s big Bessemer, Ala., warehouse to try to outlaw one of the big tools in bosses’ anti-union anti-worker toolbox, captive audience meetings.
The challenge is in the form of one of three labor law-breaking—formally called unfair labor practices—charges RWDSU filed February 22 with the National Labor Relations Board’s regional office in Birmingham, Ala., which covers Bessemer.
The rerun election will occur next month, as well as a vote, March 25-30, at Amazon’s big JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, N.Y. The NLRB’s regional office in Brooklyn OKd a settlement specifying conditions for that vote, also on February 22. The independent grass-roots Amazon Labor Union is trying to unionize that 6,000-worker warehouse, along with another 1,500-worker facility there.
The Bessemer rerun, among 5,600 workers, is occurring because the board threw out the results of the first Bessemer vote, a year ago, due to massive Amazon labor law-breaking which skewed it.
But the big deal in Bessemer, at least among the formal charges RWDSU, is the one challenging the captive audience meetings.
In such sessions, bosses—or their hired-gun “union avoidance consultants”—harangue workers against unions. The bosses and union busters often stop just short of breaking labor law during such rants. For example, they threaten a firm “might close the plant” if workers vote unions in. That’s...
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