A great American songwriter and singer once wrote ”picket lines and picket signs, don't punish me with brutality, talk to me so you can see, what's going on...” –Marvin Gaye, 1971
As has been well publicized in the general media, workers at a large Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York recently voted to unionize. This is the first time a union has won an election at any Amazon facility. On Friday, April 8, 2022, Amazon filed objections with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which if successful, could overturn the vote for the union. What has been less widely reported and should be of concern our readers, is that the union that won the election was not one of the mainstream union labor unions. Rather, the victors are an independent union started by two ex-workers at the warehouse. How these two guys pulled it off and what they plan to do next should be carefully studied by any employer worried about union organizing attempts at their company.
The union win at Amazon comes on the heels of a series of successful union elections at various Starbucks stores in Buffalo and other places in New York. Our previous reporting on unionization at Starbucks can be found here. These elections have the Board of Directors so concerned that former CEO Howard Schultz, who “built the company into a global powerhouse,” returned to the company to deal with the situation. Unlike the Amazon workers, the Starbucks Workers United Workers Union is affiliated with the Service...
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