The warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, will get a second vote to decide whether to form a union beginning Feb. 4, in a second mail-in election after the results of a sweeping Amazon victory were thrown out by the National Labor Relations Board.
The NLRB ruled that Amazon interfered illegally in the first election earlier this year — which Amazon won by more than a 2:1 margin — and that a second by-mail election would begin Feb. 4 and end when ballots are counted on March 28.
During the first election, Amazon's decision to have a mail-in ballot box installed in front of the warehouse was the primary violation of election rules that caused the NLRB to schedule a new vote. The months of mail-in balloting were rife with accusations of interference from Amazon, including the creation of anti-union Amazon Twitter accounts and an anti-union website.
After the initial Amazon victory, the company declared that the vote proved that workers are not interested in a union. "It's easy to predict the union will say that Amazon won this election because we intimidated employees, but that's not true," an Amazon spokesperson said at the time.
Climate TRACE's data show emissions at the facility-level.Image: Climate TRACE