More Amazon warehouse workers in New York file for a union election – CNET

Amazon workers seeking to join a union at a warehouse in Staten Island have filed a petition to formally request the vote with the National Labor Relations Board. It’s the second Amazon facility in the borough where the union has requested an election.

If the labor board approves an election, workers at the facility would vote on whether to be represented by the Amazon Labor Union, which announced the filing on Wednesday.

“This is an amazing moment in history, seeing Amazon workers finally taking the brave steps to make their voices heard,” the union said in a tweet announcing the move. 

An Amazon spokesperson said the company hasn’t received notification from the NLRB about a petition at the second Staten Island location. The NLRB didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Amazon faces multiple organizing efforts around the country. If any one of them succeeds, it would bring in the first union to represent workers at a US Amazon facility. The NLRB said in January that the union has enough signatures to go forward with an election at the first Staten Island facility. Wednesday’s petition from the second facility comes the same week that a separate union election will kick off for workers at an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama. The organizing drives also come during a union push at an REI store in New York, as well as more than 50 Starbucks locations. Workers at one Starbucks location in Buffalo, New York, voted to join Workers United.

The NLRB has made multiple findings that Amazon violated labor laws during union pushes. An official with the agency threw out the results of a previous union vote at the Bessemer facility, finding that Amazon violated labor laws while its workers voted on whether to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. In Staten Island, NLRB prosecutors alleged that Amazon intimidated and interrogated warehouse workers considering unionization.