Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is facing the potential of a second New York City facility unionizing as workers at the LDJ5 sorting center in Staten Island began voting on Monday. Ballot counting is scheduled to start the following Monday, May 2.
Amazon has fought against unionization even more fiercely than Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), securing an initial victory against its first significant unionization vote. However, the company faced the threat of unionization once again in January after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced that a Staten Island warehouse had gathered enough signatures to begin a unionization vote. The JFK8 Amazon warehouse would later be the first of the ecommerce titan's facilities to unionize after a successful vote.
With the recent victory of JFK8 fresh in mind, it seems that Amazon is intensifying its efforts as LDJ5 prepares to hold its vote. According to numerous outlets, the company has stepped up its efforts against unionizing workers at the Staten Island facility. Already, workers and the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) have reported anti-union captive audience meetings, including one-on-one talks and confiscation of union literature despite being a violation of labor laws.
"Amazon is violating the national settlement agreement," attorney Seth Goldstein, who represents unionizing Amazon workers, told Vice News. "These are blatant attacks on an agreement they were a party to. The core of the matter is Amazon agreed to something but they're violating it because it suits their purposes for winning the election."
The national agreement referred to be Goldstein was part of a massive settlement Amazon agreed to with the NLRB after being made to reverse its anti-union policy that prevented employees from gathering in parking lots and break rooms for more than 15 minutes. The settlement also required the company to email workers about their right to unionize, providing union organizers with a massive company-wide victory.
Amazon's growing anti-union push seems risky given its previous settlement and the NLRB's increasing participation in unionizing efforts to protect workers' rights. Recently, the regulator took Starbucks to court to petition for the reinstatement of workers fired for union organizing.