Amazon workers at warehouse near Albany file for union election

Amazon staff at a warehouse in upstate New York have filed a petition to kind a union with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board, the company confirmed Tuesday.

Staff on the warehouse, which is positioned within the city of Schodack, southeast of Albany, New York, are in search of to be represented by the Amazon Labor Union, a grassroots group of present and former Amazon staff that efficiently unionized one of many firm’s Staten Island warehouses, often called JFK8, earlier this 12 months.

NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado confirmed organizers on the warehouse, which is known as ALB1, filed a petition with the company Tuesday for a proposed unit of 400 individuals. She added that the NLRB’s regional workplace in Buffalo is within the strategy of verifying that the group has obtained a exhibiting of curiosity, which signifies it has met the required threshold for worker signatures.

Heather Goodall, an ALB1 warehouse employee who’s main the organizing effort, stated she and different organizers plan to carry a information convention Wednesday to debate the union marketing campaign.

Goodall and different staff have been making an attempt to arrange their office for the previous few months. Amazon has taken discover. Late final month, it started holding conferences at ALB1 discouraging workers from unionizing, together with slideshow shows that described unions as a “enterprise that promote a service.”

The organizing effort in Albany marks the most recent try to unionize an Amazon warehouse. The ALU, led by former worker Chris Smalls, in Could failed to copy its profitable union marketing campaign at one other Staten Island warehouse, but it surely has nonetheless sought to achieve traction elsewhere, together with in Albany and a warehouse in Kentucky. In the meantime, the outcomes of an election at an Alabama facility stay too near name.

Representatives from Amazon did not instantly reply to a request for remark.

The corporate has beforehand stated it would not imagine unions are the correct alternative for its workers. Amazon can be combating to get the vote at its JFK8 warehouse thrown out, arguing that the ALU and NLRB acted in a method that tainted the outcomes of the election.

A union that led the unionization effort in Alabama is contesting the outcomes of a current do-over election, arguing Amazon improperly interfered within the marketing campaign. Amazon has additionally objected to the union’s conduct through the election.

WATCH: Why unlikely union wins are taking maintain at 200+ Starbucks, Google, Apple and extra