Amazon workers at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse strike in demand that the facility be shut down and cleaned after one staffer tested positive for the coronavirus on March 30, 2020 in New York.
Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images
Amazon workers at a second warehouse on New York’s Staten Island have filed a petition to form a union, according to a labor group behind the effort.
Workers at one of the company’s Staten Island facilities, which is known as LDJ5, are seeking to be represented by the Amazon Labor Union, a labor group made up of current and former Amazon employees. ALU on Wednesday electronically filed a petition to form a union with the National Labor Relations Board, said Chris Smalls, a former Amazon employee who is a leader of the group.
ALU is also in the process of organizing another Amazon warehouse on Staten Island, which is called JFK8 and located less than a mile away from LDJ5. ALU was forced to refile its union petition in December after the NLRB found it hadn’t collected enough employee signatures to force an election. Last week, the NLRB said the group had sufficient showing to move forward with an election, and a hearing is scheduled for Feb. 16.
In filings with the NLRB, Amazon has said it remains skeptical that the ALU has gathered enough signatures to force an election at JFK8.
The petition comes as Amazon is facing a groundswell of union activity among its warehouse and delivery workers. Other retailers, including Starbucks, are seeing an uptick in organizing efforts.
On Friday, workers at one of Amazon’s Alabama warehouses will get the chance to vote again whether to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The NLRB authorized a second election at the Bessemer, Alabama, site after the agency determined Amazon improperly interfered the vote, which initially took place last spring.
Major unions have been trying to organize Amazon workers for years, to no avail. The RWDSU, the United Food & Commercial Workers Union and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have all approached Amazon workers in recent years about their interest in organizing.
