From the “have you no shame” department: Amazon, headed by the owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, is trying to postpone a vote to unionize one of its warehouses in Alabama in order to prevent mail-in voting. The National Labor Relations Board decided that in light of the COVID-19 risks associated with in-person voting, mail-in votes would be accepted. The 6,000 workers are scheduled to have ballots mailed to them on Feb. 8, offering them the chance to become the first Amazon hourly workers to unionize in the U.S.
Amazon says that it has “provided the NLRB with a safe, confidential and convenient proposal for associates to vote on-site, which is in the best interest of all parties—associate convenience, vote fidelity and timeliness of vote count.” Amazon insists that the infection rate among workers at the facility is high enough to warrant any special measures.
This would be the first unionization vote for Amazon employees since 2014, and the employer of 800,000 is fighting hard to prevent the dam from breaking in what could become a flood of labor actions. In their efforts to prevent unionization, Amazon has made a spectacularly disgusting anti-union page, complete with the never-to-go-viral hashtag #DoItWithoutDues. Bezos asks you to look deep within, and answer: “Do you want to be a doer or a due’r?”
