An Amazon warehouse in New York has successfully voted to unionize, the first of its kind

• Amazon workers at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York, have voted to form a union.
• It is the first Amazon warehouse in the country to successfully unionize.

Amazon workers at a warehouse in Staten Island are the first in the company's history to successfully form a union, a labor organizing milestone and a major blow to Amazon's efforts to keep unions out of its facilities.

The National Labor Relations Board concluded its counting of votes on Friday morning, with a majority of workers voting to join the upstart Amazon Labor Union, founded last year by former Amazon employee Christian Smalls.

The Amazon Labor Union won with 2654 votes for, versus 2131 against. A union needs a simple majority to win an election with the NLRB.

The union's success, in the Staten Island borough of New York, is likely to propel a cascade of organizing at other Amazon warehouses and retailers. The past several months have seen union victories at companies that some labor leaders previously thought were immune to unionization, such as Starbucks, where nearly 200 branches have filed to unionize. Workers at another Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, also organized by the Amazon Labor Union, will vote on a union in the next few weeks.

The Amazon Labor Union has overcome long odds. Winning a union on the first attempt at a major company is almost unheard of. Amazon has successfully kept unions out of its facilities for decades. Until now, the company has found success with an anti-union playbook that by turns intimidates and woos workers, while churning through employees at such a pace that nascent organizing efforts have had little time to take hold.

It's even rarer for workers to back an independent union, which tend to lack the financial backing and legal expertise of more established unions, according to labor scholars.

Amazon posted an unsigned statement on its blog, saying the company was "disappointed" with the outcome of the vote. The company is considering filing an objection to the conduct of the election with a federal labor panel, the statement said.

The Amazon Labor Union raised about $100,000 in two GoFundMe campaigns, and relied on other unions for legal advice, office space and volunteers. By the end of the union drive, the union was operating on a week-to-week budget, Smalls told The City.

Amazon, by contrast, has waged a lengthy and expensive anti-union campaign. The ecommerce behemoth spent $4.3 million last year trying to quash union votes in Staten Island and in Bessemer, Alabama, according to filings with the Department of Labor, previously reported by HuffPost.

Amazon seems likely to defeat the union in Bessemer, where preliminary vote results showed the company ahead by about 100 votes on Thursday, though so many ballots have been challenged that a final result in that election won't be known for weeks. Those workers are attempting to organize with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

The company's efforts have made less headway in New York City, where nearly one-quarter of workers are union members.

Many of the 18 Amazon workers Insider spoke to at the warehouse on Staten Island, known as JFK8, showed support for the Amazon Labor Union, and said it would help them advocate for higher pay, better promotion opportunities, more stringent safety rules, longer breaks, and other workplace changes. In contrast, many workers at the warehouse in Bessemer told Insider last month that they planned to vote against the union.

The ALU, which is independent from the union organizing the Bessemer facility, is pushing for a $30 minimum wage and immediate time off for injured workers, part of its campaign to turn working at Amazon into what it says will be a sustainable, middle-class job. A pro-union poster inside of a bus shelter outside the Staten Island warehouse read "We're not machines, we're human beings."

"I don't like the way Amazon can just fire people on a whim," said Denise Russo, a JFK8 employee who spoke to Insider while waiting for the bus outside the facility on Tuesday. Russo, a former real estate agent, said she's tired of seeing rules inside the warehouse enforced preferentially.

During a conversation several days before the conclusion of the union vote, a JFK8 employee who asked to be identified by his first name, Izuchukwu, showed Insider six applications he had submitted for a promotion inside the warehouse that morning alone. He said he had submitted at least 100 such applications since he started working at the warehouse in 2020. Izuchukwu, who has a bachelor's degree in computer science and an MBA, said he hadn't received a response to any of his applications.

"Amazon is a great company. Among the first three companies in the whole world," he said. "But I'm not happy here. My qualifications don't match my role."

"Every organization should have a union," he added.

Some of Amazon's tactics may have backfired. "I felt like Amazon was trying to force it down our throats" that workers should be opposed to the union, Jay Carr, another JFK8 worker, told Insider. Carr, and others who echoed his sentiments, said he voted in favor of the union in no small part because he said he felt insulted by Amazon's anti-union efforts.

Workers at JFK8 told Insider that Amazon had pulled them into mandatory anti-union meetings about once a week, where Amazon union-busters and managers told them that unions were businesses, that Smalls and the ALU could guarantee nothing, and that contract negotiations could result in worse wages or benefits — common anti-union talking points that labor organizers say aren't accurate. To reach all of the more than 8,000 workers at the warehouse, Amazon ran about 20 such meetings a day, The New York Times reported. Amazon also plastered the inside of the warehouse with anti-union fliers and video messages, according to images obtained by Insider.

During the 11-month-long union campaign, Smalls remained publicly optimistic that the ALU would succeed, despite the formidable challenges in the union's path.

"The way we organize is completely different," he told Insider. "We've never seen a campaign ever like this before. We're not a traditional union. We don't have the resources. We started from scratch with nothing."

—Christian Smalls (@Shut_downAmazon) April 1, 2022

Smalls emerged as an Amazon labor leader after he organized a walkout of the Staten Island warehouse in March 2020 to protest what he said were Amazon's inadequate safety measures in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company fired Smalls shortly thereafter over what it said was an unrelated incident.

Amazon then created plans to smear Smalls, who Amazon general counsel David Zapolsky called "not smart or articulate," according to a leaked memo obtained by Vice.

Smalls has galvanized workers not just on Staten Island but across the country. A union leader at an Amazon Fresh grocery store in Seattle told Insider last month that the store was organizing an independent union because Smalls had proved it was possible to take on Amazon that way.

The Staten Island union previously filed a flurry of unfair labor practices allegations against Amazon before the federal labor board, resulting in orders that Amazon notify its employees nationwide of their rights to unionize, rehire a union organizer it had wrongfully terminated, and grant organizers permission to hold pro-union meetings in break rooms even on days they were not scheduled to work.

Obstacles remain for the union, even after its win. Amazon has a week to file objections to the conduct of the election, which, if upheld by a federal labor panel, could result in a rerun of the vote. If Friday's count is sustained, the union will turn to negotiating its first contract with Amazon, a process that is almost certain to be lengthy and contentious.

Friday afternoon, though, Amazon Labor Union leaders appeared victorious. Smalls, dressed all in red Amazon Labor Union attire, raised his fist to the sky after signing the final vote count. Emerging from the offices where the count was held, he popped a bottle of champagne.

Speaking to reporters gathered outside the office where the vote count took place, Smalls looked ahead to the upcoming union election at the second Staten Island warehouse, called LDJ5, that the ALU is organizing. That vote will take place later this month.

"We need to hold the company accountable. Jeff Bezos needs to be held accountable. Because they're doing an injustice to these workers. Workers are not safe," Smalls said. "Until they do better, we're going to continue to organize."

Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip? Contact reporter Katherine Long via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-206-375-9280) or email (klong@insider.com).