At an Amazon site on Staten Island, hundreds of workers began voting on Friday on whether to unionize.
The warehouse, known as JFK8, has been a center of Amazon worker activism since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
Employees at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, are also in the midst of a union referendum.
On Friday afternoon, a stream of Amazon workers exited a large warehouse on New York’s Staten Island after ending up the daytime shift. Many of them crammed into city buses to travel home. On their way, they strolled through a gigantic, white tent sprawling across a part of the parking lot.
That tent will be a critical place for the next five days.
Workers at the plant, known as JFK8, just started voting on whether to join the Amazon Labor Union, a group made up of current and former business employees. The results will have relevance well beyond New York City’s smallest borough, and affect workers at all of Amazon’s facilities, where two-day Prime shipment is made feasible.
The enthusiasm was obvious on Friday as employees at JFK8 crowded around a nearby bus stop discussing about the election. Some carried yellow “vote yes” lanyards, while others wore blue “vote no” t-shirts.
