The Amazon Labor Union, the first group of Amazon employees to organize in the United States, is apparently straining to make ends meet and is still negotiating a labor contract with the e-commerce giant, according to its senior executives.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, ALU’s vice president Michelle Nieves claimed that the organization is “pretty much broke.”
The organization’s leader, Chris Smalls, an ex-Amazon employee, revealed to the publication that the group is low on funds because financing hasn’t been as generous since 2022, when it collected over $750,000 in donations and declared net assets of about $118,000. ALU’s legal expenses have caused it to become indebted ever since.
Furthermore, because the union does not yet have a contract with Amazon, it is unable to collect necessary fees from employees.
Less than a year has passed since the ALU’s employees in New York City cast their ballots in favor of unionization at the company’s JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island. Despite the fact that around 8,300 employees are employed by the warehouse, less than 5,000 persons participated in the union election that took place in March.
According to information released at the time by the National Labor Relations Board, there were 2,654 votes in favor of unionization and 2,131 against.
The workers at the ALB1 plant in upstate New York later voted against unionizing, and the ALU has since failed to organize other Amazon warehouses. Despite the fact that workers at other bases in North Carolina and California have advocated for labor union contracts, a vote has not yet taken place.
The goal of the organizers’ negotiations with Amazon is to gain better compensation and more job stability. Amazon, on the other hand, has continuously distributed anti-union propaganda to its employees, cautioning them that paying union dues may take “hundreds of dollars each year from your paycheck.”
Even more, the e-commerce giant launched a webpage calling out the ALU for “making big promises but offering very little detail on how they will achieve them.” The website claims that ALU “has never managed the millions of dollars they would receive from your paychecks” and that it “has no experience representing any associates, anywhere.”
The protest movement began in 2020, when Smalls led a protest against poor working conditions and was subsequently fired from his position as an Amazon warehouse employee. After bringing food to workers in the break area of the JFK8 plant, he continued to show up until Amazon called the police and had him jailed for trespassing.
