The Seattle Times highlights a potential turning point for Amazon: a vote to unionize in Alabama of all places.

The focus is on a warehouse in Bessemer, outside Birmingham, where workers contacted the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. By December 2020, more than 2,000 out of 5,800 employees at the site had signed cards saying they wanted union representation. That was enough for the National Labor Relations Board to schedule an election.

Not only that, but the board announced earlier this year that voting could be done by mail, which typically favors the union. Amazon wanted in-person voting.

With more than 1.2 million employees globally, Amazon is inevitably a target for unionization, as well as regulators. It’s a General Motors of the Digital Age.

At a time when only 6.3% of private-sector workers are union members, what happens in Bessemer, at what is the second-largest U.S. employer after Walmart, has big stakes for organized labor.

As The New York Times reported, “Union organizers are also building their campaign around the themes of the Black Lives Matter movement. Many of the employees at the Amazon warehouse are Black, a fact that the retail union has used to focus on issues of racial equality and empowerment. And leading the organizing effort are about two dozen unionized workers from nearby warehouses and poultry plants, most of whom are also Black.”

Read more at the Seattle Times article HERE.

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