Workers at Amazon on Staten Island have voted to unionize, marking a significant victory for labor

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Despite the company’s heavy lobbying, workers at the facility voted heavily for a union. It was interpreted as a criticism of the company’s treatment of its employees, as related by the NY Times.

It was a union organizing campaign that few thought would succeed. A small group of employees at Amazon’s massive warehouse on Staten Island, working without the support of national labor organizations, took on one of the world’s most powerful corporations.

And, somehow, they triumphed.

Workers at the facility overwhelmingly voted to form a union, according to results released on Friday, in one of organized labor’s most significant victories in a generation.

According to the National Labor Relations Board, employees voted 2,654 to be represented by Amazon Labor Union and 2,131 against, giving the union a more than 10-point victory. More than 8,300 workers at the warehouse, New York City’s only Amazon fulfillment center, were eligible to vote.

The victory on Staten Island comes at a critical juncture for labor unions in the United States, where the proportion of workers in unions fell to 10.3 percent last year, the lowest rate in decades, despite high demand for workers, pockets of successful labor activity, and rising public approval.

The Amazon union victory, the company’s first in the United States after years of worker activism, represents a huge opportunity to change that trajectory and build on recent victories. Because Amazon touches so many industries and frequently dominates them, many labor leaders see it as an existential threat to labor standards.

You can read about this subject at NYTimes.com

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