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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Just a few short weeks ago as all of you probably know, labor organizers at Amazon's warehouse on Staten Island were popping champagne to celebrate an almost 11% margin of victory vote in favor of unionization. According to the New York Times, there was an 11 percentage point margin. Less than one month later in a vote that came down to 380 for and 618 against, the Amazon sortation facility on Staten Island next door to that warehouse, rejected joining the union.

Amazon Staten Island's presence is an entire complex, including four similar warehouses, making it the largest private-sector employer in the borough that's according to a New York Times comparison, and the Amazon Labor Union, an independent union without previous ties to organized labor is attempting to unionize them all.

Joining me now to discuss why workers at this sortation facility decided not to organize and what's next for the Amazon Labor Union and for the company is Gwynne Hogan, reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, who's been covering this saga. Hey, Gwynne, welcome back to the show.

Gwynne Hogan: Hey, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, any Amazon workers out there tuning in right now, anyone from the sortation facility LDJ5, as it's known, listening in, did you vote for or against unionization and want to call up and tell us why? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Gwynne, I gave those numbers at the top of the show about how many workers voted in favor and against, but can you break down the margins for us and how it compares to the Amazon vote that happened last month? I think one of the shocking things here is that it was fairly lopsided, but in opposite directions in these two votes.

Gwynne Hogan: Yes, that's right. As you know last month you mentioned, that's a facility where about 8,000 workers were eligible to vote and 55% of them voted to support the union. In this case, we're talking about a much smaller facility, about a fifth of the size, around 1,600 employees were eligible to vote here. In this case, we had most, the majority, a very decisive no vote there with about just 38% of workers voting to support the union at that facility.

Brian Lehrer: I want to cut through what I think a lot of the talk has been about in the last day, not to say that this is not true, but that there was a lot of anti-union activity and it was structurally more favorable, the conditions there to the company, more so than at the warehouse which voted to unionize. Get to a little bit of what the company's arguments were, that most of these workers at the sortation facility seemed to buy. What did the anti-union literature say? What arguments did Amazon make at these mandatory meetings that they called to argue against unionization that more than 600 of these workers bought?

Gwynne Hogan: I think it folds along two lines here. I think the message that Amazon was spreading in the second facility was very similar to the one that it spread at JFK8, which was, "This is a third party, they're coming in. They're not affiliated with us. You could end up with a worse contract. You'll be mandated to pay union dues and if you don't, we'll fire you." This typical type of misinformation about what a union drive would bring to a facility that was spread at the first facility.

The messaging was very similar. You saw almost identical banners spread up across the second facility that said, "Vote no." They're using the same captive audience meetings, the same tactics using both. What union organizers point out is that, basically, they just brought the same number of folks that they had at JFK8, where there were 1,000 workers, into this 1,500 person facility. All of a sudden, these tactics were much more heavy-handed on the smaller number of people. That's one of the things that the union organizers will say.

Another thing, they held an impromptu press conference outside the facility yesterday. My colleague was there. They conceded that there were some organizational issues that they had struggled with, namely that they basically had to run two union drives at once. They had JFK8. They put so much focus in it. There were 8,000 people they had to communicate with. Then they just had a few weeks to spread their efforts to LDJ5.

I think they're going to say that there's more anti-union tactics being used, but then there were some structural organization issues that they had confronted just because of limited resources and time on an organizing front.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I guess it took the union a lot of time to reach as many of the 8,000 or so workers as they could at the warehouse. Then I guess you're saying that they say they didn't have the time to reach the 1,500 or so workers if I've got that number roughly right at the sortation facility. One of the things that I read because you reported it is that many of the workers at LDJ5, the sortation facility, are part-time because there's a lack of full-time work and that these Amazon facilities, which are clustered together are also hard to get to and that there's a tremendous amount of turnover at this facility.

Is one of the reasons that people would vote no that if they see themselves as just passing through for a short time, "Okay. I'll work as a sorter for Amazon for a while before I go on to the rest of my life, the rest of my career," rather than seeing themselves as building careers at a place like that or with that company, that they would be more reluctant to want to pay union dues?

Gwynne Hogan: Absolutely. I think that the turnover is so high at these facilities. You have a lot of young employees who are recent college grads. They do not want to spend their career at Amazon. The economy has been really tough and this was a place where people could find jobs during a global shutdown, basically. I hung out by a bus stop and I was just talking to some of the people that were coming through. It's a mix. Obviously, it's a mix of older and younger people, but the people, they may not even have been interested in the union vote or not heard about it and if you're not trying to make a career at this location, why am I really going to get involved with this?

Those people may not have even voted at all. Then you're left with people who were really compelled by the anti-union messaging, who may have turned out in higher numbers at LDJ5.

Brian Lehrer: What did the union argue essentially that they could provide for the workers?

Gwynne Hogan: The Amazon Labor Union has campaigned on a couple of fundamental issues. The first one is obviously higher wages. The starting wage for those warehouses is at 18.25, which is just above the minimum wage in New York City. They say they want to fight for a $30 minimum wage, but concede that that's the dream and that they may through the contract negotiation process, have to settle for something lower than that.

They want just cause protections because there's a ton of turnover. Actually, Amazon does a lot of layoffs throughout the year and then a lot of workers have a gap in employment for a few months and then they're hired two months later at a warehouse across the street because this is part of the company's business model is to have lots of turnovers.

Brian Lehrer: We did a segment on that sometime back. When you say just cause protection, in other words, people couldn't be let go unless they did something wrong.

Gwynne Hogan: Correct. There are other little changes like longer breaks. If you have a 10-hour to 12-hour shift, which is maybe not the case if workers are part-time, you could get they want hour-long lunch breaks for those people who are working really long shifts as opposed to 30 minutes. Another very simple quality of life issue that they have campaigned on is just a shuttle from the ferry stop on Staten Island because there's an MTA bus, it takes more than 45 minutes, and it's stuck in traffic and there are more than a dozen stops.

having a place where if you're commuting from another borough, you could just get the Amazon shuttle that would simplify a lot of commuters' lives and day-to-day lives.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we were going to give first priority on the phones to anyone who actually works at this Amazon sortation facility on Staten Island, but that's not that many people, and none of them are calling in. Now, we're going to open up the phones to anyone else who has a question or a comment about the larger issue of trying to unionize at Amazon facilities.

They have one win and one loss now on State Island. There are other efforts going on around the country. Gwynne Hogan from WNYC and Gothamist has been covering the local efforts. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @Brian Lehrer. Here's a tweet that came in. This is a linguistic thing Gwynne, but maybe you've seen this before. This says, "For anyone interested, Amazon's choice to call it a sortation facility and not just a sorting facility actually has a rationale. Sortation refers to the automated or mechanized process of sorting." Is that anything you're familiar with?

Gwynne Hogan: I actually don't know about that. That's interesting. I got to look into that.

Brian Lehrer: Which means I guess that they use as much automation as they possibly can. I'm sure that's the case but you can't organize the machines only the people. You write that Amazon had ramped up its anti-union tactics in the wake of the JFK8 vote, the warehouse vote where they did unionize and was able to flood the facility with anti-union consultants. Can you talk about how that worked?

Gwynne Hogan: Sure, yes. Under Federal Labor law, companies are allowed to express their first amendment rights. In most cases, it's, "We don't want you to join a union." The Amazon has hired- They did this Bessemer, they've done this in Staten Island. -varying groups of consultants who basically, they come in, they make sometimes thousands of dollars a day. According to all the federal filings to basically hold these captive audience meetings as they're called, as union organizers refer to them, those are meetings that are supposed to be voluntary but it's often not explicitly communicated to employees that they are voluntary.

They seem like they're mandatory. If your boss says you have to go to this meeting and doesn't say you don't have to go to it, you're going to go to that meeting. These types of meetings where they're given a lot of information about the union that the company condones. There's a lot of legal ways of deterring people from voting yes that fall into this gray area of conduct where people could say, "Look, I'm not going to say vote yes or vote no but like you might regret it if you vote yes."

You can imagine if your boss is saying this if you're in a small group with your peers, how that could be intimidating. In terms of the attorneys for the ALU filed I believe it was around 16 charges this past month with the NLRB that have to do with retaliation against union organizers. One union organizer was suspended. There was issues with the break room that was supposed to be a space that the union could campaign and there were issues with a sign that said vote yes even though there were signs that said vote no all over the facility. That's the tactics that the organizers have described in federal labor complaints

Brian Lehrer: Alleged dirty pool against the ALU, the Amazon Labor Union. It's interesting to me that I've seen a lot of Amazon advertising recently that touts how generous they are to their workers, that the starting wage isn't just the $15 minimum wage, it is $18 plus as you mentioned before. It's still not a lot of money but it's $3 an hour higher than the hard-fought-for $15 minimum wage in New York State. They advertise that there are good health benefits. They advertise that there are education benefits. Was Amazon actually making the case to the workers that those things might go away if they had to start from scratch with a collective bargaining agreement process?

Gwynne Hogan: Yes, that's one of the lines of reasoning that the union organizers had to combat this idea that they would get a worse contract through the union which they'll be like, "No, we would never sign a worse contract." That's definitely like the idea that there could be amorphous punishments or like a worse day-to-day outcome for you if you joined is definitely one way of communicating that you shouldn't vote yes.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Joe a FedEx worker in White Plains. Joe, you got to deliver a lot of those Amazon packages, I imagine. You're on WNYC. Hi.

Joe: Hello, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I haven't been a FedEx driver for like 20 years. It was the same thing when we were trying to unionize, I had some executive from corporate telling us why unions are bad. One of the reasons was he said, "Look at the baseball strike." I said in the meeting, "Yes, but they started like 100,000-200,000 a year to start." He didn't have anything to say back about that but it's really unfair when they get you in a room and--

Brian Lehrer: Captive audience. I wonder if there's even implicit, even if they don't say it, some kind of a threat that there would be consequences to you if you vote for the union. Joe, do you feel like you experienced anything like that at that time?

Joe: Oh, definitely. Plus the fact that my company had unionized nationally because it's a transportation company they couldn't do it locally. They were covered by something called the Railway Act.

Brian Lehrer: Joe, thank you for your call. I appreciate it. Here is Althea in Trenton. You're on WNYC. Hi, Althea.

Althea: Hi, good morning.

Brian: You're a former Amazon employee I see.

Althea: Yes, I was. I worked a couple of months at the Trenton location and it was insane because I worked for like 10-hour shift, especially during the height of the holidays. Everyone was only allowed a half an hour lunch break which was insane because you're standing on your feet for 10 hours a day. I'm like a young person relatively healthy and I was like, "Oh no problem, I can do this," but after the first week, I was experiencing feet pain, back pain, leg pain and I've never experienced this type of pain in my entire life. Then just imagine the older employees who are still doing this with only half an hour lunch break is insane to me.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think a union at that time at that place might have made the company not push people beyond their limits in that way, so many hours on their feet?

Althea: Definitely, because you're working four days a week 10 hours a day. During the holiday season, you're mandated an additional hour each day in an additional ten-hour shift.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Do you know if they have anything like that still at either the warehouse or the sortation facility on Staten Island? Is that a common Amazon practice for these pickers and packers and sorters if you know, Gwynne?

Gwynne Hogan: Do you mean that long shift?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Gwynne Hogan: Oh, yes. There's like another type where you can pick up shifts and work for less than the 11-hour shift, but most of the folks that I'm referring to were at the JFK8 had to do that 10 or 11-hour shift or even like sometimes 11 hours and 45 minutes, just under the 12-hour. Again-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Why? Why not just do three eight-hour shifts to make 24 hours like hospitals and lots of places.

Gwynne Hogan: That is a great question, Brian above my pay grade. I'm not sure what their-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Something else to dig into. Hey, let me throw in one more thing before we run out of time. Maybe a coincidence but Reuters is reporting that Amazon announced just yesterday that it will fund people's travel for medical care. This is being seen as, "We will fund your travel out of state to get abortions. To leave states where it is illegal or might become illegal."

Apparently announced it before the leak of the Roe versus Wade decision draft or returning Roe versus Wade last night. According to Reuters, Amazon told the staff they'll pay up to $4,000 annually for what they call non-life-threatening medical treatment. That would include abortion. Have you seen that yet? Do you think that's a tactic in the "we already give you good benefits" war?

Gwynne Hogan: I saw that report from Reuters and a spokesperson confirmed that that is accurate and that they will be offering this $4,000 in travel expense for like you said non-life-threatening medical treatments which could cover abortions as you've said. Is it a coincidence that it happened the same day on Monday? It does-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: I guess here's my theory on this.

Gwynne Hogan: Yes, go for it. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: We've got 20 seconds left, but that a lot of the things that we've mentioned here, $18 plus minimum wage, health benefits, education benefits, now this. Even if these union drives are unsuccessful, they're driving improved pay and benefits at Amazon.

Gwynne Hogan: It's going to be very interesting to see, especially as the JFK8 still has to work on a contract and what it can get there.

Brian Lehrer: Gwynne Hogan reporting on Amazon and the Amazon Labor Union for WNYC and Gothamist. Thanks, Gwynne.

Gwynne Hogan: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today produced by MaryEileen Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and [unintelligible 00:20:43]. Our interns this spring semester are Anna Conkling, Gigi Steckel and Diego Munhoz. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen edits our daily politics podcast. We had Juliana Fonda at the audio controls. I'm Brian Lehrer.

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