Workers at an Amazon warehouse in North Carolina rejected a proposal to unionize, becoming the latest group of the company’s employees to side against union representation.
About three-quarters of employees at an Amazon fulfillment center in Garner, a town located near Raleigh, voted against joining a grassroots labor organization called Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, the National Labor Relations Board announced Saturday.
The federal labor agency said 2,447 workers cast ballots against union representation while 829 voted in favor of joining the independent union, which is made up of former and current Amazon workers. The NLRB had said 4,300 Amazon workers were eligible to cast ballots in the election, which took place Monday through Saturday.
Rev. Ryan Brown, a former Amazon worker who co-founded the group, said Saturday, “We had already braced ourselves for a loss.”
“We knew that historically the tide was against us to have a win for several reasons,” Brown said. “One, we’re in the South. Two, the average worker that’s in North Carolina knows nothing about a union and the benefits of a union and what a union could do for them.”
The outcome came just weeks after workers at a Whole Foods Market store in Pennsylvania voted to unionize, leading to the first successful entry of organized labor into the grocery chain, which Amazon owns. Following the union win, Whole Foods asked the NLRB to toss out the election results, arguing the voting process was