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Amazon Workers at New Jersey Facility to Hold Union Election

Amazon Workers at New Jersey Facility to Hold Union Election

Amazon.com Inc. workers at a facility in New Jersey have met the threshold to hold a union election just weeks after employees at a Staten Island, New York, warehouse became the first to unionize in the company’s U.S. history. 

Local 713 International Brotherhood of Trade Unions is hoping to unionize 200 workers at an Amazon facility in Bayonne, New Jersey, according to the National Labor Relations Board. Local 713 is based in Carle Place, New York, and was founded in 1995, according to its website.

The size of the workforce at the Bayonne facility is far smaller than the thousands of employees at the JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island who earlier this month backed the upstart Amazon Labor Union to represent them. The ALU is scheduled to have a second election later this month at another Staten Island facility that employs 1,500 workers. 

A date for the Bayonne election hasn’t been decided yet. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Local 713 brought in revenue of $7.3 million, with $6.1 million in net assets in 2018, the last year non-profit filings were available for the union. Peter Hasho, the union’s president emeritus at the time, was paid more than $1 million a year, according to the filing. 

In order to meet the threshold to hold a union election, more than 30% of workers must be in favor. Before the ALU’s victory, efforts to unionize Amazon workers in the U.S. had ended in defeat. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union lost an election last year to represent workers in Bessemer, Alabama. That election was ordered to be run again in a mail-in ballot that ended in March. The union is trailing with the results still contested. 

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