Elgin Area Chamber Of Commerce: Amazon To Face Union Battle, Holiday Blues For Office Use

Elgin IL

01 December, 2021

2:32 AM

Description

Press release from the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce: November 30, 2021 By Richard Lawson CoStar News Amazon To Face Union Push Online retail giant Amazon will face another union push in Alabama as the company expands its real estate in the state. On Monday, the National Labor Relations Board's regional director in Atlanta ordered a new election at the company's fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, near Birmingham that employs some 6,000 people after striking down results of the first election that Amazon won in April. Union leaders protested to the NLRB, which agreed in August that the company's tactics resulted in an unfair election. Both sides will decide when the next election will be held, but the war of words has already started. "Today's decision confirms what we were saying all along that Amazon's intimidation and interference prevented workers from having a fair say in whether they wanted a union in their workplace and as the regional director has indicated, that is both unacceptable and illegal," Stuart Appelbaum, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union's president, said in a statement. Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, said in an emailed statement that employees overwhelmingly chose not to join the union in April and the NLRB's decision said their votes don't count. "As a company, we don't think unions are the best answer for our employees" because employees have the power to find ways to improve their jobs and unions remove the flexibility of responding quickly with changes, Nantel said. In early November, Amazon announced a second 1 million-square-foot fulfillment center for Huntsville, a delivery station in Birmingham and a 650,000-square-foot center in Montgomery. Holiday Blues for Office Use Employees emptied out of offices last week to head out for the Thanksgiving holiday. All of the major metropolitan areas tracked by Falls Church, Virginia-based security firm Kastle Systems saw office use drop for the week that ended Nov. 24, the day before Thanksgiving. It was a busy week of travel that culminated on the 24th with airports seeing the second-busiest day this year as 2.31 million people passed through security checkpoints, according to data from the Transportation Security Administration. Kastle gathers anonymous employee data from workplaces where it provides access-control technology. While it is only a sampling of buildings by one security company, the data gives a peek into how employees and employers are responding to office use during the pandemic. The week was largely flat for office use after many cities had been seeing gains. This week could return to what constitutes normal during the pandemic, with several cities above 50% on average while others are a smaller fraction of pre-pandemic levels. Sunday was the busiest travel day this year, with 2.45 million travelers passing through the nation's airports, the TSA data shows. Source: www.CoStar.com This press release was produced by the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce. The views expressed here are the author's own.