Oct 25 (Reuters) – Workers at an Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) warehouse in New York’s Staten Island have filed a petition to form a union, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board said on Monday.
Chris Smalls, a former employee at the warehouse, led the effort to collect the 2,000 signatures needed to petition regulators for a vote to organize.
For the last 6 months, workers at the Staten Island warehouse called “JFK8” and other nearby Amazon facilities have been organizing to form an independent union called the Amazon Labor Union (ALU).
The workers, who also raised safety concerns at the start of the pandemic, are demanding higher wages, job security, safer working conditions, more paid time off and longer breaks.
It is not clear when an election would be held if regulators green light the petition.
Amazon did not have an immediate comment on the petition.
The world’s biggest online retailer handily beat back an effort by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) to organize its Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse.
Workers rejected joining the RWDSU by a more than 2-to-1 margin this spring, but another vote could be held as the NLRB reviews union claims that Amazon violated labor laws during the election.
Shares of Amazon were down less than 1% in afternoon trading on Nasdaq.
Reporting by Nivedita Balu and Jeffrey Dastin; Writing by Anna Driver; Editing by Mark Porter
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