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> Does anyone really believe that the Amazon employees voted against the union because Amazon removed some union material from the break room one day? Of course not.

The truth is I don't think I know what it's like to live as an Amazon warehouse worker. When I grew up in California I didn't learn anything about unions until I was like 30 years old. Now to me unionization makes perfect rational sense, so I had assumed the union vote failed due to a lack of knowledge about unions amongst the workers. Like if you're a busy worker who needs their job and is afraid of company retaliation and you really don't have time to go to meetings and learn about the law and you can't really take a risk, then the "safe" thing is to vote no. Until I really learned about worker power, I probably would have done the same.

So actually yes I can see how Amazon removing literature could have impacted the vote. Looking at the original count:

"The result of the NLRB's initial vote count was 1,798 votes against the union and 738 in favor." [1]

The article also says are 6000 workers at the plant. So the question is, could the literature have helped 531 people change their mind, or brought more in from the non voting crowd? Seems perfectly plausible.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/the-amazon-union...

Both sides are following a standard script. Do you really believe that the only thing did Amazon did wrong was removing some literature? That's just like nailing Capone for not paying his taxes. The union found something that stuck and they went with it. Amazon will carry on intimidating employees to vote against and bringing in temporary external employees to boost the electorate with people who the union don't know exist.

If Amazon weren't an awful employer maybe they'd actually let their employees decide what they wanted instead of hiring union busting private security like Pinkertons.

Not that I think this union drive will succeed any time soon.

> I think it's clear that the union wants a do-over and is looking for any technicality that might give them another chance.

Well, what do you expect?

If Amazon was innocent here they could just let people vote whenever they want and people would most likely not vote for union (because they would not have reason).

Instead they chose to fight against the vote which is not exactly inspiring confidence in their innocence, especially when they bend and break the law in the process.

I've heard this line of reasoning before, but it feels weak & the absurdity is obvious if you apply it to any other scenario (replace "Amazon" and "union" with "Republican" and "Democrat" & then swap the positions around - it's not a valuable statement as it conveys very little information beyond virtue signalling & an appeal to emotion).

If you don't show up and present your case, the other side could win by default, not because they make the best case.

You're basically advocating for presenting a one-sided view to people and having them make a decision that way. This would imply that the union has a morally higher ground but I find that hard to believe as a union is just composed of people who are going to just employ the same tactics as Amazon if they could (albeit more limited at this time due to financial & structural reasons).

Is concept of union perfect? No it is not.

But the point is that in a sufficiently large corporation people mean shit and the company has disproportionate power over individual employees.

For example, in a small town with one large company there might just not be any other jobs.

The whole point of unions is to discriminate against the employer, to provide some leverage to employees to not be completely treated like shit.

If you are sufficiently large company you need to take correspondingly large responsibility and costs of maintaining that workforce.

In my view Amazon falls into both "sufficiently large" category as well as history of being shitty employer.

It is not a one-sided process, Amazon has already had great many chances to show they can do better but they chose to not use those chances to correct their behavior.

Maybe. On the other hand the Teamster’s links to organized crime (and general corruption) would seem to indicate unions can become just as malignant. Additionally there have been situations in the past where the union was responsible for the company going under.

Like I said, the weakness in this argument is it presumes that forming a union is strictly better. Maybe it is in this case. Maybe it’s not. Muzzling any speech to the contrary isn’t great though. Both sides should be able to be full throated advocates of their position as long as they do so fairly and within the limits of the law.

If it had no influence, then why remove the material and break the law?

should we presume this was strategically ordered by upper management and not just someone at the location just assumed outside material wasn't allowed?

yes

> should we presume this was strategically ordered by upper management and not just someone at the location just assumed outside material wasn't allowed?

They don't even need to do that. It's far smarter to set a policy forbidding that, then set up the incentives so some lower level guy feels a lot of pressure to break it. If he does, he's your fall guy. That way you can have your cake and eat it too: unethical conduct to support your objectives, muddy enough waters to shield you from blame, and a nice little PR show about how ethical you are and how much you care.

We should presume everyone in management has perfect knowledge of all the rules in play, and that everyone voting on unionizing has no idea what is going on because of some pamphlets which have been removed.

part of executive responsibility is training your staff on how to perform job duties in compliance with the law.

if they weren't strategically ordered to break the law, they were perhaps strategically not ordered to not break the law.

erroneously or maliciously, the law has still been broken, and the organization bears responsibility.

Rules are rules. If Amazon wants to keep the shop Union free, they have to do the hard work of persuading people rather than doing illegal shit.

I think they're betting that most people at Amazon were pro-Union but had a "I'm worried Amazon will find out my vote, so I'll let others do the voting for me" mentality. And now that it lost, they're hoping it's a wake-up call that votes matter.

I think the accusation that Amazon "gave workers the impression that their organizing activity was being surveilled" makes it clear the union believes people were afraid to vote.

> Does anyone really believe that the Amazon employees voted against the union because Amazon removed some union material from the break room one day?

Except that's not the only thing that happened, which is clear in the opening paragraph of the article. Their were multiple infractions, one of which (giving "workers the impression that their organizing activity was being surveilled") would definitely without a question would cause people to vote against a union and be fearful of getting involved or gathering more information. And regardless of how many times it happened, it was illegal.

The NLRB is the one making the recommendation for a new election, and, since they found that Amazon interfered with the election not just by removing this material, but in a number of other ways, why shouldn't they recommend holding a new election?

What's the alternative? When corporations violate labor law and interfere with union elections, do nothing about it? More broadly, if Amazon trusted the employees to research and vote of their own volition, why interfere (as determined by the NLRB) at all?