Amazon used USPS mailbox keys for union voting: Report | Science and Technology News

A mailbox near the entrance to Amazon’s facilities has emerged as key evidence in a union’s bid to invalidate election results.

Alabama Amazon.com Inc. a security guard at a warehouse urged the company to use the mailbox keys to use the company to send ballots to high-profile union elections this year, an employee told the National Labor Relations Committee on Friday.

Kevin Jackson, who has been working at the Bessemer warehouse for more than a year, said he saw two guards approach the mailbox and used keys to open one of the doors. The mailbox near the entrance to the Amazon facility has emerged as key evidence in the union overturning the election results.

In an April 16 complaint, the Wholesale and Retail Store union accused Amazon of misconduct – including threatening unions, firing an employee for handing out union cards, and pressuring workers to vote in the mailbox.

The mailbox was provided by the U.S. Postal Service at Amazon’s request, and union officials accused the company of installing a box for employees to vote on. Federal law restricts the oversight of workers ’union election activities. The union also complained that the installation of the mailbox seemed to Amazon to “control the mechanics of the election,” as ordered by the acting regional director of the April 30 labor committee.

Amazon has routinely denied another reason to request the mailbox, saying it was installed to ensure strong participation. “This mailbox – which only USPS had access to – was a simple, safe and completely optional way to make it easier for employees to vote, no more and no less,” the company said in a statement last month.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Jackson’s allegation.

The “cluster” mailbox has several doors with locks. Jackson said one morning as he was leaving work he saw security guards approaching the box and then one of them used a wrench to open a large bottom box labeled “1P”. “What he was pulling out or looking for, I’m not sure,” he said.

Amazon workers voted between 1,798 and 738 against joining the union in the seven-week postal election that ended in March. The Bureau has the power to invalidate the election results in the face of conduct that could change the outcome and prevent workers from freely choosing whether or not to join a union.