Amazon employees accessed mailbox for union election ballots, worker says
Amazon denies the claim. The mailbox is key to a union's objections to the e-commerce giant's actions during a failed vote to organize warehouse workers.
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The RWDSU claims that Amazon used a USPS mailbox to make voters think the company was involved in a union election.
A mailbox that was supposed to be accessible only to the US Postal Service was unlocked by two Amazon security guards during a contentious union election in Alabama, according to testimony from worker Kevin Jackson in a hearing Friday. As he was finishing up a night shift, Jackson saw the guards going through the opened mailbox for "a minute or two" as though looking for something, he said, adding that he later saw Amazon employees locking and unlocking the mailbox multiple times.
The testimony came at a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board that will consider complaints from the union that Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, voted to reject in an election that ended in April. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union claims that Amazon's actions during the election amounted to illegal influence on the vote. It was the first union election at an Amazon facility in seven years.
Amazon has said the company had no access to the mailbox, and repeated that statement in response to Jackson's testimony.
"Similar to any other mailbox that serves businesses, we had access only to the incoming mailbox where we received mail addressed to the building," an Amazon spokesperson said. "The facts will become clear when we have a chance to present them next week."
The union claims in its complaints that the mailbox was a deceptive ploy by Amazon to make workers think the company was involved in conducting the election. Amazon asked the USPS to install the mailbox after the NLRB ordered the company not to host a ballot drop box. The mailbox was a metal cabinet with slots in locked drawers and not a big blue mailbox. It was allegedly surrounded by a tent to make it look like a voting booth and subject to surveillance by Amazon's security cameras.