On Friday, the National Labor Relations Board rejected Amazon’s attempt to delay a unionization vote in its Bessemer, Alabama warehouse. Amazon, in a formal request issued last month, asked the Board to postpone the vote to further consider the company’s proposal to conduct the election in person, citing fears of fraudulent voting – despite an outbreak of Covid-19 in the area. The NLRB, in a statement, denied the request, saying that the public interest would be best served “by avoiding the type of in-person gatherings that a manual election entails.”

“Once again Amazon workers have won another fight in their effort to win a union voice,” Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union President Stuart Appelbaum said in a statement regarding the NLRB’s decision. “Amazon’s blatant disregard for the health and safety of its own workforce was demonstrated yet again by its insistence for an in-person election in the middle of the pandemic. Today’s decision proves that it’s long past time that Amazon start respecting its own employees; and allow them to cast their votes without intimidation and interference.”

"Our goal is for as many of our employees as possible to vote and we're disappointed by the decision by the NLRB not to provide the most fair and effective format to achieve maximum employee participation," said Amazon spokesperson Maria Boschetti in a statement Friday. "We will continue to insist on measures for a fair election that allows for a majority of our employee voices to be heard."

The company has a history of fighting attempts at unionization as well as spying on its own employees. Multiple times in 2020, the company published a job ad for an internal corporate spy to monitor any attempts to unionize. In 2019, Amazon engaged the Pinkerton detective agency to monitor attempts at unionization in Europe. According to a report by Motherboard, Amazon hired detectives to spy on warehouse workers and monitor them for labor unionization efforts. Pinkerton spies were "inserted" into a warehouse in Wroclaw, Poland, in 2019 to look into an allegation that job candidates were being coached for job interviews. There is no word if the allegation was ever proven true.

Amazon later confirmed to Motherboard they had indeed hired operatives from Pinkerton, the spy agency that has a centuries-long history of upending worker union activities, among other services.

Recently, Google got its first union after several decades of similar anti-union activities by the tech conglomerate.

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