When Amazon warehouse workers use the restroom, they often find themselves reading a bulletin inside the stall—called an “inSTALLment” in company jargon—that highlights both the perks of working at Amazon (“Did you know Amazon gives you free money for your savings?”) and the responsibilities of staff (“Help us prevent bugs by only eating in approved break areas”).
Since last month, though, workers at the titanic RDU1 Amazon warehouse in Garner have met a different kind of messaging on their bathroom breaks.
“Jeff Bezos makes 7.9 million dollars an hour,” one recent inSTALLment reads. “1 in 15 Amazon employees will be injured on the job,” reads another. A third notes that Bezos “spent $5.5 billion on a 4 minute trip to space.”
Unlike the usual bulletins, these are printed in both English and Spanish. And they aren’t coming from corporate management.
In early September, the worker-led movement Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity & Empowerment, or C.A.U.S.E., launched a concerted effort to get hourly workers at RDU1 to sign union cards. The push comes two-and-a-half years after hourly workers at the warehouse began organizing for a union. It also comes as Amazon rolls out a $1.50 raise for all hourly workers, bringing the starting pay at RDU1 up to $18.50.
Ryan Brown, a pastor and Amazon warehouse worker who founded C.A.U.S.E. with coworker Mary Hill in 2022, says the $1.50 raise is in part what spurred the group’s decision to initiate the card-signing effort.
“A lot of the people that I’ve been having conversations with, they feel insulted by the fact that they’re only giving us that much,” Brown says.
Beyond posting their own inSTALLments—which feature not only statistics but QR codes that lead directly to a virtual union card submission form—in warehouse bathrooms, C.A.U.S.E. members have drummed up support in recent weeks by leafleting and collecting union card signatures along Jones Ferry Road, where the two-million-square-foot RDU1 warehouse is located. To boost efficiency in their organizing efforts, C.A.U.S.E. members have formed subcommittees for day shift workers, night shift workers, and Spanish-speaking workers, and are in the process of building out a committee for Arabic-speaking workers.
There is more buzz around C.A.U.S.E. now than ever before. A video of Duke football players helping to gather signatures was shared more than a thousand times on X. Local TV affiliates and the News & Observer covered a C.A.U.S.E. press conference last Wednesday. C.A.U.S.E. says hundreds of workers have signed cards in the past month.
But when you step back and look at the task as a whole, it feels almost Sisyphean. Thirty percent of hourly workers at RDU1 must sign union cards in order to trigger a union election with the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB. The turnover rate for hourly Amazon workers is extraordinarily high; in 2022, leaked documents showed the company’s annual turnover rate to be higher than 100 percent.
To complicate matters further, it’s not clear how many people are employed at RDU1. Amazon isn’t obligated to disclose the number, and the number also fluctuates; during the holidays, for instance, the warehouse will bring on scores of seasonal workers. Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards tells the INDY that RDU1 currently has “more than 2,000” workers. Some estimates put the number as high as 6,000.
C.A.U.S.E.’s solution is to shoot for the moon. When members feel they have enough signatures, the group will send the cards to the NLRB and the NLRB will request an employee roster from Amazon. The NLRB will then check the names on the cards against the names on the roster to ensure that the cards represent 30 percent of the warehouse’s current employees.
Brown says that C.A.U.S.E. is keeping its target number of signed cards under wraps.
A few years ago, he says, at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, management got wind that organizers were nearing the number of signatures they needed to trigger an election and allegedly hired more workers in an attempt to inflate the number of eligible voters.
“We are playing a game of chess with Amazon,” Brown says.
Only one Amazon warehouse, JFK8 in Staten Island, has successfully unionized. Two other warehouses, including the warehouse in Bessemer, have been able to trigger elections but did not pass them.
In the event that C.A.U.S.E. is able to land, and win, a union election at RDU1, the group’s demands for a contract will include $30 an hour; a paid hour-long lunch break; paid sick leave; and bonuses during Amazon’s peak sales season, which begins in October and extends through the end of the year.
In general, workers want to be treated more like humans and less like machines, Brown says. Most shifts last around 10 hours. Warehouse workers currently get two paid 15-minute breaks and one unpaid 30-minute lunch break per shift. However, workers often find they have very little time to actually eat during their lunch break, Brown says.
Brown explains that if he wants to heat up his food, he usually faces a long wait in line for the microwave.
“And then while I’m sitting there, I may get a text message that tells me that I’ve been moved to a different part of the warehouse,” Brown says. “That might be a seven-minute, 12-minute walk. And I have to get there by the time the break is over, or they’re gonna write me up for TOT: time off task.”
In the weeks since C.A.U.S.E. launched the card-signing campaign, Amazon has begun to turn up the heat on what Brown describes as union-busting tactics.
At the entrance of the warehouse, where employees scan badges to clock in, there’s now a large TV screen that displays the message, “You have no obligation to speak to any group or representative of a group, including a union representative.”
Amazon representatives have also begun holding meetings at RDU1 labeled as “information meetings” that closely resemble “captive audience” meetings, where corporate management discourages union organizing. While these meetings are technically voluntary, they happen during work hours, so most employees attend to take a break from being on the line. Some workers also fear that skipping the meetings could signal involvement in union activities, leading to potential retaliation, Brown says.
A video clip of one such meeting that was obtained by the INDY depicts an Amazon representative suggesting to a room of workers that signing a union card could lead to a breach of privacy.
“Union authorization cards ask for personal information from you which can then be used by a union in lots of different ways,” the representative says in the video. “The group may even share your information with other outside groups.”
In response to the INDY’s request for comment on the unionization effort at RDU1, Hards, the Amazon spokesperson, wrote: “Our employees have the choice of whether or not to join a union. They always have. We favor opportunities for each person to be respected and valued as an individual, and to have their unique voice heard by working directly with our team. The fact is, Amazon already offers what many unions are requesting: competitive pay, health benefits on day one, and opportunities for career growth.”
Hards also noted that RDU1 “has a strong safety record” and that its “recordable injury rate in 2023 was 4.7.”
Follow Staff Writer Lena Geller on X or send an email to [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected]
The post At An Amazon Warehouse in Garner, a Card-Signing Campaign is Underway appeared first on INDY Week.