Monday Will See An NLRB Election At Amazon's Garner, NC Facility: ~4,000 Workers There, Voting For The Week...

To be fair, the State of North Carolina is a bit of an outlier, here -- compared to the rest of the US workforce: nationally, on average -- about 10% of all workers are union members. In North Carolina, the rate of union membership is less than a quarter of the the national average. So the odds of success, for the independent union called "CARE" -- may not be particularly bright.

But vote they will. Through to a week from today. We will let you know how it comes out, but this is an election the NLRB has ordered, and will oversee -- due to unfair tactics by Amazon, the last time voting was conducted. [The union seeks a $30/hour wage -- where Amazon currently pays only about $18.50/hour (just a lil' above minimum wage, in Chicago) -- and that's not nearly enough to live independently on -- as a family -- in pricey suburban Raleigh, NC.] Here's the story, from CNN a few days ago:

. . .North Carolina is a state that is generally hostile to unions. Amazon is a company that is, historically, extremely hostile to unions. Now an upstart union is attempting to represent more than 4,000 Amazon workers at one of the online retailer’s facilities there.

The National Labor Relations Board is overseeing a six-day vote starting Monday, with votes due to be counted Saturday. A win by the union, Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, or CAUSE, in the town of Garner would be just the second Amazon facility to see a union win a representation vote in the US. . . .

Amazon is now the nation's second largest employer, behind only WalMart -- at about 1.8 million workers for Amazon -- and around 2.1 million at WalMart (non-union).

And Amazon's profits are utterly staggering, these last four years: Bezos' company made $59 billion in net income in 2024 -- twice what it made in 2023 (and about on a par with major multinational pharmaceutical companies).

Its NASDAQ market cap rings in, at $2.4 trillion, this week. With a "T". So -- paying workers ~$30/hour would be no stretch -- none at all. Onward (do see our Canada story, from earlier in the week).

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