Formation of a labour union at e-commerce behemoth Amazon was assumed to be next to impossible, until the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) pulled off just that at the company’s major warehouse at Staten Island in the U.S. in April 2022, with a majority of the workers voting ‘yes’ for the union.
Justine Medina, an organiser with the ALU at Staten Island, who is in Thiruvananthapuram to take part in the International Labour Conclave, looks at the victory as an inspiring starting point for many such attempts at unionisation.
Ms. Medina got the job at Amazon as a ‘salt’, which in union parlance means someone taking a job aiming at unionising efforts.
