Votes are being counted in an election to find if Amazon Inc. warehouse employees in Alabama can form the first labor union at an Amazon warehouse in the U.S., reports said Wednesday.
The vote is among the largest unionization campaigns in America and is expected to last days and may even trigger a legal dispute.
A U.S. National Labor Relations Board officer will examine the ballots transmitted to more than 5,800 workers at the Bessemer warehouse to determine if the workers can join the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union.
If the Bessemer workers vote to unionize, it will be the first Amazon facility to do so. A simple majority is required.
The effort has pitted America's labor movement, supported by Democrat politicians and some Republicans against one of the most influential companies in the world.
Both Amazon - second only to Walmart with more than 800,000 workers nationwide - and the union will count the votes to decide which employees are or aren't qualified to be included in the unit.
The company and the union are expected to dispute individual employees' job descriptions and whether their position makes them eligible.
"If the union manages to do this, this is really groundbreaking," according to Wilma Liebman, a former labor relations board chairperson during the Obama administration.
"Amazon has a lot of facilities around the U.S. and plenty of workers...If this is the start of a broader movement toward unionization at Amazon that would be a big deal to the economy," Alex Colvin, the dean of Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said in remarks quoted by ABC.
Amazon has discouraged attempts by the retail workers' union to organize the online retail company's facilities.
