Historic Union Vote Looms Over Amazon’s Relentless Real Estate Growth
Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of the JFK8 strike, when hundreds of Amazon employees left the company’s 855,000 SF Staten Island distribution facility – named after a president who signed a landmark collective bargaining ordinance – to veto labor conditions there after seven to protest from her colleagues fell ill with Covid-19 during the worst attack of the coronavirus pandemic on New York City.
The workers claimed the company was not transparent about the number of cases in the warehouse and had not put in place adequate safety precautions. They called for 100% paid sick leave and a plan for how the company would fight the virus in the future. The strike sparked an unprecedented labor movement in Amazon camps across the country, the payoff of which is coming to a head this week.
Courtesy of the New York Communities For Change
Amazon JFK8 employees protested the company’s response to coronavirus cases during a March 30, 2020 strike.
Amazon’s more than one million employees are on an abyss as a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, with the final vote on Monday, determines whether the company should become the company’s first unionized U.S. facility. Meanwhile, her employer continues to grow extremely rapidly, leading a wave of commercial real estate investments and developments that are transforming the fabric of neighborhoods across the country.
But even if the vote is successful and more Amazon warehouses are unionized, industrial real estate experts don’t believe that would stagnate Amazon’s rapid expansion or industrial real estate boom.
“Amazon is a super jet,” said Geoffrey Kasselman, partner and senior vice president of workplace strategy at real estate investment and development firm CRG. “It certainly won’t slow them down at all in the scheme of things.”
Still, if the Bessemer camp unions it will be one of the greatest organized labor victories in a century, and labor experts believe it would only build on the national dynamics that warehouse workers generated over the past year, starting with the JFK8 leave.
“They are trying to organize in an extraordinary context, and they are doing so in a state that does not respect workers’ rights to organize. They are fighting a really challenging but important battle,” said Anastasia Christman, director of the national’s Worker Power Program Labor Law Project said to Bisnow, “I am hopeful about the election and that the election would have been found free and fair, and I hope workers elsewhere will ask the question as well.”
The outbreak of the US health crisis marked a turning point for Amazon and the industrial real estate sector as millions of American consumers were suddenly forced to turn to online retail. While Amazon’s profits increased 84% year over year in 2020, Amazon increased its real estate footprint by 50%.
According to CBRE, it was the No. 1 tenant who saw strong growth in industrial real estate for a year, with SF223.5 million rented storage space in 2020. This corresponds to an increase of 11.8% compared to the previous year. While retail property values declined 13% over the past year, demand from Amazon and its competitors rose an average of 6% in 2020, according to MSCI’s property value index.
Last year was also a turning point for Amazon employees. Staten Island workers began mobilizing labor in camps across the country. As the epicenter of the pandemic moved across the United States, workers in Illinois, Minnesota, and California walked out of the house in protest, claiming they couldn’t properly socialize and fail to follow hygiene guidelines, leading to infections.
Amazon has stated that it has followed the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, granted sick leave, and issued personal protective equipment to workers.
Some Amazon employees are suing the company in court, and last month New York Attorney General Letitia James joined them, accusing Amazon of failing to protect workers during the pandemic and retaliation against employees who tried to organize.
“While Amazon and its CEO made billions in this crisis, hardworking employees endured unsafe conditions and were rejected for rightly raising those concerns,” James said in a statement when their office filed the lawsuit. “The workers who drove this country and kept it going during the pandemic are the very workers who continue to be treated the worst.”
In response to James’ lawsuit, an Amazon spokesperson said in a written statement, “We don’t believe the Attorney General’s filing provides an accurate picture of Amazon’s industry-leading response to the pandemic.”
An Amazon warehouse
Many Amazon employees filed complaints with federal agencies, saying their safety was being neglected and demanding that the company be held accountable.
In December, the National Labor Relations Board found that Gerald Bryson and Chris Smalls, JFK8 staff who led the strikes, retaliated when they were fired after the action, Vice reported. The NLRB also found the illegally threatened Amazon worker Jonathan Bailey, who was involved in the protest at a warehouse in Queens last March, Vice reported last week. Amazon has reached an agreement on the case, while the Bryson suit trial is expected to take place this week.
“While we disagree with the allegations in the EU [Bailey] In that case, we are happy to put that matter behind us, ”said Amazon spokeswoman Leah Seay in a written statement. “The health and safety of our employees is our top priority and we pride ourselves on creating an inclusive environment in which employees can excel without fear of retaliation, intimidation, or harassment.”
While Amazon was the biggest driver of the best-performing real estate asset class last year, it has also become a symbol of the socioeconomic disparities that the health crisis has turned from a void into a divide.
“It was part of what made us think about what essential work is and why so much of the work that keeps America buzzing is underpaid, insecure and, in many cases, the exploitation of skin color and skin workers Women depends on workers, ”said Christman.
A year after the strike, the prospect of union formation is closer than ever. Around 5,800 employees in the Bessemer warehouse BHM1 are currently voting on whether they should organize themselves into a union and become part of the retail, wholesale and department store union. It is the first of its kind in Amazon’s years of efforts to suppress union mobilization in their workplaces.
President Joe Biden endorsed the movement, highlighting the importance of the pandemic, health crisis and social crisis in the decision to form a union.
“I have long said America was not built by Wall Street. It was built by the middle class and the unions built the middle class,” Biden said in his video, which supported the union effort. “Unions give power to workers, they level the playing field, and they give them a stronger voice.”
Amazon previously said it doesn’t believe the majority of its employees want to unionize.
“RWDSU membership has declined over the past two decades,” an Amazon spokesman said in a statement to Bisnow. “Our employees know the truth – starting wages of $ 15 or more, healthcare from day one, and a safe and inclusive workplace. We encourage all of our employees to vote. “
Right now, Kasselman and others in the real estate industry say union formation is unlikely to change the industry’s growth trajectory emerging from an unprecedented year of growth. It would only affect growth “nominally and once,” he said. Amazon has found a way to “grow wildly” despite all the obstacles, said Kasselman.
“I just don’t see it as a dominant topic,” he said. “You can have an insatiable appetite for any type of property.”
Bisnow / Jarred tavern
An Amazon fulfillment center outside of Atlanta
Real estate developers and agents Bisnow interviewed for this story said the idea that work effort stifles the growth of distribution centers doesn’t matter. Amazon will grow 34% every year for the next five years, and so far nothing has stopped the company from expanding.
“We didn’t talk about this from a landlord or developer’s perspective,” said Dale Todd, senior director, industrial development services at Stream Realty Partners.
Others say they could imagine it having little impact on its growth, even if it is tiny. If labor costs are higher due to collective agreements, Amazon may be less likely to invest in secondary locations, according to some brokers.
“As the cost of doing business per person increases, the bottom line decreases,” said Thomas Donovan, partner and vice chairman of B6 Real Estate Advisors. “The opportunistic buying will definitely be affected.”
Even if Amazon’s bottom line is hurt, it’s just a tenant in a booming industrial market, said TerraCRG partner Dan Marks, a commercial leasing broker in Brooklyn.
“Amazon is a very important part of the market and a major player in the market, but there are others,” he said. “The market is more than Amazon.”
Kasselman also said that Amazon has high wages – its average hourly wage of $ 15, above the industry average of $ 12.90 – and good career paths. The focus of workers in Bessemer and those involved in protests nationally was on conditions in the camps. Union formation could affect productivity to some extent if the union focuses on it, Kasselman said.
“I just think that’s as far as the impact will go,” he said.
The vote has already sparked union formation requests in other Amazon camps, NPR reports, and the impact of the vote has already sparked union formation talks in non-warehousing industries, Christman said.
“We’re talking about Bessemer and a few thousand people, but it’s a toe grip,” said Kasselman. “Amazon moves markets. You are a market maker and changer. If suddenly their entire workforce were unionized, it would be unprecedented in the entire community for anyone in the supply chain industry. “