By Daniel Wiessner
(Reuters) – A U.S. retail workers’ union on Tuesday accused Amazon.com Inc of unlawfully interfering with a union election at an Alabama warehouse where the company had already been found to have engaged in unlawful conduct to deter labor organizing.
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) claiming Amazon removed union literature from employee breakrooms, limited workers’ access to the warehouse before and after shifts and forced workers to attend anti-union meetings.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The NLRB sent unionization ballots to workers at the Bessemer, Alabama, plant earlier this month, and will tally the votes at the end of March.
The RWDSU was handily defeated in an election held last year, but the NLRB threw out those results after finding that Amazon unlawfully influenced the vote by encouraging workers to place ballots in a mailbox on company property.
The charges filed on Tuesday could lay the groundwork for the union to challenge the results of the pending election if it loses.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
