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Bessemer (dpa) - The fronts are hardened, the minds heated: Amazon and unions - that never went together.
The world's largest online retailer is repeatedly criticized for its working conditions, which is why the relationship in Europe is correspondingly tense.
In the USA, on the other hand, unions have so far had nothing to report to the corporation owned by the world's richest person, Jeff Bezos.
Amazon is the second largest employer in the country after Walmart, but there is no union representation.
That could change in a few days.
For almost two months, around 6,000 employees at a logistics warehouse in Bessemer in the southeastern US state of Alabama have been voting on an employee representation.
It is an historic election that could pave the way for the first US union at Amazon in the group's 27-year history.
No wonder that the vote attracts great interest across the country.
During the election campaign, the union has already received support from top politicians, including President Joe Biden and a number of other celebrities.
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Now the showdown is imminent: the employees can decide by the deadline this Monday whether they are in favor of joining the US trade union RWDSU.
The fact that the vote takes so long is due to the postal voting process due to the pandemic.
Amazon had tried to delay the vote, but was thrown out with an appeal to the National Labor Relations Board.
The initiative of the union wants to fight for safer working conditions and fair wages.
Amazon believes it already offers its employees all of this.
In a statement on the subject, the Bezos Group boasts one of the highest wages in the industry, comprehensive fringe benefits from the first day on the job, career opportunities and a safe and modern working environment.
In fact, Amazon has significantly increased its pay in the USA, but employees in the logistics centers in particular repeatedly complain about the high and grueling workload and alleged surveillance.
The past few days have shown how hostile the parties are to each other.
On the home stretch, the election campaign got really dirty again - in the truest sense of the word.
"Paying employees $ 15 an hour does not make you a" progressive workplace "if you go against unions and employees urinate in water bottles," tweeted Marc Pocan on Wednesday.
The Democratic Party MP was referring to reports that have been circulating for years that some Amazon delivery drivers may not find time to go to the bathroom due to the enormous workload.
The company shot back in an unusually sharp tone: "You don't really believe the thing about peeing in the bottle?" Amazon responded immediately via Twitter.
"If that were true, no one would work for us."
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But that was when the whole unsavory debate really took off.
Amazon's brusque reaction called on a journalist from “Buzzfeed”, among others, who posted instructions from a delivery company working for Amazon, calling on drivers to dispose of “urine bottles” from their vans at the end of the shift.
It got even coarser the next day when the investigative portal “The Intercept” posted leaked documents from an Amazonlogistics manager, which among other things made it clear that no bags with “human feces” are tolerated in the delivery centers.
Amazon initially did not comment on this when asked.
The company is likely to have spared itself the argument about where and how delivery drivers relieve themselves so shortly before the end of the vote.
The whole ugly discussion on the Internet may be telling, but according to an analysis by the Washington think tank Brookings, Bessemer is about much more than working conditions.
Should the employees of the RWDSU join, this would be "one of the greatest victories of the unions in the south in decades, which could shake up the labor movement and inspire far beyond Alabama," says the study.
The vote also revolves heavily on dignity and equality.
At Amazon in Bessemer, an estimated 85 percent of employees are black, who in any case make up a disproportionate number of "frontline workers" in the USA who carried out unsafe but socially important jobs in the low-wage sector during the pandemic.
While these people risked their lives in the Corona crisis, Amazon increased its profit by 84 percent and its share price by 82 percent in 2020, write the Brookings researchers.
Jeff Bezos' private wealth grew by $ 67.9 billion in the Corona year - that is 38 times the total risk bonuses that Amazon paid its employees in the pandemic.
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© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210329-99-08809 / 2
Report "The Intercept"
Website of the trade union initiative BAmazon Union
Brookings Foundation study
Amazon-Tweet You don't really believe the peeing in bottles thing?
RWDSU website on the initiative in Bessemer