Victory at Amazon Site Leads Other Unions to Rethink Strategy

The ragtag group of Staten Island warehouse workers that beat Amazon.com, Inc. last week also shattered long-held assumptions about what it takes for the labor movement to win big elections.

The Amazon Labor Union did what bigger, more established counterpart unions couldn’t—creating the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the U.S. despite being a volunteer organizing operation with no formal ties to existing unions. Nevertheless, ALU cruised to victory with 55% of the vote from workers at that New York warehouse.

Beneath the ALU’s farm-team swagger, the victory shows how organic, peer-to-peer organizing can be far more effective than professional union ...