Amazon is sending postal mail to warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama urging them to “VOTE NO” on unionization, and has also pushed anti-union ads on Twitch

A mysterious new USPS mailbox has appeared on Amazon property amid a historic union drive in Bessemer, Alabama.

VICE 2021-02-25 Lauren Kaori Gurley

Context & Ripple Effects

The Bessemer drive has been an escalating communications war. Amazon already bombarded workers with five texts a day and bathroom-stall flyers, and it fought the NLRB's mail-ballot decision by insisting on in-person voting during the pandemic. The new USPS mailbox on Amazon property, paired with 'VOTE NO' mail and anti-union ads on Twitch — a platform Amazon itself owns — extends that campaign into workers' mail stream and its own media network.

The mailbox is the most legally sensitive piece: an employer-controlled drop box on company grounds sits awkwardly next to Amazon's own argument that mail balloting is unreliable, and everything here lands before an NLRB that is already overseeing the election.

First-order effects

The roughly 6,000 eligible Bessemer workers are now reached through four owned channels — texts, flyers, mail, and Twitch ads — with the company controlling both the message and, via the on-site mailbox, part of the voting apparatus.
The union's counter-messaging has to compete against an employer that can reach every worker daily at near-zero cost, a gap the NLRB's election oversight does not close.

Second-order effects

The on-site mailbox hands the union a concrete interference complaint for the NLRB, echoing the captive-audience tactics detailed after the campaign that became the record for challenging the result.
Running anti-union ads on Amazon-owned Twitch invites scrutiny of the company using its own platforms for labor messaging — a conflict other employers lack and one that could shape how platform-owning corporations are treated in future disputes.

Third-order effects

If the pattern holds, high-stakes union votes at large employers become multi-channel persuasion campaigns — texts, mail, in-house media, and physical infrastructure on company property — with election legitimacy contested through NLRB challenges rather than settled at the ballot box.

The trend: Union elections at major employers are turning into employer-controlled, omnichannel persuasion campaigns, pushing legitimacy disputes from the ballot box to the NLRB.

Discussion

@moreperfectus @moreperfectus on x
NEW: Amazon is running glossy anti-union ads to combat the organizing drive by workers at their Bessemer, AL, warehouse. An Alabama resident said this spot is one of several that Amazon is now running on Twitch. https://twitter.com/...
@jordanuhl Jordan on x
“A USPS mailbox intended for mailing union ballots was recently installed just feet from where Amazon workers exit and enter the warehouse, a move that workers say makes them feel surveilled in the election, which is supposed to be anonymous.” https://www.vice.com/...
@bigblackjacobin Edward Ongweso Jr on x
Amazon leveraging its ownership of Twitch to spread anti-union propaganda reminds me of Uber and Lyft using the app to spread their propaganda, but especially of how the ads persisted after I left California before the Prop 22 vote https://twitter.com/...
@phirephoenix Jenny on x
if unions were truly ineffectual and pointless then why are the world's most powerful companies terrified of them, pt. 378 https://twitter.com/...
@jason_koebler Jason Koebler on x
NEW: Amazon's union busting has hit new levels. We've obtained a mailer that went to all employees instructing them to “Vote NO” and also learned they are telling employees to vote in a new USPS mailbox on campus https://www.vice.com/... by @LaurenKGurley, reporting in Bessemer
@sgaibrie Gaibrie S on x
This is so slimey @amazon. Imagine how exploitative your employment practices must be to try this hard (to the point of installing a fake union voting booth in your warehouse) to bust unionization? Unions are the first step to mitigating the harms of free enterprise https://twitt…
@jomc Joanne Mcneil on x
Amazon's ownership of Twitch seems vastly underreported given its influence and that it will do something like this: https://twitter.com/...
@bigblackjacobin Edward Ongweso Jr on x
Amazon's union-busting tactics continue to escalate. After an on-site USPS mailing box suddenly appeared at Amazon's Bessemer, AL warehouse, the company began sending mailers and text messages to employees begging them to Vote NO in the union election https://www.vice.com/...

Chronicles