It was a union organising campaign that few expected to have a chance. A handful of employees at Amazon’s massive warehouse on Staten Island, operating without support from national labor organisations, took on one of the most powerful companies in the world.

And, somehow, they won.

Workers at the facility voted by a wide margin to form a union, according to results released on Friday, in one of the biggest victories for organised labour in a generation.

Employees cast 2,654 votes to be represented by Amazon Labour Union and 2,131 against, giving the union a win by more than 10 percentage points, according to the National Labour Relations Board. More than 8,300 workers at the warehouse, which is the only Amazon fulfillment centre in New York City, were eligible to vote.

The win on Staten Island comes at a perilous moment for labour unions in the US, which saw the portion of workers in unions drop last year to 10.3 per cent, the lowest rate in decades, despite high demand for workers, pockets of successful labour activity and rising public approval.

Critics — including some labour officials — say that traditional unions haven’t spent enough money or shown enough imagination in organising campaigns and that they have often bet on the wrong fights. Some point to tawdry corruption scandals.

The union victory at Amazon, the first at the company in the US after years of worker activism there, offers an enormous opportunity to change that trajectory and build on recent wins.

Many union leaders regard Amazon as an existential threat to labour standards.

But the win by an independent union with few ties to existing groups appears to raise as many questions for the labour movement as it answers.

New York Times News Service