A historic union vote at an Alabama Amazon.com Inc. warehouse has finished and the count is about to begin.

Observers have said that what happens next could shape the U.S. labor movement for years to come. This week 6,000 workers at a warehouse near Birmingham ticked a box in a decision that could lead to the first-ever union at an Amazon warehouse. If that happens, it’s a good bet more warehouses will soon see unionization efforts.

It has been a messy affair so far, with Amazon employees being criticized for posting aggressive tweets when pushing back against people denouncing the company. In fact, some of the tweets were so belligerent some bystanders at first believed accounts had been hacked. That doesn’t seem to have been the case, with information later coming to light that the pushback was greenlighted by top executives, including Chief Executive Jeff Bezos.

Paying workers $15/hr doesn’t make you a “progressive workplace” when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles. https://t.co/CnFTtTKA9q

— Rep. Mark Pocan (@repmarkpocan) March 25, 2021

The organizers of the union have said the pay at the warehouse doesn’t reflect the harsh conditions for the workers, which they say is working under pressure while constantly being monitored. Each worker’s productivity is surveilled throughout every step of the shift, so if they don’t meet their quotas, there’s a possibility of being fired.

Some workers have called this dehumanizing. Moreover, since 85% of the workers at the warehouse are African-American, the vote has also been called a matter of racial justice.

In response, Amazon has said that it pays $15 per hour, which is twice that of the state’s minimum wage and more than many large rivals such as Walmart Inc. pay. The company has also said that it supplies health insurance and some other benefits that low-paying jobs rarely give to workers. As for the monitoring, Amazon has said tracking boosts productivity, and measuring employee performance is not out of the ordinary.

“Obviously, we want to win,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said last Friday while he was in Alabama. “But I think a major point has already been proven. And that is that workers, even in the Deep South, are prepared to stand up and organize and fight for justice.”

Amazon is currently the second-largest private employer in the country, with some 950,000 workers. Just last year, the company added 400,000 more people to its workforce, making it a much bigger company than in 2014 when the last unionization came to nothing after Amazon’s fierce anti-union campaign. If workers vote for a union this time, there’s little doubt it will send shockwaves around America.

Photo: Scott Lewis/Flickr