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Amazon.com Inc. appears to have won a historic union election vote at one of its biggest warehouse facilities.

According to a Wall Street Journal count Friday morning, warehouse workers at Amazon’s fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, voted not to unionize. With 72% of the 3,215 mail-in ballots, about half the nearly 6,000 eligible workers, about 71% voted against joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

The Journal noted that the National Labor Relations Board is still counting votes and has not yet declared a winner officially.

The vote is said to be the largest-ever group of Amazon workers to decide collectively whether or not to unionize. If the final result had gone the union’s way, the Bessemer fulfillment center could have become the first union of Amazon workers in the U.S.

On Thursday after initial counting indicated a likely loss for the union, RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum called for the NLRB to investigate Amazon’s conduct during the election campaign and vote over claims that it improperly pushed the U.S. Postal Service to install a mailbox at the Bessemer warehouse.

Appelbaum said in a statement that the “system is broken” and that Amazon “took full advantage of that.” He added that he will ask the labor board to hold Amazon accountable for what he said was “illegal and egregious behavior” throughout the campaign.

“But make no mistake about it; this still represents and important moment for working people and their voices will be heard,” he insisted.

Amazon spokesperson Rachael Lighty said in a statement that the mailbox was installed at the facility to make voting easier.

“The RWDSU fought those at every turn and pushed for a mail-only election, which the NLRB’s own data showed would reduce turnout,” she said. “This mailbox — which only the USPS had access to — was a simple, secure and completely optional way to make it easy for employees to vote, no more and no less.”

A final result is unlikely even when all the votes are counted. Both sides will be able to file objections and appeal the result to the NLRB once the result is in. Any challenge to the result would likely be heard by the NLRB’s board of directors, and could delay a final verdict by several months.

The election took place amid a backdrop of increased scrutiny over Amazon’s labor practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Groups of employees pushing back against some company policies.

With employees risking their exposure to a frightening new disease, some protested against what they said were inappropriate safety measures at Amazon’s facilities and complained that the company had fired workers who led those protests and organized mass walkouts. Labor regulators have said they found merit in complaints that the layoffs were retaliatory in nature.

Amazon has campaigned hard against unionization. As the movement headed towards a vote, Amazon reportedly required that workers at the facility attend anti-union training, posted anti-union signs and sent messages to employee’s phones urging them to vote no.

Analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group told SiliconANGLE that the U.S. tech industry has largely avoided unionization up until now by ensuring its employees are well-treated with decent benefits. However, the picture is changing, he said, as top executives’ salaries have massively increased while those of rank-and-file employees have stagnated.

“The result is that dissatisfaction has grown, and practices such as Amazon’s, like forcing people to work during a pandemic have suddenly opened the industry up to unions again,” Enderle said. “Few of today’s executives have been trained in how to prevent unionization, though, and so we see that they are resorting to draconian tactics rather than benefits to bring employees back from the brink, increasing the likelihood of unions forming.”

Unions have a strong presence at Amazon in Europe, but until now the company has successfully campaigned against any efforts to organize workers in the U.S. The last vote on unionizing at Amazon in the U.S. took place in 2014, when a group of maintenance and repair workers at one of its warehouses in Delaware voted against joining the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Although one union probably won’t be able to agitate for significant changes to Amazon’s labor policies, broader unionization would lead to the company having less control over its warehouse workforce and that could ultimately affect the massive profits it has generated over the years.

“Unions can increase friction and hurt a firm’s profitability and agility,” Enderle said. “They are an avoidable expense that typically arises from executives being out of touch or inconsiderate of their employee’s needs.”

The outcome of the Bessemer vote will in any case be a key labor decision that will likely determine the future freedom and speed to act that Amazon has going forward, said Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc.

“This is a close one to watch and it shows once more the central role and interest Amazon has when it comes to keeping the U.S. economy going forward, so this is a landmark vote,” Mueller said. “At the end of the day it comes back to employees to decide whether they trust Amazon’s management or the union more to do the right thing for them.”

However, Enderle said there were several possible reasons why the preliminary results of the vote had gone Amazon’s way.

“You’d have to survey the Amazon employees to see why they are voting against the union,” he said. “It could be because the majority either don’t trust the union, don’t believe that Amazon won’t retaliate against them or aren’t angry enough to support the change.”

The result of the vote could also be indicative of the systemic way that organization of workers through unions has been under attack in the U.S., ever since former President Ronald Reagan put unions in the crosshairs of his policies four decades ago, said Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT Inc.

“I’m amazed by the resistance to or antagonism toward unions in many parts of the U.S.,” King said. “Amazon has made the situation more complex, and advantageous to itself, by offering more generous pay and compensation to employees than many or most companies provide. But generations of opposition and abuse have made it difficult for many to understand the benefits they could request and attain by banding together.”

With reporting from Robert Hof

Photo: Scott Lewis/Flickr