But inside the Staten Island plant, known as JFK8, tensions remain high between the union and Amazon. Several settlement worker organizers were fired, prompting heated reactions from the union. Amazon has yet to sit down at the bargaining table with the union, prompting Senators Sanders and Kirsten Gillibrand on Friday to urge Amazon’s CEO to recognize the union rather than fight it. And Amazon is currently trying to have the election results thrown out after filing more than two dozen objections, not only to the alleged behavior of union leaders, but also to the regional office of the National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the election. . The agency denied Amazon’s accusations against it.

The ongoing saga in the factory shows how the surprise victory of the underdog Amazon Labor Union is far from the end of a long battle for collective bargaining between some warehouse workers and one of the most major employers in the country. It also points to a playbook that Amazon could use with other warehouses, at a time when the pandemic has heightened some employees’ concerns about working conditions at the e-commerce giant. At Amazon, only a few other American sites held a union election and so far they have failed to organize.

“Amazon is not willing to acknowledge having a union,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations for Labor Education Research. She added that the developments at JFK8 reveal major weaknesses in US labor law. “One of the problems with our labor laws is that if a company refuses to negotiate, the worst penalty is a piece of paper saying, ‘Go negotiate’.”

Among its complaints, Amazon alleged in a filing that the regional office of the NLRB, which oversaw the election at the facility, “unfairly and improperly facilitated the [Amazon Labor Union’s] victory.” Amazon also accused the rank-and-file union, led by Smalls, of bullying employees, among other allegations.

The new union, meanwhile, strongly contested the layoffs of JFK8 staff. After learning last week that the company had fired another worker-organizer from the plant, marking at least the third to be fired since the first election results, the newly formed union did not mince words.

In a statement to CNN, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said the employee was terminated due to violent behavior at work. The union did not respond to requests for comment.

Bronfenbrenner said Amazon’s actions since the union election come as no surprise to an employer who has opposed and avoided organizing efforts for so long.

“They’re going to fight to stay unorganized for a very long time,” she said, “until the cost of being unorganized becomes more than the cost of being unionized, and that’s going to require that their customers and their investors put a lot of pressure on them.”