Amazon . com Inc. and other large companies should expect to see future labor-organizing efforts despite the rejection of a union at the e-commerce firm’s Bessemer, Ala., warehouse, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said.
Mr. Walsh, who took office last month, said the vote doesn’t change President Biden’s goal of increasing union jobs in the U.S.
“I don’t think you can judge the fate of labor on one vote,” Mr. Walsh said Tuesday in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I think there will be other conversations as we move forward in the country, in other companies as well as Amazon.”
Mr. Walsh noted that the vote in Alabama was the first of its kind. The election marked the first time Amazon warehouse workers who fill customer orders held an election, and the group was the largest number of Amazon employees to vote on unionizing.
The vote in Alabama failed by a wide margin despite support from Mr. Biden and other prominent Democrats and efforts by organizers to link the election to civil-rights causes, including the Black Lives Matter movement.
