How does unionising work in USA?

Question

I am wondering why I read articles about employees voting on unionizing across different Amazon warehouses in US. What kind of majority is required to start a union?
What happens if vote goes for NO?

Where I live, at least 10 people are required to start a union, you fill documentation, give it to court clerks and they register your union – no voting needed. There can be multiple unions within 1 company. There can be unions across whole industries etc.

In: 12

Answer 1

Unions in the USA come in two parts.

First, it the “Local”. essentially the individual “branches” of the union that make up workers for a specific area or a specific company. For example if you become an electrician, chances are you will join “Local XYZ” (where XYZ is usually a number).

Then, all those “locals” band together into a “national” group, in the case of electricians, “IBEW, or International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.” that then really coordinates and organizes these thousands of workers so they can all benefit from group negotiations.

Now, in the USA when you here about individual locations or stores or warehouses forming unions, it is because they are the first of these workers to be forming unions, there is no national or international organization yet, just a bunch of individual locals forming. This is why workers need to vote, they are voting to form these locals, which can then band together into a nation wide group. For example with all of the amazon warehouse workers trying to form a union, in the next couple years we might see the “International Brotherhood of Warehouse/Shipping Workers” form that lets all warehouse/shipping workers group together. Or for Starbucks maybe the “International Brotherhood of Café Workers” forms and allows all the coffee/bake shop employees to group together.

But until that over-all giant body gets established, all the individual work places need to vote to form a union to get the ball rolling.

Edit: to be clear I am not a union organizer or representative, this is just based off my knowledge from people I know who ARE part of unions. So if I am wrong somewhere let me know.