Why Amazon employees near Albany were divided about joining a union

Published

2 years ago

October 19, 2022

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Workers stand in line to cast ballots for a union election at Amazon’s JFK8 distribution center, in the Staten Island borough of New York City, U.S. March 25, 2022.

Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

For the past few months, an Amazon warehouse near Albany has hosted the latest labor battle between the retail giant and its workers.

Workers at the facility, located in the upstate town of Schodack, sought to capitalize on a successful union campaign at another Amazon warehouse, more than 150 miles away on Staten Island, which resulted in the company’s first unionized site in the U.S.

On Tuesday, those hopes were dashed.

Employees at the warehouse near Albany voted overwhelmingly against joining a union, delivering a blow to the Amazon Labor Union, the group behind the Staten Island victory. The ALU can challenge the results of the election, and it has a week to file an appeal to the National Labor Relations Board.

Workers at the ALB1 warehouse began organizing earlier this year, believing that a union could give employees more power to address their concerns about safety, inadequate paid time off and low wages. The starting wage at the facility rose to $17 an hour, up from $15.70 an hour, after Amazon raised pay for its frontline workforce nationwide.

Following the vote, an Amazon spokesperson said “Amazon as we think that this is the best arrangement for both our employees and customers. We will continue to work directly with our teammates in Albany, as we do everywhere, to keep making Amazon better every day.”

Here’s what workers on the ground told us.

‘$18 does not stretch very far’

Cari Carter, who has worked at ALB1 for two years, makes $18.20 an hour as a packer, placing items into boxes before they’re shipped out. As a single mother with three children, she said she can’t afford to manage her expenses and recently took out a loan from Amazon in order to pay her car bills.

“Some people are happy making $18 an hour because that’s enough to support themselves. They’re usually single individuals,” Carter said in an interview outside the warehouse. “I myself am a single mother of three. $18 does not stretch very far.”

Her son, Najiel Carter, works the same morning shift as her at ALB1. He said he attended meetings held by Amazon and the union and was leaning toward voting for the union because he felt it could lead to longer break times and a less stressful atmosphere at work.

Carter said she threw her support behind the union after she grew frustrated about pay and Amazon’s policies around unpaid time off. She said Amazon enforced the policy too harshly, pointing to a co-worker who was recently fired after he ran out of unpaid time off, and was absent from work for six hours while he dealt with a car emergency.

Amazon refused to let the employee use their vacation time to cover the absence, she said, adding that employees even offered to “donate their unpaid time” to help him keep his job.

“It just so happened that he had an unforeseen incident happen, he’s negative six hours, and he’s gone,” she said.

Michael Verrastro said he also feels a union is necessary to keep Amazon from unfairly disciplining its workers. In late August, Amazon fired Verrastro from ALB1 after he kicked an empty box out of frustration when tools at his workstation repeatedly malfunctioned.

Amazon said Verrastro, who joined the company in 2020, violated its workplace violence policy and claimed a box hit his co-worker after he kicked it. Verrastro said he acted out because he was concerned he wouldn’t reach his productivity goals for the day.

Verrastro said the loss of his job has created significant hardship for him, as he was diagnosed in 2020 with aggressive prostate cancer and is still undergoing treatment. Two weeks ago, he was denied unemployment benefits.

“Here I am, now 60 years old, aggressive prostate cancer, ran out of insurance, had to go short term on Medicaid, no right to an appeal to go back to work, and Amazon just refuses to acknowledge what they’re doing,” Verrastro said. “Unfortunately, I’m not the only person who something like this has happened to.”

After he was fired, Verrastro said he got a call from lead organizer Heather Goodall and was connected to the ALU’s lawyers. They filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board over his firing. Verrastro has also filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights.

“I want people to know what this company does to its people, to its employees, to the people who make the company possible,” Verrastro said.

‘A union isn’t good for Amazon’

Other employees said they voted against the union, saying they felt it was unnecessary because the pay and benefits offered by Amazon are generous.

“If anything, I’m concerned a union will take money out of my paycheck,” said Dionte Whitehead, who works as a stower at ALB1. “A union isn’t good for Amazon.”

Workers also expressed skepticism about the ALU. The organization was started by Chris Smalls last year after he was fired from his management assistant job for leading a protest at Amazon’s sprawling JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island. The victory at JFK8 turned into a lightning rod for labor organizers seeking to unionize Amazon and other companies across the country.

But the group has struggled to build momentum after a failed union drive at another Staten Island facility, and it has suffered from infighting among members. The election win has also been clouded by a months-long court battle with Amazon, which is seeking to have the results thrown out.

Amazon sought to discredit the ALU in posters and other communications broadcast at ALB1. One message displayed on a screen inside the warehouse called the union “untested and unproven,” while flyers left on a break room table said “The ALU isn’t telling the truth.”

ALB1 worker Tyrese Caldwell said he voted no because he felt the ALU is too inexperienced.

“They’re a fresh union, and they’re trying to tackle something as big as Amazon,” Caldwell said.

Michael Oakes, another ALB1 employee, agreed. “If it were an established union, not the ALU, I might be behind it,” he said.

Plan B: A more experienced union?

Carson, the packer, said ahead of the vote on Tuesday that ALB1 organizers had discussed other strategies if they lost the election, including asking workers if they’d prefer to be represented by a well-established union.

“There are a lot of people who were opposed because it was a startup union,” she added.

Major national unions have tried to unionize Amazon workers for years to no avail. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union is seeking to represent workers at a Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse, but a vote there last spring did not have a clear outcome and is currently in court as both sides challenge some votes. Meanwhile, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters last year announced a renewed push to scale up efforts to organize Amazon workers.

Even if some workers question the fledgling Amazon Labor Union’s ability to organize ALB1, Smalls signaled he remains committed to the effort.

“This won’t be the end of ALU at ALB1,” Smalls said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

Technology

Oracle’s Federal Electronic Health Record experienced a nation-wide outage

Published

4 hours ago

March 6, 2025

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Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Oracle’s Federal Electronic Health Record experienced a nation-wide outage on Tuesday, the Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed to CNBC.

The agency said “all users” of the company’s Federal EHR, including the VA, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were impacted. Six VA medical centers, 26 community clinics, and remote VA sites experienced disruptions, the agency said.

“Affected VA medical facilities followed standard contingency procedures during the outage to ensure continuity of care for Veterans,” a VA spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.

An electronic health record, or an EHR, is a digital version of a patient’s medical history that’s updated by doctors and nurses. It’s crucial software within the U.S. health-care system, and outages can cause serious disruptions to patient care.

Oracle is one of the largest EHR vendors thanks to it’s $28 billion acquisition of the medical records giant Cerner in 2022.

The company’s Federal EHR initially started experiencing issues at around 8:37 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, the VA said. Users reported that the software froze and they were unable to access applications. Access was restored and cleared by 2:05 p.m. Eastern that day after Oracle restarted the system.

Oracle is carrying out an investigation to determine what caused the outage, the VA said. Oracle did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The outage marks Oracle’s latest stumble in a thorny, years-long EHR rollout with the VA, which has been marred by patient safety concerns. The agency launched a strategic review of Cerner in 2021, before Oracle’s acquisition, and it temporarily paused deployment of the software in 2023.

Four VA facilities in Michigan are slated to deploy Oracle’s Federal EHR in 2026.

In October, Oracle unveiled a brand-new EHR equipped with fresh cloud and artificial intelligence capabilities. The early adopter program for the software begins this year, though it’s not clear if the VA has plans to utilize it.

Oracle is slated to report third-quarter fiscal 2025 earnings on Monday.

Watch: Oracle CEO Safra Catz: Being number one is very important

Technology

Broadcom shares soar 16% as earnings top estimates on demand for custom AI chips

Published

5 hours ago

March 6, 2025

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Broadcom shares soar 16% as earnings top estimates on demand for custom AI chips

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan.

Lucas Jackson | Reuters

Broadcom reported first-quarter earnings on Thursday that topped analysts’ expectations, and the chipmaker offered strong guidance for the current quarter. The stock jumped 16% in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did versus LSEG consensus estimates:

Earnings per share: $1.60 adjusted vs. $1.49 expected
Revenue: $14.92 billion vs. $14.61 billion expected

Broadcom said it expects about $14.9 billion in second-quarter revenue, higher than the $14.76 billion forecast by Wall Street analysts. Revenue in the last quarter rose 25% from $11.96 billion a year earlier.

The company said net income increased to $5.5 billion, or $1.14 per share, from $1.33 billion, or 28 cents per share, in the same period last year.

Broadcom’s artificial intelligence business is at the center of the company’s recent boom, which saw its stock price more than double last year. The company is one of the primary data center infrastructure vendors for AI, working both on Google’s custom AI chips as well as providing essential components for networking thousands of other chips together to develop advanced AI software.

Prior to the after-hours pop, the stock was down about 23% so far in 2025, as investors rotate out of risk partly due to concern about President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Broadcom said it recorded $4.1 billion in AI revenue during the first quarter, which is 77% higher on a year-over-year basis. Those sales are reported as part of Broadcom’s semiconductor solutions business, which grew 11% on an annual basis to $8.21 billion during the quarter.

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said in a statement that the company expects “continued strength in AI semiconductor revenue,” reaching a projected $4.4 billion in the second quarter.

In December, Broadcom said it was developing custom AI chips with three large cloud customers. Tan said on Thursday that in addition to those customers, it had “deeply engaged” with two other hyperscalers, and are working with four other potential customers to develop their own custom AI chips.

Tan said that Broadcom closely chooses partners for developing custom AI chips who can deploy the resulting product in large quantities. “To put it bluntly, we don’t do it for startups,” Tan said.

The other major part of Broadcom’s revenue comes from its infrastructure software division, which includes software from the company’s acquisition of VMware in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2023. Broadcom said it saw $6.7 billion in software sales during the quarter, a 47% increase on an annual basis.

WATCH: Chip stocks see strong performance punished by markets

Chip stocks see strong performances punished by markets

Technology

HPE to cut 2,500 employees as stock slides 19% on weak earnings outlook

Published

5 hours ago

March 6, 2025

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HPE to cut 2,500 employees as stock slides 19% on weak earnings outlook

Antonio Neri, CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, speaks during an interview with CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, October 20, 2023.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Hewlett Packard Enterprise shares slid 19% in extended trading on Thursday as the data center equipment maker issued quarterly and full-year guidance that came in below consensus.

Here’s how the company did in the fiscal first quarter in comparison with LSEG consensus:

Earnings per share: 49 cents adjusted vs. 49 cents expected
Revenue: $7.85 billion vs. $7.82 billion expected

HPE’s revenue rose 16% year over year in the quarter ending on Jan. 31, according to a statement. The company was left with profit of $598 million, or 44 cents per share, up from $387 million, or 29 cents per share, in the same quarter a year earlier. The adjusted earnings per share excludes stock-based compensation.

“We could have executed better,” CEO Antonio Neri said on a conference call with analysts. The company had higher than normal inventory for artificial intelligence servers because of a shift to next-generation Blackwell graphics processing units from Nvidia.

The backlog for AI systems rose 29% quarter over quarter to $3.1 billion. Total server revenue totaled $4.29 billion.

HPE dealt with extensive discounting in the market while selling traditional servers during the quarter, finance chief Marie Myers said. As the quarter progressed, HPE moved to limit travel and discretionary spending, she said.

“We expect pricing adjustments may negatively impact top-line growth in the near term,” Myers said.

The company said it would implement a cost-cutting program involving layoffs over the next 18 months that will lead to $350 million in gross savings by the 2027 fiscal year. Around 2,500 employees will be affected, a spokesperson said, representing about 5% of the workforce when also factoring in expected attrition. At the end of October, HPE employed 61,000 people, according to its most recent annual report.

In January, the U.S. Justice Department filed in a federal district court to stop HPE from acquiring Juniper Networks. HPE announced the proposed $14 billion deal in January 2024. The court expects a trial to begin in July, according to the statement. The deal should close by October 2025, HPE said. In December, the company had said the transaction would be done in early 2025.

HPE called for 28 cents to 34 cents in adjusted earnings per share for the fiscal second quarter, with revenue coming in between $7.2 billion and $7.6 billion. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had looked for 50 cents per share on $7.93 billion in revenue.

For the 2025 fiscal year, HPE sees $1.70 to $1.90 in adjusted earnings per share. Analysts polled by LSEG had predicted $2.13 per share.

HPE expects to update its prices to reflect higher expenses from U.S. tariffs, Neri said, adding that he has not perceived any business deterioration from President Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

As of Thursday’s close, HPE shares were up about 2% so far in 2025, while the S&P 500 index was down 2%.

WATCH: HPE shares fall more than 10% after mixed earnings, layoff plans