Why Amazon employees near Albany were divided about joining a union

Published

3 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

Tech founders call on Sequoia Capital to denounce VC Shaun Maguire’s Mamdani comments

Published

9 hours ago

July 7, 2025

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Tech founders call on Sequoia Capital to denounce VC Shaun Maguire's Mamdani comments

Almost 600 people have signed an open letter to leaders at venture firm Sequoia Capital after one of its partners, Shaun Maguire, posted what the group described as a “deliberate, inflammatory attack” against the Muslim Democratic mayoral candidate in New York City.

Maguire, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, posted on X over the weekend that Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary last month, “comes from a culture that lies about everything” and is out to advance “his Islamist agenda.”

The post had 5.3 million views as of Monday afternoon. Maguire, whose investments include Elon Musk’s SpaceX and X as well as artificial intelligence startup Safe Superintelligence, also published a video on X explaining the remark.

Those signing the letter are asking Sequoia to condemn Maguire’s comments and apologize to Mamdani and Muslim founders. They also want the firm to authorize an independent investigation of Maguire’s behavior in the past two years and post “a zero-tolerance policy on hate speech and religious bigotry.”

They are asking the firm for a public response by July 14, or “we will proceed with broader public disclosure, media outreach and mobilizing our networks to ensure accountability,” the letter says.

Sequoia declined to comment. Maguire didn’t respond to a request for comment, but wrote in a post about the letter on Wednesday that, “You can try everything you want to silence me, but it will just embolden me.”

Among the signees are Mudassir Sheikha, CEO of ride-hailing service Careem, and Amr Awadallah, CEO of AI startup Vectara. Also on the list is Abubakar Abid, who works in machine learning Hugging Face, which is backed by Sequoia, and Ahmed Sabbah, CEO of Telda, a financial technology startup that Sequoia first invested in four years ago.

At least three founders of startups that have gone through startup accelerator program Y Combinator added their names to the letter.

Sequoia as a firm is no stranger to politics. Doug Leone, who led the firm until 2022 and remains a partner, is a longtime Republican donor, who supported Trump in the 2024 election. Following Trump’s victory in November, Leone posted on X, “To all Trump voters: you no longer have to hide in the shadows…..you’re the majority!!”

By contrast, Leone’s predecessor, Mike Moritz, is a Democratic megadonor, who criticized Trump and, in August, slammed his colleagues in the tech industry for lining up behind the Republican nominee. In a Financial Times opinion piece, Moritz wrote Trump’s tech supporters were “making a big mistake.”

“I doubt whether any of them would want him as part of an investment syndicate that they organised,” wrote Moritz, who stepped down from Sequoia in 2023, over a decade after giving up a management role at the firm. “Why then do they dismiss his recent criminal conviction as nothing more than a politically inspired witch-hunt over a simple book-keeping error?”

Neither Leone nor Moritz returned messages seeking comment.

Roelof Botha, Sequoia’s current lead partner, has taken a more neutral stance. Botha said at an event last July that Sequoia as a partnership doesn’t “take a political point of view,” adding that he’s “not a registered member of either party.” Boelof said he’s “proud of the fact that we’ve enabled many of our partners to express their respected individual views along the way, and given them that freedom.”

Maguire has long been open with his political views. He said on X last year that he had “just donated $300k to President Trump.”

Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, has gained the ire of many people in tech and in the business community more broadly since defeating former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the June primary.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

WATCH: SpaceX valuation is maybe even conservative, says Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire

Technology

Samsung expects second-quarter profits to more than halve as it struggles to capture AI demand

Published

9 hours ago

July 7, 2025

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Samsung expects second-quarter profits to more than halve as it struggles to capture AI demand

Samsung signage during the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, US, on Thursday, March 20, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics on Tuesday forecast a 56% fall in profits for the second as the company struggles to capture demand from artificial intelligence chip leader Nvidia.

The memory chip and smartphone maker said in its guidance that operating profit for the quarter ending June was projected to be around 4.6 trillion won, down from 10.44 trillion Korean won year over year.

The figure is a deeper plunge compared to smart estimates from LSEG, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate.

According to the smart estimates, Samsung was expected to post an operating profit of 6.26 trillion won ($4.57 billion) for the quarter. Meanwhile, Samsung projected its revenue to hit 74 trillion won, falling short of LSEG smart estimates of 75.55 trillion won.

Samsung is a leading player in the global smartphone market and is also one of the world’s largest makers of memory chips, which are utilized in devices such as laptops and servers.

However, the company has been falling behind competitors like SK Hynix and Micron in high-bandwidth memory chips — an advanced type of memory that is being deployed in AI chips.

“The disappointing earnings are due to ongoing operating losses in the foundry business, while the upside in high-margin HBM business remains muted this quarter,” MS Hwang, Research Director at Counterpoint Research, said about the earnings guidance.

SK Hynix, the leader in HBM, has secured a position as Nvidia’s key supplier. While Samsung has reportedly been working to get the latest version of its HBM chips certified by Nvidia, a report from a local outlet suggests these plans have been pushed back to at least September.

The company did not respond to a request for comment on the status of its deals with Nvidia.

Ray Wang, Research Director of Semiconductors, Supply Chain and Emerging Technology at Futurum Group told CNBC that it is clear that Samsung has yet to pass Nvidia’s qualification for its most advanced HBM.

“Given that Nvidia accounts for roughly 70% of global HBM demand, the delay meaningfully caps near-term upside,” Wang said. He noted that while Samsung has secured some HBM supply for AI processors from AMD, this win is unlikely to contribute to second-quarter results due to the timing of production ramps.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s chip foundry business continues to face weak orders and serious competition from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Wang added.

Reuters reported in September that Samsung had instructed its subsidiaries worldwide to cut 30% of staff in some divisions, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Technology

Waymo to begin testing in Philadelphia with safety drivers behind the wheel

Published

13 hours ago

July 7, 2025

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Waymo to begin testing in Philadelphia with safety drivers behind the wheel

A Waymo autonomous self-driving Jaguar electric vehicle sits parked at an EVgo charging station in Los Angeles, California, on May 15, 2024.

Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images

Waymo said it will begin testing in Philadelphia, with a limited fleet of vehicles and human safety drivers behind the wheel.

“This city is a National Treasure,” Waymo wrote in a post on X on Monday. “It’s a city of love, where eagles fly with a gritty spirit and cheese that spreads and cheese that steaks. Our road trip continues to Philly next.”

The Alphabet-owned company confirmed to CNBC that it will be testing in Pennsylvania’s largest city through the fall, adding that the initial fleet of cars will be manually driven through the more complex parts of Philadelphia, including downtown and on freeways.

“Folks will see our vehicles driving at all hours throughout various neighborhoods, from North Central to Eastwick, and from University City to as far east as the Delaware River,” a Waymo spokesperson said.

With its so-called road trips, Waymo seeks to collect mapping data and evaluate how its autonomous technology, Waymo Driver, performs in new environments, handling traffic patterns and local infrastructure. Road trips are often used a way for the company to gauge whether it can potentially offer a paid ride share service in a particular location.

The expanded testing, which will go through the fall, comes as Waymo aims for a broader rollout. Last month, the company announced plans to drive vehicles manually in New York for testing, marking the first step toward potentially cracking the largest U.S. city. Waymo applied for a permit with the New York City Department of Transportation to operate autonomously with a trained specialist behind the wheel in Manhattan. State law currently doesn’t allow for such driverless operations.

Waymo One provides more than 250,000 paid trips each week across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas, and is preparing to bring fully autonomous rides to Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C., in 2026.

Alphabet has been under pressure to monetize artificial intelligence products as it bolsters spending on infrastructure. Alphabet’s “Other Bets” segment, which includes Waymo, brought in revenue of $1.65 billion in 2024, up from $1.53 billion in 2023. However, the segment lost $4.44 billion last year, compared to a loss of $4.09 billion the previous year.

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