RALEIGH, N.C. — Workers at Amazon’s hulking fulfillment center in Garner voted against unionizing, according to election results announced Saturday, marking a defeat for the independent union that had aimed to make history in the nation’s least organized state.

The union election, conducted between Monday and noon Saturday and overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, was open to 4,300 employees at the Wake County warehouse known as RDU1. ABC11, The News & Observer’s news-gathering partner, reported that about a quarter, or 829, of those who participated in the election voted to unionize, while 2,447 voted against the effort.

The campaign conducted outside and within RDU1 involved music, hamburgers, informational sessions, banners and charges of unfair labor practices.

Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, or CAUSE, had hoped workers would vote to unionize. The three-year-old, independent organization sought to earn workers $30-an-hour minimum starting wages and full-hour paid breaks during shifts, which can last more than 10 hours. Amazon says it pays U.S. customer fulfillment workers between $18.50 and $29.50 an hour, varying with location, at an average around $22.

Amazon is the nation’s second-largest private employer. During the Garner election, the company followed its blueprint from past elections, holding voluntary employee meetings to sway workers against the union and displaying posters with statements like “unions run their business with your money” around the four-floor, 2 million-square-foot facility.

Along a steel barricade lining RDU1, Amazon hung banners aligned with its corporate RDU1 campaign slogan, “Together, we soar.”

“We’re glad that our team in Garner was able to have their voices heard, and that they chose to keep a direct relationship with Amazon,” company spokesperson Eileen Hards said in a statement Saturday. “We look forward to continuing to make this a great place to work together, and to supporting our teammates as they build their futures with us.”

That CAUSE is a stand-alone organization, not affiliated with a larger union, made its fight against a $2.5 trillion company particularly noteworthy.

“Going up against a major employer with an independent union is very rare, in fact almost unprecedented,” said Abraham Walker, a sociology professor at Fayetteville State University.

Yet one of the other examples Walker mentioned was in 2022 when the independent Amazon Labor Union successfully unionized an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York. (ALU has since affiliated with the Teamsters.) This facility, called JFK8, remains the only unionized Amazon facility in the United States, though Amazon-owned stores like Whole Foods have organized.

CAUSE was launched three years ago by RDU1 item packers Ryan Brown and Mary Hill, who had become concerned over the company’s COVID-19 safety policies.

In late December, CAUSE filed for an election after enough employees filled out union authorization cards to indicate their interest. The National Labor Relations Board set a seven-day voting window for mid-February.

“The folks who know best how to organize Amazon are those who work at Amazon,” said Zoey Moretti Niebuhr, chair of the union’s community committee. “We think worker power is the answer to fight back against this company.”

RDU1 is massive. Its sprawling footprint hovers over a section of Jones Sausage Road, about a 10-minute drive south of downtown Raleigh. On Thursday, Moretti Niebuhr flipped hamburgers at a CAUSE support station just beyond the steel barricade. In the parking lot, Amazon played loud pop music which CAUSE members said was part of the company’s campaign.

Music and food are legal aspects of a union campaign. But both sides have also been accused of unfair labor practices in recent weeks under the National Labor Relations Act. On Feb. 12, a charge accused CAUSE of unlawful coercion. Since January, Amazon has received three charges in Garner — alleging unlawful dismissals, denial of access, and coercion.

Amazon has a record of unfair labor practices. A prominent union campaign at its warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, is headed to a third election after the NLRB found the company violated labor law during the initial vote. At the start of 2025, Amazon has close to 350 open or settled unfair labor practice charges across 27 states. In one example, the NLRB found Amazon “unlawfully interrogated and threatened employees” at the JFK8 facility in New York.

North Carolina is a right-to-work state. The Tar Heel State annually ranks near the bottom for union membership, and in fact finished 50th out of 50 states in 2024 with only 2.4% of workers in a union.

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