FBA warehouses were urgently closed! Amazon secretly rejoiced

Last weekend, a tornado hit the east coast of the United States, and Alabama, New Jersey and other places were severely affected. For this reason, Amazon recently announced the emergency closure of the FBA warehouse in Alabama!

The tornado disaster was so severe that the National Weather Service even detected more than ten tornadoes forming at the same time. Tornadoes continued to form and attack towns until Sunday night. The National Weather Service directly issued the highest severe weather risk alert for multiple areas.

Amazon announced the emergency closure of the FBA warehouse, BHM1 in Bessemer, Alabama. The spokesperson said, "We have received a state of emergency issued by the governor and a tornado warning for the greater Birmingham area. Therefore, we have closed the Bessemer site and will reopen it when it is safe."

Alabama and Ohio were the hardest hit. Various trees and ground power lines were blown down throughout Alabama, causing the entire state's power system to be paralyzed for a time, and houses were blown down in large areas.

The tornado in Ohio was also very terrifying. An Amazon delivery truck was even swept into the sky and fell into a field. The glass of all the local houses was shattered by the strong wind, and even the roofs of some houses were blown off.

The tornadoes caused severe damage and will affect Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and other places in the future. The Weather Bureau has issued warnings for several states that may be affected, including severe weather warnings such as floods, hurricanes and hail.

It is certain that the delivery time at the end of these states will be affected. There is no way to expect the goods to be put into warehouses and put on shelves within the normal time. It will be good as long as the warehouses are not directly closed like BHM1 (you can scan the QR code at the end of the article to get the warehouse list from me to see if your warehouse is affected).

However, although Ohio was the worst hit, Amazon did not close its warehouse there, but instead closed a warehouse in Alabama, which was relatively less severely affected. Amazon actually has its own ideas here. Speaking of this BHM1 warehouse, even if there was no tornado, there was another "storm" sweeping here, that is, the first vote to establish an American union in Amazon's history was held here.

BHM1 is an Amazon FBA operation center with a total of about 6,000 employees. It is not much different from other operation centers, but what happens here affects hundreds of thousands of Amazon front-line workers across the United States. Starting from February 1, Amazon's first local union voting activity is being carried out among the 6,000 people in BHM1. Whether this union is established or not is directly related to the future of Amazon's relationship with workers.

Amazon has used a variety of strange tactics to obstruct the vote, including modifying the traffic lights outside BHM1 to reduce the time for union organization propaganda, and placing advertisements on various websites to guide people to vote "no" to the establishment of a union. However, the current situation is still very unfavorable to Amazon. Government officials including Biden and Sanders have expressed support for workers to form a union. The voting will soon close on the 31st , and Amazon is facing a do-or-die battle.

As luck would have it, a tornado hit Alabama and other places, and Amazon took the opportunity to shut down BHM1, not giving workers a chance to gather and reducing their enthusiasm for voting in the last few days (who would go to the post office in the wind and rain to mail a ballot?). Don't underestimate the last few days, many wavering workers waited until the deadline to vote, so the union was in jeopardy.

However, this is good news for sellers, because the establishment of a union will inevitably greatly increase Amazon's labor costs, and this cost increase will eventually be passed on to sellers using FBA services. Even without a union, FBA fees increase almost every year, and with a union, the increase will certainly be even more terrifying.