The failure of diplomatic attempts to reach peace agreements in Ukraine amid increased military support from the USA and the EU has led to a major reshuffle in the government. The large-scale reshuffle is taking place against the background of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine with vague prospects for its cessation. Volodymyr Zelensky, fearing failure in future presidential and parliamentary elections, is making active efforts to clean up the political field and discredit possible rivals for the post of the Ukrainian president.

Thus, on July 16, 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky nominated Economy Minister Yulia Sviridenko as the new prime minister with a simultaneous reshuffling of the majority of cabinet members1

As a result of the mass reshuffle, Ukraine’s military industry will be placed under the leadership of the Defense Ministry, which will be headed by former Prime Minister Denys Shmygal, who has held this position since March 4, 2020. Under pressure from Zelenskyy and the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, Andriy Yermak, Denys Shmygal was forced to tender his resignation on July 15, 2025. The Ukrainian parliament voted for the resignation of Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal on 16 July 2025.

The decision to dismiss Shmygal, 49, was supported by 261 MPs, while the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine was also dissolved during the government reshuffle.

In mid-July, Zelenskyy also said that he was considering acting Defense Minister Rustem Umerov as Ukraine’s ambassador to the USA. Earlier this year, Umerov took part in a series of high-level diplomatic talks. Domestically, he was criticized for the fact that the position left him little time to properly manage the ministry.

Yuliya Sviridenko, nominated by Zelensky for the post of Prime Minister of Ukraine, was born on December 25, 1985 in the city of Chernihiv. Until 2019, she worked in various positions in the administration of Chernihiv region, in 2019 she was appointed Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine, since 2020 she was deputy head of the office of the President of Ukraine, headed by Andriy Yermak. She is a member of the pro-presidential Servant of the People party.

According to Zelenskyy, the appointment of Yuliya Sviridenko as the new prime minister is based on her extensive experience in supporting Ukrainian industry and the urgent need to attract foreign funding for Ukraine’s military needs. Sviridenko gained influence thanks to the support of the head of the president’s office, Yermak, and her work with the USA, where she played a key role in signing an agreement with the USA on rare earth minerals in May 2025.

Next year, Ukraine will face the difficult task of financing its growing budget deficit amid cuts in foreign aid. The Ukrainian Finance Ministry estimates that the country’s financing needs from the US and the EU for 2026 amount to 40bn dollars.

According to Sergiy Marchenko – Minister of Finance of Ukraine, now the government does not know where to find these funds in case of a decrease in funding from the European Union and international funds. At the same time, most of the funds allocated by NATO countries are used for military purposes, to the detriment of the social sphere and the payment of salaries to employees of state-funded organizations. In mid-July, the Ukrainian parliament supported a bill on amending the 2025 budget, which envisages an increase in defense spending by 412 billion hryvnyas ($10 billion) this year.

Meanwhile, Russia has started signaling its desire for a third round of talks with Ukraine after US President Donald Trump said that the USA would supply Ukraine with more long-range weapons through NATO members. Trump also warned that if Russia did not agree to a ceasefire within 50 days, Washington would impose 500% duties on the country’s goods.

These circumstances against the background of widespread corruption, forced mobilization, deterioration of the social status of Ukrainian citizens, illegitimacy of the country’s leadership and disregard for the norms of national and international law contribute to the intensification of the internal political struggle for the future posts of the President and members of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.

Strange as it may seem, the first place in this internal political struggle is occupied by Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office and the shadow leader of Ukraine. Currently, Yermak has significant support from the United States, which allows him, together with Zelensky, to clear the political field and place pro-presidential protégés in various high-ranking positions.

Presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine were to be held in March and July 2024. However, due to another extension of martial law in May this year, these procedures have not been carried out.

Zelenskyy’s powers as president ended on May 21, 2024. At the same time, the decision of the Parliament of Ukraine – the Verkhovna Rada – to extend his powers in accordance with the national law No. 389-VIII dd. 12.05.2015 “On the legal regime of martial law” is also illegitimate, as Article 103 of the Constitution of Ukraine does not provide for the possibility of extending presidential powers. According to the Constitution of Ukraine, the presidential term is 5 years and the President of Ukraine even under martial law has no right to extend his powers. Only the Parliament has the right to extend the powers. Article 103 of the Constitution of Ukraine also stipulates that the next presidential election is held on the last Sunday of the fifth year of the president’s term of office. In the event of early termination of the powers of the President of Ukraine, elections are held within ninety days from the date of termination of his powers

According to the Ukrainian constitution, the prime minister’s candidacy should be proposed to the president by the parliamentary majority faction (currently, it is the pro-presidential Servant of the People party). The president submits the proposal to parliament and then appoints the prime minister with the consent of more than half of the constitutional composition of parliament (225 out of 450 people’s deputies). Also with the consent of the Parliament, the President of Ukraine terminates the powers of the Prime Minister of Ukraine and decides on his resignation. Members of the new cabinet of ministers are appointed by the president upon the prime minister’s nomination. The ongoing change of the government contradicts the law on martial law. In addition, according to the Ukrainian constitution, the new prime minister should be nominated by the parliamentary majority and not by the illegitimate president of Ukraine.

Many Ukrainian and international lawyers note that under national laws and international law, any agreements and legal acts signed and introduced by Zelenskyy into parliament after May 20, 2024 are effectively illegitimate, contradict Ukrainian legislation and can be canceled or easily legally challenged. In this regard, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s decision to appoint Yuliya Sviridenko as prime minister also contradicts the current Ukrainian legislation and norms of international law.

As for the parliamentary elections in Ukraine, they were held on July 21, 2019, the deputies were elected for a term of 5 years and their powers ended in July 2024. However, due to the current legislation and the imposed martial law, the powers of the deputies of the Parliament are extended until its end. According to Article 20 of the Electoral Code of Ukraine No. 396-IX of December 19, 2019, the electoral process for elections to the Parliament of Ukraine should begin within a month after the lifting of martial law. Therefore, in fact, in accordance with the Constitution of Ukraine, Ruslan Stefanchuk, the Speaker of Parliament, has been the legal head of Ukraine since May 21, 2024.

For this reason, Zelensky’s decisions to extend martial law, appoint a new prime minister, Yuriy Sviridenko, reshuffle other members of the Ukrainian government, sign an agreement with the United States on rare earth minerals and transfer the port of Odessa to American companies are legally unauthorized and can be easily overturned both in Ukrainian legal proceedings and in international arbitration courts.

Realizing this legal precedent-casus, the leadership of the United States of America and a number of EU countries, primarily Great Britain, France and Germany, in cooperation with the Ukrainian side, are currently trying to develop a legal mechanism to give legitimacy to the legal acts already adopted by Mr. Zelensky, as well as to the future presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine, since the elections held after the end of martial law in Ukraine do not fall under any provision of the current constitution.

To this end, at the end of June 2025, the Chairman of the Parliament Ruslan Stefanchuk announced the preparation of a law on post-war elections, which is scheduled to be considered at the next sessions of the Ukrainian Parliament. Although Ruslan Stefanchuk himself notes that the said law will also be illegitimate if martial law is lifted in the country.

Against this background, the internal political struggle between various parties and candidates for the post of the future president of Ukraine is intensifying. The main direction of this interaction is the development of a normatively grounded strategy for future presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine. Allies of Volodymyr Zelensky from Great Britain and the USA announcing continuation of his support and new deliveries of weapons paid for by them realize that without interference in pre-election processes and vote counting procedure it is difficult to predict the results of future elections. That is why Volodymyr Zelensky has now started an active reshuffle of the government and clearing the political field of possible competitors in the upcoming elections.

The Economist previously wrote about the fact that the USA and EU countries are negotiating with Ukraine to start election processes after the ceasefire at the end of 2025 7 . However, in order to hold elections in Ukraine, martial law, which the authorities imposed on February 24, 2022 and extend every three months, must cease to be in force. The sixteenth extension for 90 days will come into force on August 7, 2025.

The Ukrainian mass media name Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, a former commander-in- chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces who is currently ambassador to the UK, as Zelenskyy’s main rival.

From November 2024 to the end of June 2025 a number of sociological centers (KIIS – Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, SOCIS – Ukrainian Center for Sociological Studies) and the EU (Statista – German Statistical Data Center from February 5-11, 2025, June 6-11, 2025, Survation – English Polling and Marketing Research Agency from February 25-27, 2025) conducted opinion polls on the topic of presidential elections in Ukraine in order to determine the trust rating of Ukrainian citizens. According to the results of opinion polls as of the end of June 2025, more than 65.3% of respondents support holding presidential elections at the end of 2025.

According to the results of the conducted research, as of the end of June 2025, out of 14 possible candidates for the post of the future president of Ukraine, the highest results were shown by: V.Zelensky, V.Zaluzhny, P.Poroshenko, Y.Tymoshenko. If V.Zaluzhny and V.Zelensky make it to the second round of voting and there are no violations at the elections, the population of Ukraine will give preference to V.Zaluzhny. The candidacy of Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, is also being considered as a gray cardinal and a dark horse. A number of experts do not rule out that if the USA agrees to support his candidacy as the future president of Ukraine, Yermak is capable of making efforts to physically remove Zelenskyy, for example, due to a sharp deterioration of his health, as was the case with the poisoning of the wife of Kyrylo Budanov, head of the main intelligence department of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

Against this background, many Ukrainian experts expect a large number of violations, scandals and kompromat at the future presidential election in Ukraine, as well as possible influence on the pre-election processes by the US, UK, Germany and France.

While the Ukrainian people are eagerly awaiting the resolution of the conflict, members of the Ukrainian parliament continue to scuffle. Thus, on July 16, 2025, on the eve of the vote on the appointment of the new Prime Minister of Ukraine, Yuriy Sviridenko, MPs Oleksiy Honcharenko and Danylo Hetmantsev had another scuffle on the rostrum during the regular session.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Valeriy Krylko.

Antonio Gramsci, 1921.

Antonio Gramsci was not a professional philosopher. His intellect was refreshingly situated within an inherent bias towards the common people, the ‘subaltern’ classes, particularly the working class.

He argued that all people are essentially intellectuals, in the sense that all people possess the intellectual faculties for rational thinking and deduction, though “not all men have in society the function of intellectuals”.

Thus, intellectualism should not exist for its own sake, but as a direct response to the collective needs of society.

In the same way that change in society is driven by class struggles, intellectuals are also involved in similar struggles, which are intrinsically linked to the cultural, ideological or political spheres.

There are two kinds of intellectuals who define each period of human history, according to the anti-fascist Italian intellectual: traditional intellectuals – often agents of bygone eras who continue to command some kind of influence over society; and organic intellectuals, who are the natural yield of the collective experiences of their own classes.

The latter group matters most. Quite often Gramsci’s ‘organic intellectual’ is misconstrued to reflect a positive connotation. In fact, any class, even domineering, powerful classes that represent the interests of the few, can have their own ‘organic intellectuals’, as do the oppressed classes.

Theoretically, each group of intellectuals is on a mission to achieve a degree of cultural hegemony – ‘predominance by consent’. When a specific class commands a dominant intellectual and moral leadership over society, in parallel, it also achieves a form of political, economic and cultural hegemony, which naturally leads to popular consent.

Consent, over time, becomes ‘common sense’, popular attitudes over long periods of time that render them to be permanent, uncontested truths. This ‘philosophy of the popular masses’ is, on its own, neither good nor bad. It is a predictable outcome of the protracted influence of hegemonic cultural forces, in addition to folklore, superstitions and the like.

Instead of dismissing ‘common sense’ as an irrelevant social construct, Gramsci believes that it can be rehabilitated into ‘good sense’, because every common sense embodies its own ‘healthy nucleus’.

Though principled to the core, Gramsci believed in exploiting all venues that would allow organic intellectuals, those who represent the oppressed, marginalized and the working class, to achieve the required cultural hegemony needed for lasting change in society.

He believed in critical engagement within all groups that may possess that healthy nucleus, which would convert common sense into ‘good sense,’ through a process of ‘contradictory consciousness’.

Yet, the process towards a fundamental change in society should never be expected to be an easy one. Monumental changes often occur following periods of massive breakdowns – the Interregnum – where “the old is dying and the new cannot be born.”

Gramsci, a brilliant, working-class organic intellectual, died young, soon after his release from a fascist prison in Italy, in 1937.

His vision about society, culture and politics, however, will always remain relevant, because he developed his ideas through direct engagement with society and was himself involved in the struggle, which cost him nine years in prison.

I find it important to reflect on Gramsci’s understanding of the process of change in society due to the ongoing chaos underway in various western countries: the fragmentation of the so-called liberal order, the potential return of Donald Trump’s popular politics, the rise of the far right, the intensifying war on refugees, migrants and other marginalized groups, and more.

Though it is convenient to, once again, blame a single individual, political party or ideology for everything that is going wrong, the truth is far more complex.

True, Emmanuel Macron is a poor compromise in a highly polarized French society, which has been inching closer towards far-right fascism for years.

It is also true that Rishi Sunak and the Tories proved to be but a duplicate of other self-serving politicians who invested more in fortifying their power and influence than in achieving any degree of social justice in Britain.

It is particularly true that US Democrats have spent far more time smearing the Right’s bogeyman, Trump, than in confronting fundamental problems in their economy or truly fixing foreign policy blunders of the past.

There are many other such truths that may imply easy fixes to supposedly singular problems. But the crisis in the West is much deeper than the mistakes of an opportunistic politician or a senile candidate. It is rather a crisis of ‘good sense’.

The ‘common sense’, whether real or imaginary, which unified the west for decades, starting soon after WWII, no longer truly represents common, shared values.

Each side in the ongoing polarization has invested in its own ‘common sense’, making a claim to its own ‘cultural hegemony’ without ever achieving the required ‘predominance by consent’.

The vast lack of trust in the ‘system’ becomes the only result of intellectual polarization.

Meanwhile, the ‘subaltern’ groups remain marginalized and, in some cases, completely irrelevant. This leads to political breakdowns, cultural paralysis and, ultimately, outright conflict.

This potential all-out conflict is Gramsci’s Interregnum – the old’s final fight for relevance, and the lack of powerful new forces that could serve as alternatives. This is also known as the ‘age of monsters’.

The West has already entered this phase, the consequences of which are already felt, not just in the west, but all across the world, from Ukraine to Palestine and beyond.

The post Dear West: Your ‘Age of Monsters’ Has Begun appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

It’s a tall order: The festival generates around 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide every year, the equivalent of burning over 100 million pounds of coal. A series of disasters at this year’s festival have brought the gap between Burning Man’s rhetoric and reality into sharp relief: First, a half dozen protesters demanding stronger environmental commitments from the organization blocked the festival’s entrance for roughly an hour before they were forcibly removed. Days later, torrential rain — the kind of event made more likely and extreme by climate change — stranded revelers in a dystopian free-for-all. But the greatest irony of all may be Burning Man’s less-publicized opposition to renewable energy in its own backyard.

Burning Man’s problems began on August 27, the first day of this year’s festival, when a blockade of climate protesters created a miles-long traffic jam on the two-lane highway into the dry lakebed of the Black Rock Desert, about 120 miles north of Reno, Nevada, where Burning Man takes place. In addition to calling for “systemic change,” they demanded that festival organizers take immediate steps to decrease the event’s carbon footprint. Burning Man, which started out as a small gathering of artists on a beach in San Francisco in the 1980s, has grown into a massive event that attracts a growing percentage of the world’s ultra-wealthy every year. The protestors, who were ultimately dispersed by police, demanded the festival “ban private jets, single-use plastics, unnecessary propane burning, and unlimited generator use per capita,” among other requests. 

Then, torrential rain spurred by a late-August hurricane and the onset of monsoon season in the desert turned the festival into a gargantuan mud pit, stranding attendees and forcing Burning Man to close the roads into and out of the festival from Friday until Monday afternoon, when conditions improved. Since no supplies could be trucked in or out, partiers were forced to ration water and other supplies. Some people, including the DJ Diplo and the comedian Chris Rock, abandoned their vehicles in the desert and walked out of Black Rock City, as the festival site is known, on foot. (It’s 15 miles from Black Rock City to Gerlach, the nearest town.) The rain caught festivalgoers off guard, but experts say floods like the one that inundated Black Rock City are a forecasted consequence of climate change. 

“The well-known southwestern summer monsoon is expected to yield larger amounts of rainfall in a warming climate,” Michael Mann, presidential distinguished professor in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Earth and Environmental Science, told Wired. 

A broad consensus exists, of course, on how to slow the climactic changes that are beginning to wreak havoc like this: replace the fossil fuels that currently power much of the world with a wide variety of carbon-free sources. In fact, the federal government approved one such project, a geothermal energy initiative in the Nevada desert a mile outside of Gerlach, last year. The exploratory project, funded by an international renewable energy company called Ormat Technologies, aims to find out whether geothermal — which taps naturally-occurring heat under the earth’s surface to produce clean energy — is commercially viable in the Nevada desert. 

But the venture faced immediate pushback from the Burning Man Project, one of a group of plaintiffs that sued the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, over its approval of up to 19 exploratory geothermal wells in the Black Rock National Conservation Area. The Burning Man Project, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, also worked with residents of the tiny town of Gerlach, the hamlet closest to the geothermal development, to appeal the BLM’s decision. The wells, the organization said, would “threaten the viability” of Burning Man’s various projects in Nevada by potentially jeopardizing local hot springs in the area and disrupting the desert ecosystem. The plaintiffs argued that BLM had approved the project without adequate environmental review and hadn’t sufficiently consulted local communities, including the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, in its permitting process. 

“People travel to Gerlach to experience the solitude of the vast open spaces and undeveloped vistas present in the Black Rock Desert,” the lawsuit said, “as well as to attend numerous events and to pursue a variety of recreation experiences in the undeveloped desert.” 

After the lawsuit was filed, the Washoe County Commission in Reno ultimately voted 3-2 against the proposed geothermal project, a move that baffled clean energy experts and overturned the county’s prior approval of the project.

The claim that the region remains relatively undisturbed, given the 70,000-person party that rolls in every year, rang particularly hollow.

“Some of the hype around Gerlach has been disturbing from a scientific point of view,” James Faulds, Nevada’s State Geologist, told Grist. “The Gerlach area has already been disturbed by man.” 

Faulds added that no hot springs in the area besides the ones located immediately above the actual geothermal wells would be affected by the development, and that the geothermal power plant itself wouldn’t be visible from the Burning Man festival. (The Burning Man Project did not respond to Grist’s requests for comment.) 

Ormat may try to appeal the county’s decision or scrap the project and apply to build new geothermal development elsewhere in the state instead. “Ormat will continue to press forward with exploration and development of its renewable energy projects throughout the State of Nevada to help the state and federal government meet their renewable energy goals,” the company said in a statement following the county commission’s vote. 

A single megawatt of geothermal energy can provide enough power for up to 1,000 residential homes year-round. That gives it a smaller land-use footprint than either wind or solar power, Faulds pointed out.

“Let’s say that power plant is producing 30 megawatts. You could drive by that and say ‘huh, that’s 30,000 homes,’” Faulds said. “That could be a big chunk of homes in a city in southern California or northern California, wherever the power is being sold to — where a lot of the Burning Man folks, of course, come from.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Burning Man’s climate reckoning has begun on Sep 5, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

In 2023, different climatic anomalies have been recorded that set new historical records in the tragic progression of climate change at the global level.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by José Seoane.

NEVI was created by Congress’ 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and over the last year the federal government has used it to disburse millions of dollars to states to build out the charging-station network. But the program is intended to achieve other goals as well: It’s one of the first attempts to implement the Biden administration’s commitment to ensuring that at least 40 percent of the benefits of climate and energy funding reach disadvantaged communities. That effort, called Justice40, is one of Biden’s most high-profile environmental justice promises and one that has been plagued by delays and controversies. 

Both NEVI and Justice40 are complex and challenging initiatives to implement on their own, let alone simultaneously. The former requires states to build charging stations as quickly as possible to spur faster EV uptake, all while meeting a range of technical and complicated minimum standards. The latter requires that the distribution of those resources benefits communities that are classified as disadvantaged according to a range of demographic and environmental criteria. It’s now up to states to balance the sometimes-competing goals of the two programs.

A new report by a group of environmental and public policy nonprofits and think tanks examines the challenges that have emerged in this effort. Crucially, NEVI requires that states first build charging stations every 50 miles on so-called alternative fuel corridors — highways designated by the federal government for investment in electric, hydrogen, and other fueling stations — and within one travel mile off an exit from the corridors. Since disadvantaged communities are not always in areas that meet these geographic strictures, NEVI’s “strict siting requirements limit how benefits can be delivered to [disadvantaged] communities,” the report noted.

The report also found that since states had less than six months to submit their NEVI plans to the federal government, there were varying and often limited efforts to engage with community groups. Of the 20 states that the report examined, two — South Carolina and West Virginia — did not consult with community groups or hold public meetings at all before submitting their plans for NEVI funding. An additional four states only conducted private meetings with community groups and government agencies, but didn’t solicit feedback from the general public. 

“A few months for a completely new program that they have to educate people about and a new bill they have to educate people about — that was a legitimate hurdle,” said Rachel Patterson, the lead author of the report and deputy policy director at the environmental group Evergreen Action. 

NEVI funding is being distributed in phases over five years. States are first required to build fast-charging stations every 50 miles along the alternative fuel corridors and within a mile off an exit from an alternative fuel corridor. Once this requirement is met, states will have much more flexibility to use NEVI funding to place charging stations in communities of their choosing. 

Patterson said that almost every state official her group spoke with identified the 50-mile requirement as a problem — not just in terms of getting chargers to disadvantaged communities, but in getting them to where they’ll be put to the most use, period. The requirement “practically doesn’t serve where the majority of the population is most of the time, and more so serves this American road trip fantasy that I’m not sure people are really doing with EVs right now,” said Patterson. 

Rural states like Wyoming have voiced their objections to the 50-mile requirement. Since NEVI only supports 80 percent of the cost of building charging stations, states have to come up with the remainder. Wyoming officials have said that traffic on the state’s highways and demand for electric charging are unlikely to be robust enough for private companies to want to foot the cost of building even heavily-subsidized stations.

“There’s not going to be enough EVs to break even in five years,” said Loren McDonald, an electric-vehicle consultant based in California’s Bay Area. “There probably should be some flexibility for some of those states.”

Many of the state plans also failed to consider users’ personal safety while charging — a concern that is likely more prevalent for disadvantaged communities. Of the 20 state plans considered in the report, four states did not make any considerations for safety. Other states like Pennsylvania, however, listed lighting, visibility, and regular staffing onsite as key issues. 

The states also had different approaches to identifying disadvantaged communities in the first place. While the White House has built a tool to identify communities with high environmental burdens for prioritization under Justice40, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy have also built their own tool for identifying Justice40 communities. Although the Federal Highway Administration, which is in charge of distributing NEVI funding, asked states to use the transportation and energy departments’ tool, some states chose to use state-level and federal tools. 

“If multiple tools are used simultaneously, more of the population will likely be identified as disadvantaged and so benefits may be less targeted,” the report noted. It also makes it difficult to compare the NEVI program’s outcomes across states. 

But Patterson stressed that these challenges are not insurmountable, and NEVI offers community groups, states, and the federal government a chance to find solutions. 

“The NEVI program is such a great case study because very rarely are programs going to be written perfectly to comply with Justice40,” said Patterson. “Governments are going to need to do things like reach out to advocates and folks who have been thinking about this for a long time to figure out creative ways to get benefits to people.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden’s EV charger rollout has begun. Will it deliver on environmental justice? on Jul 11, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

Amazon's union-busting tactics appeared successful on Monday after a tally by the National Labor Relations Board revealed workers failed to unionize a second Amazon warehouse in New York City on Staten Island.

"The organizing will continue at this facility and beyond."

The final tally of workers at the LDJ5 warehouse was 380 in favor of the union to 618 against out of 1,633 eligible voters.

The loss came a month after workers at the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island made history by voting in favor of Amazon's first-ever union in the United States—a result Amazon is trying to overturn.

The Amazon Labor Union (ALU), the worker-led organization started by former JFK8 employee Christian Smalls—fired after his organizing efforts—lamented that workers at a second Amazon facility weren't able to secure victory.

"The organizing will continue at this facility and beyond," ALU tweeted. "The fight has just begun."

Attorney Seth Goldstein, who represents ALU, told VICE they would contest the election and accused the retail giant of violating "laboratory conditions in this election with mandatory anti-union meetings and we've already got a whole series of charges against them."

Labor Notes reported last month that Amazon was "trying every trick in the playbook to throttle worker organizing at its Staten Island warehouses in New York City," with such efforts including mandatory anti-union meetings.

Ahead of the final tabulation, ALU pointed to a swelling labor movement.

"No matter the outcome of the election," the group tweeted, "workers are uniting for change at LDJ5, JFK8, and around the world. Mega-corporations continue to spend millions in union-busting + fear tactics and we continue to organize for a society not based on exploitation and greed."

Maurice Mitchell, national director of Working Families Party, had a similar takeaway.

"Every movement will meet roadblocks," Mitchell said in a statement, "but today's outcome doesn't change the simple fact that working people are taking on the billionaires and big corporations—and they're winning."

"This year has seen an incredible resurgence of worker power," he continued, "as warehouse workers, baristas, and grocery store clerks demand good pay, basic benefits, and respect on the job."

"Each victory is all the more impressive because workers are fighting within a rigged system that gives corporations the power to union-bust with impunity. That has to change," he added. Mitchell urged Congress to take up the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would strengthen worker protections on the job.

But whether or not lawmakers take up that proposal, Mitchell said that "workers will keep fighting, shop by shop and election by election, until they win.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Andrea Germanos.