It was a bigger week than usual for Amazon, the most valuable public company in the world. On Monday, the first half of Prime Day (the two-day shopping holiday that is estimated to generate $5 to $6 billion in revenue for the company), the employees at Amazon’s Shakopee, Minnesota distribution center walked off the job to call attention to what they claim are harsh working conditions. In Germany, Spain, Poland, and the UK, Amazon workers demanding better wages protested and went on strike. Activists swarmed the Washington, D.C. home of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to demand action on issues like immigration and climate change.

But it was starkly quiet in the parking lot at JFK8, Amazon’s massive fulfilment center on the West Shore of Staten Island. Shifts began and ended, workers stepped quietly on and off the city buses that operate between Matrix Global Logistics Park and the St. George ferry terminal some 40 minutes away, and heat steamed off the asphalt. Nowhere was there a hint of protest.

That doesn’t mean some workers at the cavernous warehouse aren’t trying to fight for their rights by trying to unionize. In December, the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) announced its involvement in organizing the more than 2,000 workers at JFK8. If successful, Staten Island’s fulfillment center could become the first unionized Amazon facility in the country, representing a historic labor victory. In February, the union was at the table with Amazon for a conversation on neutrality less than twenty-four hours before the company pulled out of a deal that would have made Long Island City, Queens its second headquarters. HQ2 collapsed over community objections to the $3B in corporate incentives offered to Amazon, and the company’s history of anti-union tactics.

On Monday, there was palpable anxiety about discussing life inside the company’s 855,000-square-foot, $100 million building, which opened last fall. “I’m grateful for this, it’s a good job,” said one fit Amazon employee, who recently worked a white collar job. “I work four 10s and run the equivalent of 25 miles a night, basically I run a marathon every day. I make $17.10 an hour and there’s lots of overtime. The benefits are great, although there’s no performance-based incentives.” He paused. “The unions are chomping at the bit to get in and they could use it here. No, I can’t give you my name.”

At the bus stop, an older worker who’d recently been hired praised the company for bringing employment to the borough and brushed off queries about working conditions at Amazon facilities. “They tell you you have to lift and carry when they hire you,” he said. “Me personally, I like the job. It’s calming, I feel I’m making a difference. I’m helping out–customers call in and they get their orders filled.”

A young employee standing nearby said he’d heard little-to-no union talk. “My dad’s a union worker and he thinks this job is OK as long as conditions are OK. Which they are. At first it was tough, but now it’s OK.”

At issue for union advocates are working, health and safety conditions at the facility and Amazon’s retaliatory activity when employees engage in union activity. Earlier this year, the RWDSU filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of Justin Rashad Long, a former employee at the Staten Island facility who alleges he was fired because of his organizing efforts there, a claim Amazon denies. Amazon has been the subject of more than 50 unfair labor cases, with most of the complaints being dismissed