Some 5,800 Amazon employees at the company’s Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse voted in the last two months on whether to unionize in a move that could energize the labor movement and mean higher prices for those buying from the online retail giant.

Vote-counting was to begin this week after both sides exercised their rights to challenge the validity of individual ballots. Warehouse workers began voting Feb. 8 on whether to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union amid complaints about work rules and disciplinary action.

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The vote also coincides with antitrust investigations of the retail giant and congressional probes of its practices.

“I think everyone is seeing through the P.R. at this point and focusing on both their economic and political power,” Amazon critic Sarah Miller, who runs the antitrust think tank American Economic Liberties Project, told the New York Times (March 25).