My impression (over a few decades) is that news stories about a unionization vote (won, lost, or upcoming) near-always proclaim the employer's "vote no" campaign to be exceptionally aggressive and underhanded. Perhaps my news sources quietly ignore the ~99% of unionization votes where such is not the case. But I suspect that both pro- and anti-union readers feel quite flattered by such characterizations, and so journalists have learned to proclaim that in near-all their stories upon the subject.

Whether or not that suspicion is correct, I get the impression that even a slightly-competent union would have fully expected Amazon to fight hard and nasty in this case. A couple stories (from seemingly-pro-union sources) seemed to say that the location was one which Amazon would have chosen, if they had to face a union vote. Compared to other Amazon warehouses, this one paid notably less-bad wages (relative to the local job market), had notably less-evil managers (again, relative), etc.

If that's vaguely correct, then how can the union's decision to fight in Bessemer, AL be explained? "The union is a sock puppet of Amazon's, and losing was the secret plan..." sounds cool. But there are many different unions in this world. Perhaps while a noisy one was picking and losing a fight in Bessemer, the savvier ones were quietly continuing with their own plans for Amazon.