Amazon violated law in resisting warehouse unionization, labor judge says
Christopher Hutton
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Amazon violated federal labor law when it attempted to stop two of its warehouses in New York from unionizing, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled.
The online retail giant illegally threatened employees with withheld wage increases and benefits if they pursued the formation of a union, an administrative law judge ruled on Monday. The judge also said that Amazon broke federal law when it removed a worker’s post from a digital forum that invited colleagues to sign petitions to make Juneteenth a paid holiday.
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While the NLRB judge found Amazon guilty of those two charges, it dismissed several others that labor organizers claimed.
Challenges to the ruling were transferred to the NLRB, which, now that it is controlled by Biden appointees, will have an opportunity to overturn precedent and stop employers from hosting mandatory anti-union meetings.
A majority of workers at the Staten Island warehouse voted in favor of unionization in April. U.S. labor law requires that a company begin negotiating in good faith with a union after it wins an election and the results are verified.
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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said at a public event that there were a “lot of irregularities” in the union drive. “I think that it’s going to work its way through the NLRB,” the Amazon CEO said. “It’s probably unlikely the NLRB is going to rule against itself, and that has a real chance to end up in federal court.”
Subsequent unionization attempts have struggled since the Staten Island success. A May vote at a nearby New York facility ended with the majority voting against it.