Amazon Illegally Called Police on Employees, Restricted Union Talk, Labor Board Alleges

Josh Eidelson, Bloomberg News

An Amazon.com Inc. logo at the Viva Tech fair in Paris, France, on Thursday, June 15, 2023. Viva Tech gathers startups, investors and executives from several countries and has become France’s leading event in technology and innovation. Photographer: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. illegally called the police on employees, restricted discussions about organizing, and terminated an activist in the lead-up to a vote on unionization last year, US labor board prosecutors alleged in a complaint.

In a Monday filing, a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board, accused the e-retailer of repeatedly violating federal law in the spring, summer and fall of 2022 at a warehouse located outside Albany, New York. Amazon “has been interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed” under federal law, the regional director wrote in the complaint, issued on behalf of the agency’s general counsel.

The company prohibited staff from discussing the union during their work time while allowing them to discuss other non-work topics, according to the complaint, which also claims the company held “mandatory or effectively mandatory” anti-union meetings. The company also promulgated a policy prohibiting employees from being on the property before or after their shifts in order to discourage union organizing, and enforced it selectively to target union activists, the complaint claims. Last August, it says, the company terminated an employee because they supported the union and took part in collective action, and “to discourage employees from engaging in these activities.”

Last November, a federal judge in New York in a different case ordered Amazon to stop retaliating against employees for workplace activism.

“These allegations are completely without merit and we look forward to showing that through the legal process,” said Eileen Hards, a spokesperson for Amazon. “Dozens of charges filed at ALB1 have already been dismissed by the NLRB, and we look forward to having these allegations dismissed as well.”

Last October, workers at the Albany-area facility voted 406-to-206 against joining the Amazon Labor Union.

Monday’s complaint says the company should be forced to reinstate the terminated activist with back pay and an apology, hold a meeting with employees and the warehouse’s general manager at which a notice about workers’ rights is read aloud, and provide the union with equal time to talk to employees during work if more anti-union “captive audience” meetings are held.

Complaints issued by NLRB regional directors are considered by agency judges, whose rulings can be appealed to labor board members in Washington DC, and from there into federal appeals court, a process that can drag on for years. The agency lacks authority to make companies pay punitive damages for violations or hold executives personally liable for wrongdoing.

The ALU, an upstart group founded by current and former Amazon workers, scored a stunning victory in April 2022, when it won a unionization vote at the company’s 8,000-person warehouse in New York’s Staten Island.

But the group has struggled to expand its foothold to other facilities, or to force Amazon to actually negotiate a contract. The company contested ALU’s win, claiming misconduct in the election, and while an NLRB regional director rejected those allegations, Amazon is appealing, and has signaled it expects to continue that legal battle in federal court as well.

“Amazon was so outrageous in their attacks on the union that it was impossible to successfully organize” at the Albany-area facility, the union’s attorney, Seth Goldstein, said Monday. The remedies sought by the regional director, he said, would “help restore the opportunity to be able to organize in the facility.”

(Updates with allegations)