A federal labor official on Wednesday rejected Amazon’s try to overturn a union victory at a warehouse on Staten Island, eradicating a key impediment to contract negotiations between the union and the corporate.
The official, a regional director of the Nationwide Labor Relations Board, discovered that there was a scarcity of proof to help Amazon’s declare of election improprieties and that its objections to the election must be overruled.
The choice was broadly anticipated after a labor board listening to officer beneficial in September that the corporate’s objections be put aside. Amazon, which argued that the election was unfair due to improper conduct by each the labor board and the union, stated in a press release that it knew the regional director was unlikely to rule in opposition to the company.
The corporate stated it meant to enchantment the choice to the labor board in Washington. “As we’ve stated because the starting, we don’t consider this election course of was truthful, reliable or consultant of nearly all of what our group needs,” the assertion stated.
The Amazon Labor Union didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
In an interview at The New York Occasions DealBook convention in late November, Andy Jassy, Amazon’s chief govt, indicated that the corporate wouldn’t drop its challenges, calling the struggle “removed from over.”
“That has an actual probability to finish up in federal courts,” Mr. Jassy stated.
The N.L.R.B. regional director discovered that the proof Amazon offered both didn’t set up that the board or the union acted improperly or that it didn’t present that their actions altered the result of the election.
For instance, Amazon had accused the labor board of failing to manage the presence of members of the information media close to the voting space. However the regional director discovered that “the press was peaceably assembled and never engaged in harassment of voters” and that board officers “had no accountability to instruct the press to not discuss to voters or to go away the employer’s property.”
Staff on the warehouse, referred to as JFK8, voted to affix the impartial Amazon Labor Union in an election whose outcomes have been introduced in April. Greater than 8,000 workers have been eligible to participate, and the union gained by roughly 10 share factors.
Weeks later, the union misplaced a vote to symbolize employees at a smaller Amazon warehouse on Staten Island, LDJ5, and it misplaced one other vote at a warehouse close to Albany, N.Y., in October.
The choice on Wednesday got here after one other unfavorable ruling for Amazon tied to exercise at JFK8. In mid-November, a federal decide in New York issued an injunction requiring the corporate to “stop and desist” from firing employees for exercising their labor rights. The decide additionally compelled firm officers to learn her order to employees on the warehouse.
The case that resulted within the federal decide’s injunction dates again to the early days of the pandemic, when an Amazon employee protested security situations exterior JFK8 and was later fired.
The decide’s ruling primarily put Amazon on discover that it couldn’t fireplace employees for participating in protected actions like protesting security situations or union organizing. Amazon officers learn the decide’s order to employees at JFK8 repeatedly through the first week of December.
