The National Labor Relations Board has accused Amazon of threatening, surveilling and interrogating staff at its JFK8 warehouse in New York to discourage them from unionizing. According to the board’s grievance as seen by Motherboard, Amazon introduced a union avoidance marketing consultant to the power and advised staff that it “can be futile for them to pick the Union as their bargaining consultant.” The marketing consultant reportedly mentioned that union organizing on the warehouse would fail anyway, as a result of the organizers have been “thugs.”
NLRB’s grievance additionally mentioned that Amazon representatives interrogated staff about union actions and promised to repair their points in the event that they did not assist the union and did not distribute union literature. Further, the labor board alleges that safety guards confiscated union literature from staff and advised them they could not distribute the supplies with out permission. If you may recall, Amazon’s warehouse staff in New York filed a petition to unionize with the board final yr, however they needed to withdraw it after failing to collect sufficient signatures to be authorised. The JFK8 staff re-filed their software in December and lately reached union vote threshold.
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel denied the allegations to Motherboard, telling the publication: “These allegations are false and we sit up for displaying that by way of this course of.”
These allegations come from a sequence of unfair labor observe costs filed by staff in May and June final yr. The board investigated the incidents and located benefit that they occurred. It has given Amazon February tenth to answer the grievance and has set a listening to for it on April fifth. In addition to detailing staff’ allegations in its grievance, the NLRB has additionally outlined a sequence of cures it needs the corporate to observe. In specific, it needs Amazon to coach its managers, supervisors, safety guards and union avoidance consultants on staff’ rights to prepare and type unions.