The National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Amazon, accusing the company of refusing to bargain with a union representing its Staten Island warehouse workers, a move that comes months after the agency rejected Amazon’s effort to overturn the results of the warehouse’s unionization vote.
File Photo: Union organizer Christian Smalls speaks following the vote for the unionization of the ... [+]
The complaint notes that Amazon has “failed and refused to bargain” with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which represents workers from its JFK8 Staten Island warehouse.
Following a vote in April last year, the JFK8 warehouse became the first Amazon facility nationwide to successfully unionize.
Amazon is challenging the results of the unionization vote in court.
The complaint states that the reason behind the company’s refusal to bargain with the union “is to test the certification of the union” by the federal agency.
The NLRB’s general counsel is seeking an order that requires Amazon to “bargain in good faith” with the Union, among other remedies.
On April 1 last year, a majority of the nearly 8,300 workers at the JFK8 warehouse voted in favor of unionization. After that historic vote, similar efforts to unionize Amazon warehouse workers across the country have struggled. The ALU lost two other unionization votes last year—one at a second Staten Island facility called LDJ5 in May and another at a warehouse in Albany, New York in October. Amazon had called for the results of the JFK8 vote to be invalidated, as the company accused the NLRB of interfering during the unionization drive and the ALU of intimidating workers. The federal labor watchdog, however, ruled to uphold the results of the vote in January, after it found no evidence to support Amazon’s allegations.
Amazon faces labor complaint over failure to bargain with union (Reuters)
Amazon Union Dissidents, in Challenge to Leader, Move to Force Vote (New York Times)