Amazon violated labor laws at two Staten Island warehouses in the run-up to last year’s union elections, a federal administrative judge has ruled.
The judge, who hears cases for the National Labor Relations Board, ruled Monday that Amazon bosses had unlawfully threatened to withhold wage and benefit increases from workers in the warehouses if they voted to form a union. The judge, Benjamin W. Green, also ruled that Amazon had illegally removed posts on a digital message board by an employee who asked colleagues to sign a petition circulated by the Amazon Labor Union. The union tried to represent the workers in both warehouses.
The ruling called on Amazon to stop the unfair labor practices and to issue a statement saying it would not be involved.
In the same decision, the judge dismissed several allegations made in a complaint by Labor Department prosecutors, including allegations that Amazon had said net pay would decrease if workers organized; that Amazon has promised improvements in a program that subsidizes workers’ education expenses if they choose not to form a union; and that Amazon pointed out that workers would be fired if they unionized and failed to pay union dues.
The judge determined that these allegations were either exaggerated or that the action was not unlawful in the final instance.
Amazon can appeal the verdict to the Labor Board in Washington.
“We are pleased that the judge dismissed 19 – almost all – allegations in this case,” Mary Kate Paradis, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said in a statement, adding, “The facts continue to show that the teams in our buildings work hard to do the right thing.”
The union declined to comment.
The violations happened at a huge Amazon warehouse called JFK8 where workers worked voted for a union at an election, the results of which were announced in April, and at a smaller, nearby warehouse called LDJ5, where workers worked rejected a union the next month.
In the weeks leading up to the elections, Amazon called on workers in the camps to do so Dozens of anti-union meetings where bosses questioned the Amazon Labor Union’s credibility, stressed the costliness of union dues and warned that workers could be worse off under a union.
The judge’s ruling put aside a broader question posed by unemployment prosecutors: whether employers can compel workers to attend such meetings.
The meetings are legal under Labor Committee precedent and common among employers faced with union campaigns. But the board’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, has argued that the precedent conflicted with federal labor law and had attempted to challenge it.
Judge Green concluded that he lacked the authority to set aside the precedent. “I have a duty to apply applicable law,” he wrote. Ms. Abruzzo’s office can appeal and ask the Washington Department of Labor to overturn the precedent.
