The employees, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, during the pandemic organized workers around climate action and warehouse conditions in April 2020.
According to The New York Times, which first reported the news Monday, the federal agency said it would file a complaint if the case was not settled. The NLRB confirmed the finding to CNN Business.
Cunningham told CNN Business on Monday that she “can no longer be happy with the news today.”
“It’s a moral victory and it feels incredible to be not only on the right side of history, but also on the right side of the law,” she said. “Amazon tried to silence workers and it did not work. We are actually stronger than ever. Organization is still growing at Amazon.”
Meanwhile, it Amazon (AMZN) appears to defend the termination of the employees. Amazon spokeswoman Jaci Anderson told The Times that it “terminated employees because they did not speak publicly about working conditions, safety or sustainability, but rather that they repeatedly violated internal policies.”
“We support the right of every employee to criticize the working conditions of their employer, but that does not imply the perfect immunity from our internal policies, which are all legal,” Anderson said.
Amazon and Costa did not immediately respond to CNN Business’ requests for comment.
The news comes at a time when the company is openly antagonistic towards critics of its workplace conditions, specifically the working conditions of its warehouse workers. A union election in a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, has once again shed a harsh light on the reality of Amazon and has garnered the national attention of prominent figures, including President Joe Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams. moved. The vote – whose count began last Tuesday – will determine whether the workers will form Amazon’s first U.S. union in its nearly 27-year history.
Cunningham and Costa, both designers of user experiences, are founding members of Amazon Climate Justice Employees, a group of corporate employees originally founded to advocate for climate issues. The group continues
talk about issues facing his employer, including supporting the workers who want to unite.
Cunningham and Costa’s claim is the latest retaliation from Amazon workers in which the federal agency found earnings. In November, the NLRB filed a lawsuit against Amazon for the illegal termination of a Pennsylvania warehouse worker. According to an analysis of the NLRB data by NBC News, since February 2020, at least 37 retaliation complaints against Amazon have been filed with the agency in 20 cities. Although the pandemic has been a boon for Amazon’s business, security measures related to the virus, as well as general conditions in the workplace, have also been a factor behind a more general employee uprising in its facilities. NBC News reported that NLRB is considering consolidating the allegations given the number of similar complaints.
At the time, the shooting of Cunningham and Costa led to the resignation of Amazon engineer and vice president Tim Bray. In a lengthy blog post about his departure, Bray said he “stopped with dismay the repulsion of whistleblowers shouting at warehouse workers who were afraid of Covid-19.”
“The firing of whistleblowers is not only a side effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it inherent in the function of free markets. It is evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the corporate culture. , “Bray wrote. “I do not choose to serve or drink that poison.”
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