Happy Mother's Day 2022: As NLRB Indicates There Is Merit To Violations Claims By Amazon Union, At Staten Island...

First, an important "corrective" note: CNBC's story on these developments contains a pretty egregious typo. It prints "employee" in place of "employer", in its bullets and its text. So I won't link it. The NLRB hasn't previously held that EMPLOYEES are allowed to mandate "all employee meetings", to hear a union pitch... ever.

No, as outlined in April 2022, in an official agency memo of law, here is how the General Counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo (also a mom!) of the NLRB describes these rights. This, in turn leads to a finding last week, that Amazon the company, violated eployees' rights by holding mandatory anti-union organizing meetings, during the regularly scheduled shifts, and cattle-calling all employees into them, leading up to a vote they lost at one plant, and apparently prevailed in -- at the second. Here is the relevant part:

. . .Section 7 guarantees employees “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” 29 U.S.C. § 157. It also provides employees with “the right to refrain from any or all of such activities. . . .”

Section 8(a)(1) makes it unlawful for an employer “to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7.” 29 U.S.C. § 158(a)(1). . . .

Over 75 years ago, the [NLRB] recognized that the Act protects employees’ right to listen as well as their right to refrain from listening to employer speech concerning the exercise of their Section 7 rights.

Forcing employees to listen to such employer speech under threat of discipline -- directly leveraging the employees’ dependence on their jobs -- plainly chills employees’ protected right to refrain from listening to this speech in violation of Section 8(a)(1). The fact that a threat arises in the context of employer speech does not immunize its unlawful coercive effect. The Supreme Court has made clear that threats fall outside the scope of employers’ statutory and constitutional free-speech protections [NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., 395 U.S. 575, 617 (1969)]. . . .

So -- the NLRB is strongly suggesting to Amazon that, if litigated in a federal courthouse, the outcome will be an immediate order to begin bargaining with the union -- since the NLRB as an agency now supports the so-called "Joy Silk" doctrine which essentially prevents endless delays, once a clear majority is shown in favor of the union. Joy Silk (a 1949-era case) says that where an employer violated the law (here, mandatory meetings) during the campaign period -- if the union wins (as it did, clearly), the company must certify the union and enter negotiations for a contract, almost immediately.

The vote in the larger Staten Island warehouse was about 2 to 1 in favor of unionizing. Game. . . effectively over. Of course, Amazon will squawk, but the end is in sight. Mr. Smalls will, through his union -- bargain for better conditions for the people of Amazon, not just those who voted for his union. All of them. Cheers!

नमस्ते