Amazon Illegally Fired Activist Workers, Labor Board Finds (nytimes.com) 86
Amazon illegally retaliated against two of its most prominent internal critics when it fired them last year, the National Labor Relations Board has determined. From a report: The employees, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, had publicly pushed the company to reduce its impact on climate change and address concerns about its warehouse workers. The agency told Ms. Cunningham and Ms. Costa that it would accuse Amazon of unfair labor practices if the company did not settle the case, according to correspondence that Ms. Cunningham shared with The New York Times. "It's a moral victory and really shows that we are on the right side of history and the right side of the law," Ms. Cunningham said. The two women were among dozens of Amazon workers who in the last year told the labor board about company retaliations, but in most other cases the workers had complained about pandemic safety. Claims of unfair labor practices at Amazon have been common enough that the labor agency may turn them into a national investigation, the agency told NBC News. The agency typically handles investigations in its regional offices.
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you rate just went up and we need to work 7 days an week for the mouth of NOV and DEC
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That's fine, he was doing that any way to cover for all the work the activists weren't doing on company hours.
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What if all jobs are terrible, except if you got your job through your father-in-law?
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Hope you married the right person then.
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That's why polygamy is such a sure bet.
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Just obey the law. It doesn't matter if the people whose legal rights you violate are unpopular. The fact that it is not a popularity contest is what makes it *law* rather than *politics*.
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Re: Fire all workplace activists (Score:1)
Also, it has yet to be determined if any laws were broke.
Nice grammar, mouthbreather.
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Thanks. It's so rare to get a compliment on the internet. You made my day.
Re:Fire all workplace activists (Score:4, Informative)
NLRB is not a *court* of law, it is a law enforcement agency that investigates claims of legally prohibited labor practices by either employers or unions.
The board negotiates settlements, but it can also *impose* them. In that sense it functions like a combination of a law enforcement agency and a binding arbitration tribunal. If you don't like the settlement you can petition the Court of Appeals, but until you win your appeal NLRB decisions stand.
There *is* a way to set aside an NLRB ruling without going to the Appeals Court. If you don't comply with an NLRB settlement, the NLRB has to go to a regular court to get an injunction. It doesn't have to argue matters of fact before that court, but the injunction can be denied if it can be shown the Board has no legal basis for ruling on a complaint.
So yes, there was a determination that a law was broken. It just hasn't been independently adjudicated yet.
Re:Fire all workplace activists (Score:5, Insightful)
Regulations are laws. Labor regulations are laws. They are adopted under authority granted by statute and are meant to implement those statutes.
Firing a worker for organizing is illegal in all 50 states. The word "activist" has nothing to do with it.
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Private company, they can do what they want.
Except what they're prohibited from doing. Which is many, many things, including - specifically - retaliating against employees for labor organizing.
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Except that's a baseless claim when even the summary states they were climate activists on top of whatever else they were. Claiming they were fired for labor organization is like someone claiming they were arrested for being black. Were they doing something else besides what they claimed they were targeted for? Is there a single piece of evidence that shows they were specifically targeted for the exact reason they claim? It not Amazon is right to ignore this ruling as nonsense and insist on a judicial revie
Re: Fire all workplace activists (Score:1)
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There must be something really fucked up with american water if you think workers rights, rights that help you are bad and you would rather billionaires should be helped to suck every last drop of blood of the masses they can exploit.
Internal Policies (Score:4, Informative)
Sounds reasonable.
After Amazon told them that they had violated its external communications policy by speaking publicly about the business, their group organized 400 employees to also speak out, purposely violating the policy to make a point.
Oh, I see. "We didn't terminate them for speaking out, we just have internal policies against speaking out."
Whitewashing Corporate PR Bullshit at its finest.
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They really hate themselves, they just haven't figured it out yet.
Re: Internal Policies (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's why people like me who bubble up into phb land make policies to keep politics out of the workplace.
There is no such thing as a politics-free workplace. Humans are inherently political animals. Who should we listen to in this meeting: politics. Where should we go to for lunch: politics. Who gets that big promotion? What framework should we use for this feature? Do we want a union? Should limited-liability corporations exist? All politics.
What do we label as political and ban from workplace discussion? Yup. Politics.
Anytime you have two people using rhetoric to sway the opinion of a third you are eng
Re: Internal Policies (Score:2)
Mod funny
Re: Internal Policies (Score:2)
Quite true. But I think a good place to draw a distinction is the kind of politics that sees one side accusing the other of being literally hitler. Whether it's over national border policy or hiring choices or where to set the thermostat, once it gets to that point, banhammers, demotions, or firings are not inappropriate.
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Maybe he is the boss and his whole spinal column is at risk!
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Everyone needs hobbies.
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And here is one reason business owners want to keep workers impoverished, they don't want their workers to be able to afford the "luxury" of having a conscience.
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Grow up. Every single employer in this country has a clause for salaried workers to not publicly disparage the company.
As any competent HR person will tell you, You don’t need a policy for every bad behavior. [evilhrlady.org] If you don't know that you can be fired for talking trash about your employer publicly, you're not capable of functioning as an adult.
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b) Fortunately, the law doesn't give a fuck about whatever clauses someone like Bezos puts in his contrac
labor laws say you can't stop working from talking (Score:3, Informative)
labor laws say you can't stop working from talking about pay or work conditions.
Re: labor laws say you can't stop working from tal (Score:2, Insightful)
SJW climate activism has jack shit to do with either.
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Used to work at a company where for a while, people were getting fired for "confidentiality issues" which were strongly suspected by many workers to be bullshit (but who would know? They were confidential!). I suspect one of them was actually for having the intro to Pon De Floor by Major Lazer as a ringtone that went off all the time.
Re:Internal Policies (Score:4, Interesting)
Ultimately there could be a fine line between retaliatory firing for valid criticism of the company's safety practices, vs. firing for poor performance because you're not doing your job - whether you've redirected your energies to blogging about how awful working conditions are, or coaching a kids' soccer team.
No, what gives me confidence that Amazon is in the wrong is the fact that NLRB looked at the facts and came to that conclusion.
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I am shocked that the NLRB found in favor of union organizers.
It is a 5 member board.
There are currently three Republicans, one Democrat, and one vacancy.
All three Republicans are Trump appointees.
So one would expect it to lean against unions. But Trump hates Jeff Bezos. So who knows?
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Could be a vengeance move, like pardoning Anthony Levandowski, or, because I don't know who these people are, it could be that Trump didn't go out of his way to find a loyalist deploragoon to appoint to the position, and actually appointed a decent person to a role. That did happen a few times.
Right Issues vs. Wrong Issues Activism (Score:4, Insightful)
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p>The only reason you'd charter a corporation to begin with would be to serve the public interest.
That is about as clueless as statement as I have ever seen, even here on /.
I suspect you'll need to have a grown up explain the big words to you, but this [upcounsel.com] has a pretty good summary of the reasons to incorporate. None of them involves the public interest. All of them involves the interests of the business owners.
People who incorporate to "serve the public interest," other than the occasional non-profit, range from "poor" to "living in a cardboard box, and the debt collectors have a seizure notice on the box.
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Re:Right Issues vs. Wrong Issues Activism (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't have a problem with workplace activism about things that directly affect employees such as improving workplace safety, pay, benefits, forming unions, and other issues. That's the right approach to activism and employees stand to benefit in concrete ways. But activism about more abstract and larger issues such climate change, who the company does business with, company support (or non-support) for a political organization or figure, and so on only serves to sow divisiveness within the company.
One wonders then where the ethical direction of a company should come from?
If someone says both "the board of directories have a fiduciary duty to pursue profit at all cost" (false, but a common thought) and "the workers and middle managers shouldn't rock the boat by talking about the ethical direction of the company" then there'd be no one at all within the company who can steer it ethically. If they also combine it with "government shouldn't regulate" then there's no moral voice at all.
Personally I think the world is good where there are all three levels of ethical direction - from workers and middle-managers, from executives, and from government.
Re:Unfiar? (Score:4, Insightful)
I see you are unfamiliar with the realities of US employment:
Typically, instead of being paid a fair wage, you are instead kept in a constant state of fear of being replaced by a significantly less expensive foreign worker. In cases where that is not possible, a toxic workplace culture is purposefully cultivated so that you can be fired for capricious reasons.
In this case, it appears to be category 2. People who would like the workplace culture to be less toxic, and who mention the toxic components of the workplace's culture publically as a last-ditch effort to get management to give a fuck about it, are then just summarily fired for "violating policy."
Throw into that, the reality that basically *EVERY* employer is doing this, and that the big names all play golf together at their rich CEO countryclub get togethers, your prospects of being hired elsewhere goes down when you get fired in this manner.
This causes the rank and file employees to "settle for less", and keep doing so consistently, because there is no footing from which to demand equity in the employment relationship.
But by all means, keep conflating that the situation is bombastically about slavery.
foreign worker can just use the ER for free (Score:2)
foreign worker can just use the ER for free if they get hurt at the warehouse so take that $15/HR and hit your rate as the foreign worker is willing to work off the clock to hit there rates.
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So what you're saying is that you WANT a worker's revolution in the U.S. so we can go full-on Communist?
Because that attitude is what causes it. Much of what FDR did was to head off a worker's revolution for the good of all.
Implement a livable UBI and THEN there will be no coercion in an employment agreement.
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UBI? Because FDR planted money trees? Get real. We have fucked up tax incentives for rich people and its created flat wages for nearly 50 years. UBI is no solution. Fixing taxes and thus wages is a solution. We need to use money we already have, not money we print for fun. When fix the problem of 10% of people owning over 60% of wealth then we won't need UBI.
People that make money from investments get to keep much more of their money than people that make their money from labor. This Reaganomics appro
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The alternative is top acknowledge that all employment carries at least some coercion to the employee (even if not intentional on the part of the employer). A potential alternative would be if we could maintain negative unemployment to drive employers to compete for employees.
A very complex alternative would be finer grained minimum wage. Everyone should make at least the bare minimum, but there should be a higher wage for dynamite stackers.
Welcome to Uncle Bezos's Cabin (Score:2)
Welcome to Uncle Bezos's Cabin now get moving we have a lot work to get done right now.
At will employment vs illegally fired? (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't get it... if an employer doesn't even *have* to give a reason for dismissing an employee, how do you go about proving an employer illegally fired you?
I mean, considering you can be fired just because the boss has decided that they don't like you, and unless you have something in an employment contract to the contrary, they don't even HAVE to have anything like a good reason, it seems to me like the idea that "illegally firing" someone can only ever really happen if the employer is a complete moro
Re:At will employment vs illegally fired? (Score:5, Informative)
There are plenty of illegal firings in at-will employment. For the most broad example, "I don't like you" is legal but "I don't like you because you're black" is not. Employees still have some legal rights in all 50 states.
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Re:At will employment vs illegally fired? (Score:4, Informative)
If you lie about the illegal reason, it's still illegal and that's one of the things NLRB investigates.
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Is not giving a reason seen as the same thing as lying?
How are they supposed to disprove that a person doesn't simply have an irrational dislike of someone that has no bearing on a protected class?
How can you prosecute someone for firing for an illegal reason if they didn't even give a reason, and it's entirely legal for an employer to fire someone for no reason at all?
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It's generally hard, but a lot of people are stupid enough to put it in writing.
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I had already explicitly mentioned the possibility of an employer being stupid enough to admit it as a plausible exception, above.
I would have imagined such ignorance to be the exception and not the rule. I am simply stunned at your allegation that such stupidity is somehow actually common.
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We've apparently met different idiots in life. Common in my experience. (People who put incriminating shit in writing.)
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I don't get it... if an employer doesn't even *have* to give a reason for dismissing an employee, how do you go about proving an employer illegally fired you?
In a well-functioning company: "We have concerns about this employee's performance so let's follow our standard unbiased procedure, keep a paper trail of where they're meeting or failing to meet expectations, and fire them if they consistently fail to meet."
In a well-functioning company where the low-performing employee also happened to do protected activities like union organizing: "We've got a clear unambiguous paper trail of where the employee fails to meet expectations, and of how they're being treated
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" if an employer doesn't even *have* to give a reason for dismissing an employee, how do you go about proving an employer illegally fired you? "
By a) having evidence of a reason for firing, and b) that reason being illegal. What's not to get?
No one is fired for absolutely no reason. If the reason is ever discussed, a party to that discussion can testify as to what that reason was.
Sometimes people think they have a clever stated reason that is really just a thin veneer over an actual reason. A difference in
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It's very hard to leave so little evidence of a fishy reason that there's no opening to investigate something fishy. For example, if 90% of the people fired are left-handed* but only 10% of your workforce is left handed, that's a sufficiently implausible distribution that you can start looking deeper.
On top of that, bigots aren't that clever or they wouldn't be bigots. Eventually they'll make a bigoted decision that loses someone a lot of money.
*: AFAIK, left-handedness is not a protected class, but even th
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Just because they hold irrational views about certain demographics doesn't mean that they aren't smart or that they are incapable of seeing that doing anything which might reveal such views to other people would be seen as unfavorable.
Eventually, perhaps... but it seems to me like it would be unlikely to expect that it would be in the aftermath of any particular
Fines (Score:2)
Why did this happen? (Score:1)