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- Amazon is about to lose its bid to overturn its workers' vote to form their first labor union.
- The National Labor Relations Board indicated that it would overrule all of Amazon's objections.
- With the objections cleared, the labor union would be free to pursue certification with the NLRB.
The federal labor board is set to throw out Amazon's appeal against its workers' historic vote to join a labor union at one of its Staten Island warehouses, according to a hearing officer's report seen by Insider.
The warehouse workers had been the first in the e-commerce company's history to successfully form a union, voting in April to join the newly founded Amazon Labor Union. The union needed a simple majority to win the election with the National Labor Relations Board and won with 2,654 votes in favor of the move versus 2,131 against it.
Amazon had appealed against the election result, filing 25 objections, including allegations that union organizers intimidated workers to vote for their cause. It also accused the NLRB's Brooklyn office of appearing to support the union drive.
All of those objections are to be "overruled in their entirety," a hearing officer for the NLRB wrote in their report filed Thursday.
Amazon had "not met its burden" of establishing that the labor union or any third parties had interfered with the election, the report said.
The hearing and decision were overseen by the NLRB's office in Phoenix so that its Brooklyn office could be recused from the matter, it noted.
The officer said their conclusion came after 24 days of hearings over Zoom for lawyers of all parties to review the evidence and make their arguments.
With Thursday's decision, the Amazon Labor Union is now cleared to pursue certification as the first recognized labor unit in the logistics giant — four months after workers voted to do so.
The Amazon Labor Union said in a statement that it was "pleased" with the officer's findings, adding that its workers "understand that this is just the beginning of a much longer fight."
"Amazon's abuse of the legal process is simply a stalling tactic that is meant to delay our negotiations and cause workers to lose faith in the process," the union wrote.
Per CNBC, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement: "As we showed throughout the hearing with dozens of witnesses and hundreds of pages of documents, both the NLRB and the ALU improperly influenced the outcome of the election and we don't believe it represents what the majority of our team wants."
Amazon and the Amazon Labor Union did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.
The past year has seen a rise in union victories among industry giants once thought to be impervious to unionization. For example, over 200 Starbucks outlets have filed to unionize, while Apple's retail workers at its Grand Central store are debating unionization as well.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/xGUJTHs
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