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Government Businesses IT

Amazon Retaliated After Employee Walkout Over Return-to-Office Policy, Says NLRB (theverge.com) 77

Posted by EditorDavid from the labor's-day dept.
America's National Labor Relations Board "has filed a complaint against Amazon..." reports the Verge, "that alleges the company 'unlawfully disciplined and terminated an employee' after they assisted in organizing walkouts last May in protest of Amazon's new return-to-work [three days per week] directives, issued early last year." [T]housands of Amazon employees signed petitions against the new mandate and staged a walkout several months later. Despite the protests and pushback, according to a report by Insider, in a meeting in early August 2023, Jassy reaffirmed the company's commitment to employees returning to the office for the majority of the week.

The NLRB complaint alleges Amazon "interrogated" employees about the walkout using its internal Chime system. The employee was first put on a performance improvement plan by Amazon following their organizing efforts for the walkout and later "offered a severance payment of nine weeks' salary if the employee signed a severance agreement and global release in exchange for their resignation." According to the NLRB's lawyers, all of that was because the employee engaged in organizing, and the retaliation was intended to discourage "...protected, concerted activities...."

The NLRB's general counsel is seeking several different forms of remediation from Amazon, including reimbursement for the employee's "financial harms and search-for-work and work related expenses," a letter of apology, and a "Notice to Employees" that must be physically posted at the company's facilities across the country, distributed electronically, and read by an Amazon rep at a recorded videoconference.
Amazon says their actions were entirely unrelated to the workers activism against their return-to-work policies. An Amazon spokesperson told the Verge that instead, the employee "consistently underperformed over a period of nearly a year and repeatedly failed to deliver on projects she was assigned. Despite extensive support and coaching, the former employee was unable to improve her performance and chose to leave the company."

Amazon Retaliated After Employee Walkout Over Return-to-Office Policy, Says NLRB More | Reply

Amazon Retaliated After Employee Walkout Over Return-to-Office Policy, Says NLRB

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  • The NLRB will be smacked down, just like in the Starbucks case.

    • This will end up at the supreme court and we all know how that will turn up. Alito will cite chicken bones voodoo rituals and Thomas will say flat out he driving a car that he didn't pay for.

  • So you can just say "F this .. I'm protesting the thermostat setting" and refuse to work and they can't fire you?

    • So you can just say "F this .. I'm protesting the thermostat setting" and refuse to work and they can't fire you?

      If and only if you can get a majority of employees to join your strike. Even then, you may need to get NLRB certification. Wildcat strikes have less protection.

      Individual actions are not protected.

    • Never fails, 'mericans protecting the rights of their overlords over their own.

    • ...and refuse to work and they can't fire you?

      You're confusing being in the office with working. I get less work done in the office than I do at home. Working at home is just more conducive to getting stuff done.

    • Nope. Read the article.

  • You know... the PIP might be justified. (Score:3)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Monday June 24, 2024 @02:20AM (#64572687)

    All these things could be valid. Including underperforming and the PIP. Being an activist doesn't preclude somebody from being a crappy performer.

    It'll come down to the paper trail. When it hits lawyers it always does.

  • Amazon is cancer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jopet ( 538074 ) on Monday June 24, 2024 @02:53AM (#64572709) Journal

    One of the damaging, exploitative, destructive symptoms of unregulated globalized capitalism.

  • When companies are comfortable with remote work, they will replace you with someone in remote area that are cheaper. You might have the upper hand now but in the long run jobs will move away from high paying cities.

    • During the pandemic, when the work-from-home event was in full swing, we saw a massive migration of workers relocating from expensive cities out to cheaper areas.

      So it seems that this threat of being replaced with someone who lives in a cheaper area is really a benefit that workers already want (which is to say, they opted to become the worker living in a cheaper location).

      Inasmuch as some workers might be replaced with much cheaper foreign workers, that's already been done as much as it can be done. The o

  • Did they walk around their living rooms waving a placard?

    • Or did they unironically show up to the office the one time so that they could then walk out? Either way, this is a real life comedy skit.

  • It might actually be that the employee in question was on a PIP.

    But he or she got the others to join protesting getting back to the office and that makes it a bit less clear cut.

    In any case, given Amazon's past history, I have a huge problem giving them the benefit of the doubt...

  • Crazy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Monday June 24, 2024 @07:02AM (#64572959) Journal

    You should be able to be disciplined and/or fired for disrupting business operations. That you did it in service of something you want shouldn't magically prevent that, lol.

    And I say this as someone who insists on WFH. But I can't make my employer support it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HBI ( 10338492 )

      I'm not going to waste time explaining how we got here after the Industrial Revolution, but you'd be well advised to crack a book on the topic. Or at least read a web page. People go on and on about Triangle Shirtwaist fires but the child labor stuff in the 1830s in England is more poignant.

      The bottom line is that the reason we have communism is exactly this type of business practice. The labor laws are a compromise to avoid that kind of revolution.

    • I mean executives and directors constantly make business decisions to the detriment of business operations so.

  • really, what do you expect? If I wasn't hopelessly addicted to convenience I wouldn't use Amazon. I am working on an appeal to my morality when I can find it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • I think this part says it all: "the former employee was unable to improve her performance and chose to leave the company."

  • Amazon says their actions were entirely unrelated to the workers activism against their return-to-work policies... the employee "consistently underperformed over a period of nearly a year and repeatedly failed to deliver on projects she was assigned. Despite extensive support and coaching, the former employee was unable to improve her performance..."

    The real question is do they do this to all under-performing employees or just those who try to organize. By definition roughly half are "under-performing".

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