Employees, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, organized workers around climate action and warehouse conditions during the pandemic before their layoffs in April 2020.
The federal agency said it would file a complaint if the case was not resolved, according to The New York Times, which first reported on Monday. The NLRB confirmed the discovery to CNN Business.
Cunningham told CNN Business on Monday that “I couldn’t be happier with today’s news”.
“It is a moral victory and it is incredible not only to be on the right side of history, but on the right side of the law,” she said. “Amazon tried to silence workers and it didn’t work. In fact, we are stronger than ever. The organization continues to grow on Amazon.”
However, Amazon (AMZN) appeared to defend his dismissals from employees. Amazon spokesman Jaci Anderson told The Times that “he fired these employees not for publicly talking about working conditions, safety or sustainability, but for repeatedly violating internal policies.”
“We support the right of all employees to criticize their employers’ working conditions, but that does not come with general immunity against our internal policies, all of which are legal,” said Anderson.
Amazon and Costa did not immediately respond to requests for comment from CNN Business.
The news comes at a time when the company has been openly antagonistic to criticism of the conditions in its workplace, specifically the working conditions of its warehouse employees. A union election at a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, once again shed a harsh light on the reality of working for Amazon and attracted national attention from prominent figures, including President Joe Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders and the right-wing activist polling station Stacey Abrams. The vote – whose count started last Tuesday – will determine whether workers will form the first Amazon union based in the United States in its nearly 27-year history.
Cunningham and Costa, both user experience designers, are founding members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a group of corporate employees originally formed to advocate for climate issues. The group continues to
talk about the problems facing their employer, including giving their support to workers who wish to join a union.
Cunningham and Costa’s claim is the latest retaliation by Amazon workers in which the federal agency found merit. In November, the NLRB issued a complaint against Amazon for the illegal termination of a Pennsylvania warehouse worker. According to an analysis of NLRB data by NBC News, there have been at least 37 counts of retaliation filed with the agency against Amazon in 20 cities since February 2020. While the pandemic has been a boon to Amazon’s business, safety precautions related to the virus, as well as the general conditions of the workplace, have also been a factor in a more general revolt by employees at their facilities. NBC News reported that the NLRB is considering whether to consolidate the allegations, given the number of similar complaints.
At the time, Cunningham and Costa’s resignation led to the resignation of Amazon engineer and vice president, Tim Bray. In a lengthy blog post about his departure, Bray said that “he gave up discouraged because Amazon fired whistleblowers who were making noise about the warehouse staff for fear of Covid-19”.
“Dismissing whistleblowers is not just a side effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the role of free markets. It is evidence of a streak of toxicity running through the company’s culture,” Bray wrote. “I choose not to serve or drink this poison.”
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