Persevering with the lengthy American custom of rich company overlords making union-busting feedback, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy went on a media blitz in 2022 to warn of the workplace-altering terrors of labor unions. (Absolutely, it’s an unlucky happenstance that his pressing PSA coincided with an uptick in organizing efforts at Amazon.) Sadly for Mr. Jassy, the US nonetheless has a Nationwide Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and CNBC studies that the board dominated Wednesday that his anti-union feedback broke federal labor legal guidelines.
Jassy popped up on CNBC in April 2022 to say that if workers voted for and joined a union, they’d grow to be much less empowered and will anticipate issues to grow to be “much slower” and “more bureaucratic.” In an interview with Bloomberg, he added, “If you see something on the line that you think could be better for your team or you or your customers, you can’t just go to your manager and say, ‘Let’s change it.’”
He capped off his union-busting trifecta at The New York Instances DealBook convention, the place the CEO mentioned {that a} office with out unions isn’t “bureaucratic, it’s not slow.”
It’s the most recent in Amazon’s lengthy historical past of union-busting conduct.
NLRB Decide Brian Gee mentioned Jassy violated labor legal guidelines by suggesting workers could be much less empowered or “better off” with out a union. Nevertheless, Gee mentioned the CEO’s different feedback about worker-employer relationships altering have been lawful. In keeping with the decide, the distinction is that the extra aggressive quotes “went beyond merely commenting on the employee-employer relationship.”
Gee added that the feedback “threatened employees that, if they selected a union, they would become less empowered and find it harder to get things done quickly.” The decide recommends that Amazon “cease and desist” from making related feedback sooner or later. The corporate can be required to put up and share a observe in regards to the decide’s order with all of its US workers.
In December, Jassy’s Amazon shares have been valued at $328 million, making him considered one of America’s wealthiest CEOs.
In an announcement to CNBC, an Amazon spokesperson mentioned the decide’s ruling “reflects poorly on the state of free speech rights today.” As a result of, hey, what sort of free nation will we even have if a retail magnate can’t inform low-income staff scary bedtime tales in regards to the perils of voting to empower themselves within the office?
