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. (Certainly, 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 stories 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 staff voted for and joined a union, they might change into much less empowered and will anticipate issues to change into “a lot slower” and “extra bureaucratic.” In an interview with Bloomberg, he added, “In the event you see one thing on the road that you simply suppose may very well be higher in your workforce otherwise you or your prospects, you may’t simply go to your supervisor and say, ‘Let’s change it.’”
He capped off his union-busting trifecta at The New York Occasions DealBook convention, the place the CEO mentioned {that a} office with out unions isn’t “bureaucratic, it’s not sluggish.”
It’s the newest in Amazon’s lengthy historical past of union-busting conduct.
NLRB Choose Brian Gee mentioned Jassy violated labor legal guidelines by suggesting staff could be much less empowered or “higher off” and not using a union. Nonetheless, Gee mentioned the CEO’s different feedback about worker-employer relationships altering had been lawful. In response to the choose, the distinction is that the extra aggressive quotes “went past merely commenting on the employee-employer relationship.”
Gee added that the feedback “threatened staff that, if they chose a union, they might change into much less empowered and discover it tougher to get issues completed rapidly.” The choose recommends that Amazon “stop and desist” from making related feedback sooner or later. The corporate can also be required to put up and share a be aware in regards to the choose’s order with all of its US staff.
In December, Jassy’s Amazon shares had been valued at $328 million, making him one in all America’s wealthiest CEOs.
In a press release to CNBC, an Amazon spokesperson mentioned the choose’s ruling “displays poorly on the state of free speech rights at the moment.” 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?
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