Amazon is facing more heat after the National Labor Relations Board determined that it illegally fired two of its employees who were voicing concerns about the company.
The labor board found that Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, who worked as user experience designers at the company’s Seattle headquarters, were fired because of their activism. They began criticizing the company in 2018 and were terminated in April of last year.
An official with the NLRB told the Washington Examiner on Monday that the board found merit with their claims and that if Amazon does not settle with the women, Seattle’s regional director will file a complaint accusing Amazon of unfair labor practices.
“It’s a moral victory and really shows that we are on the right side of history and the right side of the law,” Cunningham told the New York Times.
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Cunningham and Costa’s activism began when they joined a group of Amazon workers, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, to implore the company to do more to address climate change. The group eventually grew to nearly 9,000 employees. Over time, their activism began to shift to drawing attention to the condition of workers inside Amazon’s warehouses at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Amazon is currently under pressure from some lawmakers and activists over its labor practices at the facilities. One such location, a nearly 6,000-employee fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, has garnered national attention as its employees voted on whether to organize and join the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union.
The Bessemer facility balloting process took some seven weeks, with the vote ending last week. If the facility decides to unionize, it would deliver a gut blow to Amazon, which fears the unionization effort could cause other facilities across the country to weigh in on whether to join unions.
This week’s NLRB’s finding that Amazon illegally fired Cunningham and Costa only adds to the company’s scrutiny, which has come from both Republicans and Democrats. Despite the labor board’s conclusion, Amazon asserts that the women were actually fired for violating internal company policies.
“We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against our internal policies, all of which are lawful,” Amazon spokesman Jose Negrete said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner. “We terminated these employees not for talking publicly about working conditions, safety or sustainability but, rather, for repeatedly violating internal policies.”
In May 2020, after Cunningham and Costa were fired, a nine-person group of senators, including Democrats Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and independent socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont, sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos seeking information about their terminations and those of other employees.
“In order to understand how the termination of employees that raised concerns about health and safety conditions did not constitute retaliation for whistleblowing, we are requesting information about Amazon’s policies regarding grounds for employee discipline and termination,” the nine lawmakers wrote.
Sanders has also recently knocked Bezos for turning down an invitation for the CEO to testify at a Senate Budget Committee hearing that was held last month to address wealth inequality. Instead, one of the Bessemer employees pushing for unionization attended the committee hearing, which Sanders led.
“Today, we’re going to be talking about what it means morally and economically when one person in this country, the wealthiest person in the world, Jeff Bezos, has become $77 billion richer during this horrific pandemic while denying hundreds of thousands of workers who work at Amazon paid sick leave and hazard pay,” Sanders said during the hearing.
The employee, Jennifer Bates, said that despite Amazon having a company-wide minimum wage of $15 an hour, its warehouse employees are overworked, have little time to take breaks, and are treated as though they are “another machine.”
The results of the union vote are expected to be announced sometime this week, although the losing side has the ability to challenge the vote in court or through the labor board.
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The Washington Examiner reached out to both Cunningham and Costa for this story but did not immediately receive responses.
