A federal administrative legislation decide dominated that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy violated labor legislation by making sure anti-union feedback throughout media interviews two years in the past.
The ruling, issued Wednesday, follows a grievance filed in 2022 by the Nationwide Labor Relations Board that accused Jassy of crossing the road throughout sit-down interviews through which he mentioned that staff have been higher off with out a union.
Within the ruling, Nationwide Labor Relations Board Choose Brian D. Gee pointed to statements Amazon’s chief government made on CNBC’s tv program “Squawk Field,” and through two summits organized by Bloomberg Information and the New York Occasions.
Gee mentioned predictions Jassy made about unionization altering the employee-employer relationship have been lawful. However different statements about how workers could be much less empowered underneath a union, “discover it more durable to get issues executed rapidly and could be higher off” with out one ran afoul of federal labor legislation, the decide mentioned.
In a ready assertion, Amazon spokesperson Mary Kate Paradis mentioned the corporate strongly disagrees that “any a part of these feedback” have been inappropriate and intends to enchantment the ruling throughout the administrative legislation system.
“The choice displays poorly on the state of free speech rights in the present day, and we stay optimistic that we will proceed to have interaction in an affordable dialogue on these points the place all views have a chance to be heard,” Paradis mentioned.
Jassy’s feedback got here amid elevated unionization efforts at Amazon following a historic victory by the Amazon Labor Union throughout a union illustration vote at a warehouse in New York Metropolis. The corporate has continued to enchantment the union’s win and refused to come back to the bargaining desk.
In his ruling, Gee suggested Amazon to keep away from “threatening its workers” with related feedback sooner or later and to submit a discover in its services nationwide that signaled the corporate’s compliance with the decide’s discovering.