Last month, the New York attorney general said in a lawsuit that Amazon had retaliated against employees who tried to protest its pandemic safety measures as inadequate.Īmazon declined to say whether it had complied with labor laws during the union drive in Chester in 20. The retail workers union said Amazon was trying to surveil employees in Bessemer and even changed a traffic signal to prevent organizers from approaching warehouse workers as they left the site. The tactics that Amazon used in Chester are surfacing elsewhere. There have been no further attempts at a union in Chester. The settlement was not publicized, so there were not even any public relations benefits.Īmazon was the real winner.

Its enforcement remedies are few and weak, which means its ability to restrain anti-union employers from breaking the law is limited. The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that negotiated the settlement with Amazon, has no power to impose monetary penalties. The employee notice was a hollow victory for workers.

The effort in Chester, which The Times reconstructed with documents from regulators and the machinists’ union, as well as interviews with former facilities technicians at the warehouse and union officials, offers one of the fullest pictures of what encourages Amazon workers to open the door to a union - and what techniques the company uses to slam the door and nail it shut. “Workers trying, workers losing, workers trying again.” “If the union can prevail given those three facts, it will send a message that Amazon is organizable everywhere.”Įven if the union does not prevail, “the history of unions is always about failing forward,” she said. “This is happening in the toughest state, with the toughest company, at the toughest moment,” said Janice Fine, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University.

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