Amazon has been taken to court in New York state after it was accused of violating federal law multiple times to obstruct unionisation efforts at a warehouse near Albany in the last year.
The new complaint was filed by a regional director at the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB).
The complaint accuses them of illegally firing an organiser prior to a union ballot last year, calling the police on employees, barring discussion of unions at the workplace, and seeking to limit employee interaction at the warehouse before and after hours to thwart organising.
ALB1, the warehouse cited in the complaint, failed to form a union in October last year by a vote margin of two to one but the Amazon Labour Union (ALU) says that is because of intimidation.
It would have become the second-ever Amazon fulfillment centre to unionise, following the historic formation the ALU at the Staten Island warehouse JKF8 in April 2022.
ALU president Chris Smalls accused Amazon of interfering with the ALB1 vote.
Smalls said: ‘Workers were subjected to intimidation and retaliation on a daily basis.
‘The suits at Amazon corporate know they can’t win without putting their thumb on the scale.’
It is not the first time Amazon has been accused of anti-union tactics – or been found guilty of employing them.
An administrative judge ruled in January that Amazon had illegally threatened to hold back wage increases and improved benefits at two New York City sites if workers formed a union.
The NLRB also ordered the e-commerce titan, the second largest employer in the US, to ‘cease and desist’ in retaliating against employees in November.
A federal judge found that Amazon had fired an employee at JFK8 after they pushed for greater workplace protections and safety measures during the pandemic.
Teresa Poor, the NLRB regional director in Brooklyn, said in a statement at the time: ‘This relief is critical to ensure that Amazon employees can fully and freely exercise their rights to join together and improve their working conditions, including by forming, assisting, or joining a union.’
Amazon has denied any wrongdoing.
It sought to overturn the JFK8 union election results in a legal challenge lodged in May 2022, but the NLRB rejected its objections in September.
The ALU was officially certified in January.
Meanwhile, a strike started last Wednesday in the Youngstown City School District in New York on what would have been the first day of classes.
The strike came after negotiations broke down last Tuesday between Youngstown City School District’s teachers union and the school administration.
Teachers demonstrated outside school buildings Wednesday and beyond, Youngstown Education Association spokesperson Jim Courim said.
Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor claimed that a strike would be illegal because the teachers union rejected use of a third-party fact-finder to help arbitrate the two sides’ differences.
The start of the school year was pushed back until Friday, and students will begin the year remotely.
Free school breakfasts and lunches were provided at drop-off sites while buildings are closed to the public, according to a help page created by the district.
The union has said it’s striking after months of failing to reach an agreement with the district on both wages and working conditions
The district is offering 2 per cent raises and the union is seeking at least 4.8 per cent.
With regards to the amount of student contact time, the administration is seeking an increase but the union wants it to stay the same.
Concerning the contract language around managing where teachers are placed according to the district’s needs teachers have stated that they want more of a say on this front.
- Elsewhere, a nail salon chain with 25 locations in the city will pay out $300,000 to more than 100 current and former employees after having paid them less than the minimum wage and not compensating them for overtime over a period of years, the office of New York Attorney General (AG) Letitia James announced last week.
An investigation by the AG’s office, the state Department of Labour and the state Department of State into Envy Nails begun in 2018, found that between 2015 and 2021, nail salons routinely misclassified their employees, many of them immigrants and workers of colour, as independent contractors.
Aside from the payout, Envy Nails which has locations in Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx, also must dissolve improperly registered corporate entities and submit reports to AG’s office for three years.
AG James said in a statement: ‘Envy Nails did not pay minimum wage, cheating more than 100 salon workers out of the livelihoods they had rightfully earned.
‘We are holding them accountable for their crimes, and New Yorkers can rest assured that we will always fight for workers’ rights.
‘Thank you to our partners in government and advocacy for working together with my office to ensure Envy Nails pays up and makes these workers whole.’
Members of the New York Healthy Nail Salons Coalition, including the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) and Adhikaar, have been calling on legislators to pass the Nail Salon Minimum Standards Council Act.
They say it would establish a council made up of nail salon workers, salon owners and government representatives to recommend safety standards and minimum pricing for services in the industry.
Charlene Obernauer, NYCOSH’s executive director said: ‘We believe building a better nail salon industry is possible and that’s why we continue to fight for the Nail Salon Minimum Standards Council Act and to organise workers.
‘I hope this case helps support our fight for this legislation. It is rare to find a worker who hasn’t experienced wage theft in the nail salon industry.’
Many nail techs have been susceptible to wage theft because they are purposefully misclassified as independent contractors, which allows employers to circumvent minimum wage, overtime and workers’ compensation laws.
The New York Nail Salon Workers Association estimated that 46 per cent of workers in the nail salon industry were wrongly considered independent contractors.
Additionally, nearly 90 per cent of nail salon workers are foreign-born, and 84 per cent are women.
The workers often earned poverty wages: about half of Spanish, Nepali and Mandarin-speaking nail technicians in the state reported earning below minimum wage, according to a report by Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labour Studies.
Julie Bracero-Kelly, the general manager of the NY NJ Regional Joint Board of Workers United: ‘In 2018, our union was proud to stand with nail salon workers at Envy and work with them to file wage theft complaints.
‘Labour violations like wage theft and employee misclassification are all too common in the nail salon industry and despite the risk of retaliation, these workers bravely stood up for their rights.
‘The attorney general listened to them and acted to deliver justice.
‘She has been a force for combating wage theft across the state, and we thank her and her partner agencies for investigating this case and fighting for workers who are too often left to fend for themselves.’
- The AG’s office also announced that, in addition to the wage violations, the state Department of Taxation and Finance and the city Department of Finance found that Envy Nails underreported more than $2 million in taxable sales between September 2014 and August 2019.
The nail chain owed at least $90,000 in sales tax and penalties.
One salon under the Envy Nails banner, Nails 181, pleaded guilty to third-degree grand larceny for failing to pay sales tax during this period, according to the AG’s office.
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Laurie Peterson ordered Nails 181 to pay more than $275,000.
