Business Insider headline: Amazon held 25 mandatory anti-union meetings each day in the weeks leading up to the Staten Island union vote
Katherine Long 12 hours ago
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-anti-union-meetings-s…
Amazon held 25 mandatory anti-union meetings a day for employees at a warehouse on Staten Island, New York, in the six weeks before a union vote at the facility in March, according to testimony from an Amazon human-resources official at a federal hearing on Wednesday.
The upstart Amazon Labor Union, led by the charismatic former Amazon worker Christian Smalls, won that vote by a convincing margin. Amazon has contested the victory, alleging bias on the part of federal labor officials managing the vote and improper conduct by the union. Wednesday’s hearing was the third day of what observers expect to be weeks of testimony before a federal labor-relations official decides whether to rerun the election at that facility, called JFK8.
Amazon’s use of mandatory anti-union meetings, sometimes called captive-audience meetings, has come under scrutiny in recent months as the company has battled union campaigns in Staten Island and Bessemer, Alabama. The general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency overseeing union activities, said in April that she believed captive-audience meetings violated federal labor law.