The image is by Alex Castro.
Amazon has agreed to let workers organize on company property outside of their shift time, as part of a nationwide settlement with the National Labor Relations Board. The company used to not allow employees to be around its facilities more than 15 minutes before or after their shifts, making it more difficult to organize with co-workers.
You can read the agreement here or below, which requires Amazon to notify its workers that they are legally obligated to join a union and that it can't retaliate against them if they do. The company will have to post the notice in a certain way.
The notice should be sent to anyone who worked at the facilities since March 22nd.
It should be in prominent places in the US.
It can be found on the news alert page of the A to Z app for workers.
Amazon can only briefly post the notice and have it count.
The settlement looks to prevent Amazon from only posting the notice during a holiday period where workers aren't actually present, like Apple did with a notification about workers' rights to discuss pay and working conditions. The agreement requires Amazon to keep the notifications up for 60 days. It will have to prove to the NLRB that it is complying with the order.
Amazon is facing a workers' rights movement. The warehouse workers in Staten Island walked out to protest the company's labor practices and filed a petition to organize. The election to unionize Amazon workers in Alabama was called off due to objections that the company had interfered with the election.
It is not clear how much this new settlement will affect any current or future union drives, but it is clear that the National Labor Relations Board has a close eye on Amazon to make sure the company is following labor laws.
Amazon didn't respond to The Verge's request for comment on the settlement. The settlement agreement between the National Labor Relations Board and Amazon provides a crucial commitment from the company to millions of its workers that it will not interfere with their right to form a union or take other collective action. The National Labor Relations Board will continue to defend the labor rights of all workers, even if it means trying to ensure that Amazon complies with the settlement.
The statement from the general counsel was added.
