The NLRB is suing Amazon to get a fired activist his job back

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The National Labor Relations Board is suing Amazon. The watchdog wants a judge to order Amazon to give Gerald Bryson his job back. The National Labor Relations Board says there is a clear case of Amazon retaliating against him for protesting unsafe working conditions at its JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, NY.

The Section 10(j) injunction is intended to temporarily make a situation right when the court case could take too long to fix the issue. According to The New York Times, Bryson has been fighting to get his job back for almost two years. The petition states that other employees may be afraid to speak out if Bryson isn't reinstated, as it views his firing as a message from Amazon to its workers. Workers at the JFK8 warehouse will vote on unionization on March 25th.

Kathy Drew King is the Regional Director of the National Labor Relations Board.

We are seeking an injunction in District Court to immediately reinstate a worker that Amazon illegally fired for exercising his Section 7 rights. We are also asking the Court to order a mandatory meeting at JFK8 with all employees at which Amazon will read a notice of employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act. No matter how large the employer, it is important for workers to know their rights—particularly during a union election—and that the NLRB will vociferously defend them.

A request for comment was not immediately responded to by Amazon.

The process has been hard for him. He said that the systems for fighting back against large corporations like Amazon are outdated and need to be rebuilt. He said that he wouldn't get any gloves.

He talked about his struggles with being out of work as a single father and how this isn't a court case. He says he's fighting until the end despite his frustration. That work at Amazon is why I hope to make a change for other people.

The leader of the Amazon Labor Union is the man who used to work at the JFK8 warehouse. The ALU is involved in efforts at another Amazon Staten Island facility. The election details are being decided. Christian Smalls is one of the workers fired by Amazon.

According to The New York Times, the company says that it fired the man after he got into a heated shouting match with another warehouse employee while attending a protest.

If two employees are in a fight, the company's policy is to fire both of them. He says he submitted video evidence to prove that he started the argument.

The public face of the organizing movement for improved COVID-19 health and safety practices at the JFK8 Facility was fired by Amazon. The company faced heavy criticism from workers for how it handled the Pandemic at JFK8 and similar facilities, and the New York Attorney General filed a lawsuit last year, accusing the company of not protecting its workers from the disease.

Amazon has been sued by the National Labor Relations Board for its actions at its Staten Island facilities. The labor watchdog accused the company of threatening, surveilling, and interrogating employees. The company called the organizers "thugs" and promised to solve employees' issues if they rejected unionization efforts, according to the complaint.

In December, the National Labor Relations Board reached a settlement with Amazon that required the company to notify workers of their rights to organize via emails, a message on an internal app and website and physically posted signs. The notifications were a step in the right direction, but the all-hands meeting proposed by the National Labor Relations Board would likely be more attention-getting for employees. In the settlement, Amazon agreed to let employees organize on company property outside of their shift time, something they were not allowed to do before.