NLRB rules against Amazon for attempts to bust union at Staten Island warehouse

Amazon, market cap: $2.2 trillion, got its hands slapped by the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday, for a union-busting effort at a Staten Island warehouse.

Workers at the warehouse ultimately approved the union in a 2022 vote, making it the first-ever successful union election at an Amazon facility.

Amazon, of course, challenged the victory with the NLRB, claiming the election was tainted by workers, union agents and NLRB employees who oversaw it, and lost at that as well.

The decision handed down on Wednesday had to do with “captive-audience meetings,” which require employees under threat of discipline or discharge to attend meetings in which the employer expresses its views on unionization.

“Ensuring that workers can make a truly free choice about whether they want union representation is one of the fundamental goals of the National Labor Relations Act. Captive audience meetings—which give employers near-unfettered freedom to force their message about unionization on workers under threat of discipline or discharge—undermine this important goal,” said NLRB Chair Lauren McFerran.

“Today’s decision better protects workers’ freedom to make their own choices in exercising their rights under the Act, while ensuring that employers can convey their views about unionization in a noncoercive manner,” McFerran said.

Amazon can appeal the NLRB ruling to a federal appeals court, and it can, and probably will, also just wait out a change in the board’s composition once Donald Trump is inaugurated in January.

The five-member board currently has a Democratic majority, but Trump will be able to make two appointments in 2025, and those two would give Republicans a majority.

This is where Jeff Bezos, the executive chairman of Amazon, cuddling up to Trump in recent weeks comes into the equation.

Bezos, net worth: $225 billion, didn’t get that filthy, stinkin’ rich by letting people making $15 an hour, like the Amazon warehouse employees in Staten Island, do things to look out for themselves like join a union.

This is how rich people get – and stay – rich.

It’s not because they’re smarter than you; they’re only smart enough to tilt the game we’re all playing in their favor.