Amazon is arguing that the country’s top labor watchdog is violating the Constitution as it fights to have its unfair labor practice lawsuit dismissed, citing recent conservative decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court.
In documents filed last month, lawyers for the tech giant disputed a complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) after two Georgia workers alleged they were retaliated against, surveilled and interrogated after exercising their right to organize.
Workers at the ATL6 Amazon warehouse outside Atlanta filed suit in 2023. The NLRB regional office found the charges meritless and filed a complaint against Amazon. A court hearing is scheduled for October.
Amazon denies the allegations and has asked that the lawsuit be dismissed on constitutional grounds.
Amazon’s July filing comes as a wave of companies facing alleged labor violations attack the NLRB and just a month after the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron doctrine, which weakens federal agencies’ power to interpret the laws they enforce and leaves it up to courts to decide whether federal agencies’ interpretations of the law are valid.
In a response obtained by the Guardian, the NRLB’s complaint against Amazon “should be dismissed because the General Counsel’s interpretation of the Act and its request in this case to the National Labor Relations Board implicates the primary issue doctrine and related non-delegation principles and therefore violates Article I of the U.S. Constitution,” Amazon’s lawyers wrote.
The NLRB’s complaint “should be dismissed,” they added, because the agency’s process “violates Article II of the U.S. Constitution” by involving “the exercise of significant power by U.S. officials who are improperly insulated from the President’s removal power.”
Amazon’s lawyers argued that the NLRB’s simultaneous exercise of legislative, executive, and judicial powers in this case violates the separation of powers provided by the U.S. Constitution and the due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment.
Such claims were once considered conservative heresy, according to lawyers who advise Amazon workers and the nonprofit labor advocacy group United for Respect. “We believe this is part of a broader effort by conservatives around the country, and particularly retail employers, to dismantle the administrative state and attack the institutions that are tasked with protecting workers’ rights,” said Bianca Agustin, co-director of United for Respect. “This is a concerted industry effort because of increased activism at the worker level.”
The NLRB declined to comment on Amazon’s allegations, but the board’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, recently blasted employers’ arguments challenging the agency’s constitutionality.
“We are not going to succumb to the pressure that is being placed on us to address the challenges and defend the constitutionality of the agency’s structure,” Abruzzo said in April during a panel with the Roosevelt Institute after SpaceX, Trader Joe’s, Amazon, Starbucks and Energy Transfer made similar arguments to the NLRB. “Why did these arcane legal arguments come about?
“After SpaceX wrongfully fired eight workers for raising workplace concerns, we dared to file a complaint against the company, and Amazon, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s and other companies have followed suit as we seek to hold them accountable for repeatedly violating workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively.”
Two Amazon employees, learning ambassador Ron Sewell and transportation worker Nancy Regimbal, have both worked at Amazon warehouses for seven years and, because of their tenure, have taken the lead in airing employee concerns about the policy changes.
Sewell met with Regimbal in a parking lot near the warehouse in May 2023. Sewell wanted to help another worker who was challenging Amazon’s policy changes to transfer temporary workers to other warehouses and to stop part-time workers from getting paid their full four-hour shifts if they were sent home early.
According to Sewell and Regimbal, an Amazon shuttle van showed up where they were with management, they were asked what they were doing, and were later contacted by an Amazon investigator and reprimanded for not being in the parking lot. Both employees dispute this, with Sewell claiming that Amazon management followed them to the parking lot.
“In the seven years I worked at Amazon, I was never warned, because I knew all the rules and followed them,” Sewell said. “And that was because I was organizing, talking to my coworkers, getting other people to follow me. They wanted to get rid of me, and they thought this was an easy way to get rid of me, so they made something up and said they would follow it.”
Resimbal also claimed that he had never received a written warning in his seven years at Amazon, and that the written warning was retaliatory because he had posted concerns and complaints from coworkers who wanted to post anonymously days before receiving the written warning.
“The investigators and administrators crossed the line in a number of ways,” she said. “They did not follow the correct procedures in terms of dealing with any of these issues that they are so-called reprimanding us for.”
She said she protested the letter but never received it or a response as to why she received it.
“I literally have mountains of documents, pictures and chats to show my side of the story,” Regimbal added. “I’m not going to let them beat us down. We’ve been speaking out about heat issues, safety issues, water issues, wage issues, every issue, and our voices are only getting louder.”
Amazon did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the lawyers’ arguments or the allegations contained in the unfair labor practice charges.
