Amazon says US labor watchdog that filed labor charges violates constitution

Amazon has argued the country’s top labor watchdog is violating the constitution as the company fights to dismiss unfair labor practice charges, leaning on a recent conservative US supreme court ruling.

In a filing last month, attorneys representing the technology giant pushed back against a complaint issued by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) after two Georgia workers alleged that they faced retaliation, surveillance and interrogation after exercising their right to organize.

The workers, based at the ATL6 Amazon warehouse on the outskirts of Atlanta, filed charges in 2023. The NLRB’s regional office issued a complaint against Amazon after finding merit in the charges. A court hearing is scheduled for October.

Amazon, which denies the allegations, is seeking to dismiss the complaint on constitutional grounds.

As a string of corporations facing charges of labor law violations attack the NLRB, Amazon’s July filing came just one month after the supreme court overturned the Chevron doctrine, undermining the authority of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer, deferring to the courts whether a federal agency’s interpretation of a law should stand.

The NRLB’s complaint against Amazon “should be dismissed because the General Counsel’s interpretation of the Act and requests to the National Labor Relations Board in this case implicates the Major Questions Doctrine and associated principles of non-delegation and therefore violate Article I of the United States Constitution,” Amazon’s attorneys wrote in their response, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian.

The NLRB complaint “should be dismissed”, they added, because the agency’s procedures “violate Article II of the United States Constitution” by involving “the exercise of significant authority by an Officer of the United States who is improperly insulated from the President’s removal power”.

The NLRB’s “concurrent exercise of legislative, executive and judicial power in this proceeding violates the separation of powers established by the United States Constitution,” the Amazon attorneys claimed, “and the guarantee of due process found in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

Such arguments were once considered conservative fringe arguments, according to an attorney advising the Amazon workers and United for Respect, a non-profit labor advocacy group. “I think this is part of a broader effort on the part of conservative voices in the country – retail employers specifically – attempting to dismantle the administrative state and attacking the agencies tasked with protecting workers rights,” said Bianca Agustin, co-director of United for Respect. “This is a concerted effort on the industry’s part because of the rise in activism at the worker level.”

The NLRB declined to comment on the arguments by Amazon, but its general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, recently condemned arguments made by employers challenging the agency’s constitutionality.

“There is no way we are going to succumb to the pressures imposed in addressing challenges and defending the constitutionality of our agency’s structure,” Abruzzo said in response to similar arguments against the NLRB made by SpaceX, Trader Joe’s, Amazon, Starbucks and Energy Transfer during a panel with the Roosevelt Institute in April. “These esoteric legal arguments came about, why?

“Because we dared to issue a complaint against SpaceX after it unlawfully fired eight workers for speaking up about their workplace concerns, and then Amazon jumps on the bandwagon, Starbucks jumps on the bandwagon, Trader Joe’s, others get into the action – just because we are trying to hold them accountable for repeatedly violating workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain.”

The two Amazon workers – Ron Sewell, who is a learning ambassador, and Nancy Regimbal, who works in the transportation department – have both worked at the Amazon warehouse for seven years and, due to their seniority, had taken a leading role in conveying employee concerns with policy changes.

Back in May 2023, Sewell met with Regimbal in a parking lot down the street from the warehouse. Sewell wanted to help out another worker who was disputing transfers of temporary staff to another warehouse, and a policy change where part-time Amazon workers would no longer be compensated for a full four-hour shift if sent home early.

According to Sewell and Regimbal, an Amazon shuttle van with management appeared where they were. They were asked what they were doing, and later were contacted by an Amazon investigator and received disciplinary write-ups alleging they were not supposed to be in the parking lot. Both workers disputed this and alleged that Sewell was followed to the parking lot by Amazon managers.

“I never received a write-up in my seven years at Amazon because I know all the rules in and out, and I follow them,” said Sewell. “It was because I was organizing, I was talking to associates, I was getting other people to follow me, and they wanted to get rid of me and they saw this as an easy way to get rid of me, to make up something and say they’re going to go with this.”

Regimbal also argued she had never before received a write-up in her seven years of employment at Amazon and alleged her write-up was retaliation, as she was posting concerns and complaints from co-workers who wanted to do so anonymously in the days before the write-up.

“The investigators, managers, they jumped over the line in many areas,” she said. “They didn’t follow the correct steps in regards to addressing any of these issues they are so-called writing us up on.”

She appealed her write-up but said she never received a report or concrete answers on why she was written up.

“I literally have a stack of documents, pictures and chats, to show my side of the story,” added Regimbal. “I’m not going to let them tear us down. We have been speaking out about heat issues, safety issues, water issues, pay issues, you name it, and our voices are only going to get louder.”

Amazon did not respond to multiple requests for comment on their attorney’s arguments or the allegations included in the unfair labor practice charges.