Amazon has won a hearing from the National Labor Relations Board to review the company’s complaints around the successful vote to unionize at one of its Staten Island warehouses in New York.
It follows the transfer of Amazon’s case with NLRB’s Phoenix office. Amazon had requested the transfer and lodged several complaints against NLRB’s Brooklyn office, which previously handled the case.
Specifically, the company accused Regional Director Kathy Drew King and other Brooklyn staff of making statements “that call into question the Region’s ‘neutral’ stance” around the election and taking steps that the company alleged may have disenfranchised workers voting in the union election, among other complaints.
In a filing, Cornele Overstreet, director of the NLRB’s Phoenix office, said the evidence behind Amazon’s complaints “could be grounds for overturning the election.”
The hearing begins on May 23.
Amazon did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The Staten Island warehouse vote to create a worker union, called the Amazon Labor Union, marked a historic moment for the company, which has not previously had any unionized facilities in the U.S. One expert told Retail Dive at the time of the Staten Island vote results that it may have been “the most important victory in almost 100 years" for organized labor.
Workers at another warehouse at Staten Island have also voted on a union, the results of which will be tallied on Monday. A second vote to unionize by workers at a warehouse in Alabama failed, though the results have been challenged by the Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union, which organizing workers there are trying to join.
