Prior to the start of the hearing on June 13, Amazon sought to close the proceedings to the public. Following the tally of ballots on April 1, Amazon filed 25 objections to the election, including charges that the regional office of the NLRB overseeing the election favored the union, and that union leaders bribed workers with marijuana and threatened and harassed those who did not support the union. The virtual hearing is taking place four months after the election in which warehouse workers voted 2,654 to 2,131 to join the Amazon Labor Union. Lisa Dunn, the NLRB attorney presiding over the hearing from her home in Phoenix, has handled the stream of technical and other issues with calm and patience, allowing herself the occasional exasperated chuckle after yet another problem is dispensed with.Īmazon had sought to close the hearing to the public On Tuesday, a lawyer representing Amazon stopped witness testimony to report a breach, leading to yet another delay as parties investigated.Īmazon Labor Union president Chris Smalls waits as workers cast their votes over whether or not to unionize in an election held outside an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island on March 25, 2022. While the NLRB has made abundantly clear that any kind of recording, live-streaming or photos of the Zoom hearing are strictly prohibited, screenshots of the hearing have popped up on Twitter.
There have also been more serious issues. Members of other unions are joining the hearing in a show of supportĭuring the lunch break, members of other unions took advantage of the lull in the proceedings to shout out support for their comrades at Amazon, with cries of "Teamsters in the house!" "UAW in the house!" "When we fight, we win!" briefly taking over the Zoom call. Turn off your video, mute yourself, and do not use emojis or any other distractions." That led to repeated warnings delivered by the bailiff via the chat box, asking participants to "please provide just your first and last name to be admitted. Some participants turned on their cameras to display union swag in signature red while others changed their screen names to messages like "RECOGNIZE ALU." Someone grabbed control of the screen share and scrawled "UNION" across a video being presented as evidence by Amazon's lawyers. On Tuesday, the hearing grew to more than 300 participants, many of them apparently joining at the invitation of Amazon Labor Union leaders Chris Smalls, Derrick Palmer and Angelika Maldonado, who tweeted out the Zoom link. In the opening week and a half of the hearing, there's been the kind of sparring and haggling between lawyers that one would expect in any legal case.īut the proceedings have also been punctuated by an array of problems that any Zoom user would find familiar: a witness unable to connect to the Zoom meeting lawyers unable to unmute the hearing officer's camera suddenly freezing.Īnd of course, whenever there's a large number of people congregating on Zoom, there are opportunities for antics.
The NLRB will ultimately rule on whether a do-over election is warranted. It was a typical day in the marathon National Labor Relations Board's hearing that's considering Amazon's objections to the historic union election win at a Staten Island warehouse. Rogue additions to a screen share.īut it wasn't just any Zoom meeting. People muted and unmuted at the wrong times.
It's had all the hallmarks of a Zoom meeting gone awry.
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