BY CLAUDIA IRIZARRY APONTE
The City, NYC
In a step toward affirming the groundbreaking vote on Staten Island that created the nation’s first union of Amazon warehouse workers, a National Labor Relations Board official recommended rejecting the e-commerce giant’s claims that the vote was invalid.
While the NLRB’s decision on Thursday was a welcome win for the workers, their battle is far from over – and a first contract is still out of reach.
“The company and the union must bargain in good faith…. That means that they must agree to meet at a reasonable time in private and try to reach an agreement,” the workforce staffing manager, identified as Eric, said. “The law does not say that they have to reach an agreement. They just have to try to.”
That’s one reason why it takes an average of 465 days for workers to sign a first union contract, according to a recent Bloomberg Law analysis.
Sharon Block, a professor at Harvard Law School and executive director of the school’s Labor & Worklife Program, said the loophole amounts to a “huge flaw” in federal labor law that erodes worker morale.
“From an employer’s perspective who doesn’t want to bargain, you just pay some lawyers a little bit of money, and you can forestall bargaining,” she said. “Meanwhile, the union has to expend resources, almost continually organizing because you have a bargaining unit that’s saying, ‘Well, what did we do this for?’ And it’s not the union’s fault – It’s just this weakness in the law.”
“It just shouldn’t be this hard,” Block added.... Read more about Federal Official Recommends Rejecting Amazon’s Bid to Overturn Staten Island Union Election Results