Official Response to Amazon.com Customers May Violate US Labor Laws

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"We call our group Day2 [at] Amazon.com because Bezos is always telling us, 'It's Day One, we can't stop or rest,' and we think five years of Day One is generating lots of problems for us."

Zach Works
Tier Three Customer Service Employee

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(Seattle, WA) -- In an attempt to assuage public concerns about the working conditions at Amazon.com, management is now requiring that customer service employees send out anti-union messages to inquiring customers. However, these messages are potentially illegal; they may be in violation of rights that Amazon employees are guaranteed through Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

The preapproved blurb that employees are asked to send to customers reads as follows:

"Thank you for writing to Amazon.com.
As you may be aware, there have been media reports that a union has recently had discussions with some Amazon.com customer service representatives regarding unionization in Seattle.

While unions do have a role in society, at Amazon.com, everyone is an owner and can exercise individual rights to raise any workplace issues or concerns at any time.

All of us here share the same commitment and passion for meeting our obligations to customers.

Thank you again for taking the time to write to us."

According to Steve Weissman, an attorney with Weissman and Mint in New Jersey, requiring employees to respond to customers with this message violates employee's rights for two solid reasons.


"First," he states in an email statement to the Day2@Amazon/WashTech group, "the second paragraph states that employees can exercise 'individual rights,' implying that they cannot exercise 'collective rights,' i.e., they cannot join a union. This paragraph also suggests, albeit it incorrectly, that because employees are 'owners' they cannot organize."

"Second," he continues, "the statement suggests that employees who join and support unions are somehow disloyal to the company. By having employees [send out] this statement, the company is, in essence, having them embrace the company's line that unions adversely affect customer service, thereby proclaiming that the employees oppose unionization. The NLRB has held that equating support for the union with disloyalty to the employer constitutes unlawful interference with the employees' section 7 rights. City Products Corp., 251 NLRB 1512 (1980)."

Section 8 of the NLRA outlines what unions and employers can and cannot do during an organizing campaign. Employers therefore cannot "...interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in Section 7..."

In addition to the two suspected violations of Section 7 above, Weissman suspects that requiring that customer service representatives send this statement to customers may also constitute an unlawful form of surveillance. In other words, by monitoring (or threatening) to monitor how employees respond to customer inquiries about unionization, Amazon.com management may be in violation federal law.

Day2@Amazon/WashTech will continue to research this issue. If Amazon CS employees choose to pursue the legality of this message, potential recourse includes filing unfair labor practices (ULPs) against Amazon management via the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

If you have questions about the legality of your employer's actions, please contact WashTech at (206) 726-8580 or at contact [at] washtech.org.

WashTech is a local affiliate of The Newspaper Guild (http://www.newsguild.org) and the Communications Workers of America (http://www.cwa-union.org).