{"id":248068,"date":"2026-05-29T19:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T19:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/248068\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T19:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T19:34:08","slug":"amazon-lawsuit-details-federal-labor-boards-dysfunction-in-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/248068\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon lawsuit details federal labor board\u2019s dysfunction in New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Attorney General\u2019s office and the Teamsters union have turned a lawsuit over a state labor law into an appraisal of the National Labor Relations Board\u2019s failures.<\/p>\n

Recent filings\u00a0by the union and the state AG in\u00a0Amazon\u2019s federal case<\/a> against New York\u2019s recent attempt to expand labor relations enforcement capture a damning level of dysfunction in the local NLRB offices\u2019 ability\u00a0to respond to alleged labor rights violations.<\/p>\n

A complaint that one union Amazon employee filed with the NLRB 29 months ago has not advanced past the first step of enforcement, and other employees\u2019 charges remain at that stage after 24 and 16 months, according to court papers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In its lawsuit against New York, Amazon has successfully gotten a federal judge to pause the enforcement of the State Employment Relations Act (SERA) during litigation. That law would allow the state-level employee relations board to have jurisdiction over private-sector labor disputes through the National Labor Relations Act \u2014 the federal law governing union formation and collective bargaining.<\/p>\n

State and union lawyers argued that the federal court should dismiss the challenge to SERA, which they say takes a step to mitigate what they describe as a \u201clabor enforcement no man\u2019s land\u201d due to the atrophy and political capture of the NLRB.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doctrine requires a functioning, independent NLRB. The NLRB is no longer either. Not only has it suffered decades-long atrophy, but it recently lacked a Board quorum needed to effect enforceable judgments for almost a year, January 2025 to January 2026, and now operates at the pleasure of the President,\u201d wrote Teamsters attorney Julie Gutman Dickinson in her memorandum of opposition to Amazon\u2019s suit.<\/p>\n

The NLRB did not comment on the assertions. Amazon also did not return a request for comment.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

As part of its argument, the union and state AG rely on a set of data that they pulled from the labor board\u2019s three New York officers, quantifying the extent of the delays that workers face once they\u2019ve filed labor complaints.<\/p>\n

The NLRB region covering Manhattan and the Bronx takes an average of 368 days to complete an investigation and issue complaints on meritorious labor-violation charges, according to court filings. In the region stretching over Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island, this process has taken as long as 1,396 days.<\/p>\n

These figures refer only to the first step of enforcement, before the lengthy process of an administrative law judge weighing in, even if cases are appealed and require a final board decision. Throughout New York, there are currently 80 charges that were filed in 2022, for which the regional offices have formalized a complaint, but have not gotten an ALJ decision.<\/p>\n

Ira Pollock, a Queens Amazon warehouse worker who gave testimony as part of the Teamsters\u2019 court filings, claims he was fired for taking an extended medical leave in 2025 as retaliation. He said three of the four labor complaints he filed with Amazon from early 2023 are all still pending with the NLRB.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThe languishing unremedied [unfair labor practice complaints] is disheartening and has chilled warehouse workers from participating in organizing,\u201d wrote Pollock.<\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s argument in the suit is that the labor enforcement that SERA extends to the state\u2019s Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) is preempted under the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s 1959 San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon ruling, which deems federal employee labor rights to be the exclusive domain of the national labor board \u2014 not PERB.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an argument that\u00a0U.S. District Court Judge\u00a0Eric Komitee<\/a> of the Eastern District of New York found convincing when he held that Amazon would likely prevail on the merits of its challenge and granted it\u00a0a temporary injunction in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In response, the unions and AG have argued that Garmon is no longer applicable to the current state of federal labor law after President Donald Trump fired one of the NLRB members in a move that flouted procedure and left it without a quorum and unable to function for a year.<\/p>\n

The NLRB regained its ability to issue decisions in December, when the Senate confirmed two new members, but lawyers argued that its ability to end the quorum has become a de facto tool of presidential control over the quasi-judicial agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NLRB currently lacks\u2014and will not likely regain\u2014its independence,\u201d wrote the Teamsters lawyer in the memorandum.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s lawyers have maintained that Komittee should move forward with issuing a permanent injunction against SERA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Attorney General\u2019s office and the Teamsters union have turned a lawsuit over a state labor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[96945,96946,96947,96948,96949,96950,96951,3532,9,41902,11,10,96952,96953,96954,74245,3545,18962],"class_list":["post-248068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-amazon-lawsuit","tag-amazon-workers","tag-eric-komitee","tag-federal-court-injunction","tag-labor-dispute-litigation","tag-labor-law-enforcement","tag-labor-rights-violations","tag-national-labor-relations-board","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-attorney-general","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-nlrb-delays","tag-sera","tag-state-employment-relations-act","tag-teamsters-union","tag-unfair-labor-practices","tag-union-organizing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}