{"id":380810,"date":"2026-10-23T15:09:26","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T15:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/380810\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T15:09:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T15:09:26","slug":"nlrb-ordered-amazon-to-bargain-with-staten-island-workers-its-now-in-federal-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/380810\/","title":{"rendered":"NLRB ordered Amazon to bargain with Staten Island workers; it’s now in federal court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four and a half years after a grassroots union was voted in by workers<\/a> at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, the battles in court over Amazon\u2019s pushback against the vote continues.<\/p>\n

At issue in the latest set of filings in the Fifth Circuit is a National Labor Relations Board decision from April where the NLRB ordered Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN)<\/a> to negotiate with the union, which after its successful vote to unionize with no particular national organization is now aligned with the Teamsters as ALU-International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) Local 1, with the ALU standing for Amazon Labor Union<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There were dual filings last week with the Fifth Circuit in the case of Amazon vs. NLRB over the board\u2019s April decision to require Amazon to sit down and bargain with the Teamsters for a contract covering the workers at the facility known as JFK8.<\/p>\n

The briefs filed October 16 by Amazon and the Teamsters are vastly different, not just because they are coming at the case as adversaries, but because they take an entirely different approach.<\/p>\n

Legal arguments by Amazon<\/p>\n

The Amazon brief is more on narrow legal grounds about what the NLRB can and can not do.<\/p>\n

The Teamsters brief is a 115-page behemoth that relitigates and reviews the entire history of the Staten Island union and the many of the disputes that have been a hallmark of the contentious relationship between the Teamsters and Amazon.<\/p>\n

For Amazon, the battle on Staten Island marks the only time it has ever faced off against a unionization drive at one of its facilities and lost.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, a year later, another attempt at unionization<\/a> at a separate Staten Island facility failed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a closely-watched 2021 election because it was the first of a kind, Amazon beat back a unionization drive<\/a> at its facility in Bessemer, Alabama. In that case it was not the Teamsters but the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union that sought to represent workers there.<\/p>\n

Oral arguments\u2026or not<\/p>\n

In the Fifth Circuit case, the two sides are far enough apart that their respective briefs couldn\u2019t even agree on whether there is a need for oral arguments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile this Court could deny Amazon\u2019s petition for review and grant the Board\u2019s motion for enforcement without oral argument, the Court may find oral argument useful to address the briefing,\u201d the union said in a fence-straddling statement in its brief.<\/p>\n

What did Amazon say? \u201cAmazon agrees with (the union) that the issues raised in its petition can be decided without oral argument.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why it didn\u2019t bargain<\/p>\n

The Amazon brief is notable also in that it says it has not bargained with the union because it was seeking a court to overturn the NLRB\u2019s certification of the election and the April order for it to negotiate. A lack of bargaining was needed to push the issue to a court, the company said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn employer cannot obtain direct judicial review of a decision certifying a union election,\u201d the Amazon brief says. \u201cInstead, the employer must refuse to bargain with the union, be found to have committed an unfair labor practice, and then challenge the certification when it seeks review of that finding.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legal term of what Amazon is pursuing in its action against the NLRB is a \u201ctest of certification challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

NLRB Edge, a blog about the NLRB written by Matt Bruenig, said in a post following the NLRB decision<\/a> that the board rejected Amazon\u2019s arguments after \u201cfinding that all representation issues raised by Amazon either were or could have been litigated in the underlying representation proceeding, and that Amazon offered no newly discovered evidence or special circumstances justifying reconsideration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was it a big win?<\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s brief does touch on allegations it has leveled against the union. It said the union\u2019s Staten Island efforts \u201cengaged in a campaign marked by threats, coercion and intimidation.\u201d It also said the union \u201cnarrowly prevailed\u201d in its election; by contrast, the union touted the win as being a margin<\/a> of almost 11% of all ballots cast.<\/p>\n

But the more legally-oriented question the Amazon action against the NLRB puts before the Fifth Circuit is focused on a union request that beyond just ordering Amazon to bargain, it must engage in an \u201cenhanced remedy.\u201d The union describes the remedy as Amazon reading aloud at a \u201cmandatory meeting\u201d, according to the union, \u201ca notice of employees\u2019 rights under the National Labor Relations Act.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although such a reading had been recommended by the NLRB\u2019s General Counsel, the full board rejected that remedy.<\/p>\n

Amazon is recommending rejection of that union request because, one, it thinks the election on Staten Island is going to be decertified, making the issue moot.<\/p>\n

Second, the \u201cenhanced remedy\u201d of the reading of rights in a test-of-certification case has no precedent in labor law, according to Amazon.<\/p>\n

And third, Amazon says the union has not made a sufficient case that the reading is warranted.<\/p>\n

The union says if the Fifth Circuit agrees with Amazon\u2019s arguments, \u201cit would be improper to set aside the election.\u201d Instead, it recommends the case be remanded to the NLRB \u201cto provide further rationale for its decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joint employer case rolls on<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, another battle between the Teamsters and Amazon continues to play out before the NLRB.<\/p>\n

The fight there is over an April agreement between Amazon and the NLRB\u2019s General Counsel<\/a>. That agreement was designed to end a process on terms favorable to Amazon in which a lower rung of the NLRB process in Los Angeles had found that Amazon was a joint employer<\/a> along with a direct service provider, the independently-owned companies that actually deliver products.<\/p>\n

That agreement stopped the process that was launched in Los Angeles from getting to the full board.<\/p>\n

Amazon has long argued that its DSPs are independent. The Teamsters have argued otherwise and that Amazon is a joint employer with all of them, given their level of control over the delivery companies. It isn\u2019t a stretch to say that in terms of its labor structure, being held to be a joint employer would be almost an existential threat to the way it does business.<\/p>\n

The deal struck by the General Counsel ending the process was favorable enough to Amazon that Teamsters lawyers at the time called it an \u201cambush settlement agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NLRB docket on the case has mostly been quiet in recent months. The last substantive entry on it is a letter from Teamsters attorneys who said that unless there is an \u201cimmediate reinstatement of these proceedings,\u201d accepting the agreement \u201cwill represent the Board\u2019s capitulation to the corporate interests that operate to the detriment of working people across the country, who depend on the Board to effectuate the Act and protect their rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

More articles by John Kingston<\/a><\/p>\n

English language rule\u2019s comments bring criticism from Sikh organization<\/a><\/p>\n

Texas judge upholds nuclear verdict against C.H. Robinson<\/a><\/p>\n

CEO\u2019s letter boasts of lots of arrows pointing up at Triumph Financial<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four and a half years after a grassroots union was voted in by workers at an Amazon warehouse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[586,3532,9,24,63,134,136,135,18961],"class_list":["post-380810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-amazon","tag-national-labor-relations-board","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-teamsters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380810","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=380810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}