Amazon, a company with over 1.54 million workers, has claimed that the federal body in charge of defending workers’ rights, the National Labor Relations Board Relations Board (NLRB), is unconstitutional. According to The New York Times, Amazon made the allegation in a court filing on Thursday as part of a lawsuit in which the Board’s prosecutors have charged the online retailer with discriminating against employees at a Staten Island warehouse who had chosen to form a union.
Amazon is not the first company to challenge the Board’s constitutionality. Last month, Elon Musk’s SpaceX sued the NLRB after the agency accused the company of unlawfully firing eight employees and called the agency “unconstitutional” in the lawsuit. Weeks later, grocery chain Trader Joe’s, which the NLRB accused of union-busting, said that the NLRB’s structure and organization was “unconstitutional,” Bloomberg reported. And in separate lawsuits, two Starbucks baristas have independently challenged the agency’s structure as they sought to dissolve their unions.
Amazon’s claim is similar to the existing claims filed by SpaceX and Trader Joe’s. In the lawsuit, the company’s lawyers argued that “the structure of the (NLRB) violates the separation of powers” by “impeding the executive power provided for in Article II of the United States Constitution.” In addition, Amazon claimed that the NLRB’s hearings “can seek legal remedies beyond what’s allowed without a trial by jury.”
Seth Goldstein, a lawyer who represents unions in the Amazon and Trader Joe’s cases told reuters that these challenges to the NLRB increase the chances of the issue reaching the Supreme Court. And they might cause employers to stop bargaining with unions in hope that courts will finally strip the federal agency of its powers, Goldstein said. Amazon has a contentious history with the NLRB, which said the company broke federal labor laws last year.
