Posts tagged Andy Jassy
Amazon asks corporate staff to relocate or quit without severance
June 26, 2025 // The company is encouraging employees to relocate to key hubs, such as Seattle, Arlington, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., sometimes requiring them to move across the country. The change comes as the company continues its embrace of artificial intelligence (AI). CEO Andy Jassy even acknowledged that its work with AI will shrink its workforce over time.
ICYMI: Amazon Appeals Controversial NLRB Decision on CEO Andy Jassy Media Interviews
June 24, 2024 // Despite these clear free speech protections, the ALJ strained credibility by finding that Jassy “threatened employees that, if they selected a union, they would become less empowered and would find it harder to get things done quickly.” Not surprisingly, the decision was quite controversial. Amazon’s appeal is good news for fans of free speech and open debate. The appeal will first go before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which we hope will reverse the ALJ. If it does not do so, Amazon can take the case up to the federal courts.
Commentary: Unions, Free Speech and Political Demagogues
June 12, 2024 // The NLRB ruled that union strikers’ “profane, vulgar, racist, and otherwise insulting language” is protected union activity so long as the speech stops short of threatening violence. The message is clear: If you are a political ally of President Biden, you can have all the speech you want. If you represent a company or industry that Mr. Biden scapegoats for political gain, you can’t express your views in the public square without the government accusing you of breaking the law.
Labor Board Goes After Amazon CEO for Suggesting Workers Might Be ‘Better Off’ Without Unions
May 14, 2024 // "Reasonable people may disagree about the line between permissible and impermissible speech" within the bounds of federal labor laws, said Edwin Egee, a vice president at the National Retail Federation, in a statement. "However, if Judge Gee's decision is left to stand, the effect would be to erase this line entirely. Employers would rightly wonder whether they can speak about unionization at all, despite their legally protected right to do so." Gee's ruling in the Amazon case sits awkwardly alongside other recent rulings by the NLRB that gave wide leeway to employees' speech about similar topics. As the Washington Examiner noted, the NLRB in January forced Amazon to rehire an employee who had been sacked after directing an expletive-laden tirade at a fellow worker.
The Biden administration wants free speech for Big Labor, not businesses
May 9, 2024 // What’s more offensive — and, for that matter, illegal? An employee calling a coworker a “gutter b****” and a “queen of the slums”? Or a CEO saying that bringing in a labor union will make the workplace “much slower” and “more bureaucratic”? The answer is clearly the employee who racially and sexually demeaned his coworker. Yet in President Joe Biden’s administration, the CEO is the one getting punished. On May 1, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy violated federal labor law when he said that unionization comes with downsides.
NLRB Judge Rules Against Amazon CEO’s Comments
May 3, 2024 // The problem with the ALJ’s mind-bendingly distorted reasoning is type of speech Jassy used is specifically protected by the NLRA, which states: “The expressing of any views, argument, or opinion, or the dissemination thereof, whether in written, printed, graphic, or visual form, shall not constitute or be evidence of an unfair labor practice under any of the provisions of this Act, if such expression contains no threat of reprisal or force or promise of benefit.” And Jassy’s statements did not include threats of reprisal or force or promise of benefit. Moreover, try as the NLRB might to make their legal gymnastics seem legitimate, there’s also the matter of the First Amendment. What’s really going on here is that the NLRB’s General Counsel and the ALJ simply don’t like that Amazon’s CEO offered his opinion about unionizing, which is his right whether they like it or not.
Amazon CEO’s Comments Violated Labor Law, NLRB Judge Rules
May 2, 2024 // Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy made comments to the media in 2022 that violated federal labor law, a US National Labor Relations Board judge ruled Wednesday. Remarks that Jassy made to reporters about the downsides of unionization told “employees that, if they selected a union, they would become less empowered and would find it harder to get things done quickly,” NLRB administrative law judge Brian Gee wrote. Gee cited various comments Jassy made, including telling CNBC that making workplace improvements is “much slower” with a union and saying at a New York Times conference that employees without a union are “better off” because “it’s not bureaucratic.”
Commute no more: US employees embrace telework
June 12, 2023 // Teleworking has become "part of a cluster of benefits and options that companies can choose to offer workers," said Nela Richardson from ADP. For potential employees, "it's a choice of whether or not you are willing to negotiate that or look for that in your job search," she added. But what employees really want, according to Richardson, is the flexibility to choose when they work. "It's not necessarily (that) I want to work from home, I want to be surrounded by dirty dishes and unmade beds,"she said. "It's the fact that I can choose what hours I work."
NLRB Takes on Free Speech Yet Again
May 31, 2023 // Eventually, the anti-free speech charges brought by the NLRB will find their way to federal court, where they are likely to run into a buzzsaw. Not only is employer free speech protected by Section 8(c) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), but the U.S. Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision from 2008 has made that point abundantly clear. In the meantime, the agency will continue harassing businesses for engaging in perfectly legal activity. This seems like a ridiculous waste of time and money. Despite getting an extra $25 million from Congress last year, the NLRB is still pleading poverty. Perhaps if agency spent its money more productively, it wouldn’t feel the need to go back to the taxpayers for more.