US court nixes order barring Amazon from firing pro-union workers

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) -A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday tossed out a judge's order that required Amazon.com to refrain from firing union supporters amid a nationwide organizing campaign at its warehouses.

A three-judge panel of the Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the judge who issued the order last year at the request of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) failed to explain why such a sweeping mandate was necessary.

The labor board sought the order after Amazon in 2020 fired Gerald Bryson, a union organizer at a warehouse in Staten Island, for making profane comments to a coworker during a protest over an alleged lack of safety measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The warehouse, known as JFK8, in 2022 became the first Amazon facility to unionize. Amazon workers at two other New York warehouses and one in Alabama have since voted against unionizing.

U.S. District Judge Diane Gujarati in Brooklyn ruled that Bryson's firing violated his rights under U.S. labor law and barred Amazon from terminating other union supporters. But the judge refused to order Amazon to reinstate Bryson, saying there was no evidence that his firing deterred other workers from unionizing.

The 2nd Circuit on Wednesday said the requirement that Amazon not fire other workers was unnecessary if there was no evidence that Bryson's firing had a broader impact.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An NLRB spokeswoman declined to comment.

The labor board had sought a court injunction against Amazon pending the outcome of a related administrative case over Bryson's firing.

Amazon claims that it fired Bryson over his conduct at the protest and not because of his support for the union. A video of the protest showed Bryson calling a female coworker a "crackhead" and "stupid," among other comments.

Some Republican lawmakers criticized the Democrat-led NLRB for pursuing the case, citing Bryson's conduct.

An administrative judge in 2022 ordered Amazon to reinstate Bryson and the company appealed.

The five-member board last year remanded the case to the judge to apply a new legal standard the board had adopted for cases where employees engage in misconduct while exercising their rights to organize. The judge again ruled against Amazon in January.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)