Amazon has fired two Staten Island warehouse workers who helped organise a union at JFK8, the company’s largest warehouse in New York City.
According to Motherboard, the victory at JFK8 in April marked the first time in the US labour history that workers have successfully unionised at the fiercely anti-union company.
The tech giant has so far refused to recognise the union and has asked the National Labour Relations Board to throw out the results of the election, the report said.
While it is unclear whether recent terminations are retaliatory, they mark the first instance since Amazon Labour Union won a union election on April 1 that Amazon has terminated organisers in Staten Island.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment by Motherboard.
On May 3, Amazon human resources notified Mat Cusick, the comms lead for Amazon Labour Union and an Amazon warehouse worker, that he had been terminated for “voluntary resignation due to job abandonment”, according to an email obtained by Motherboard.
Cusick had been on Covid-related leave.
Amazon notified another warehouse employee, Tristan Dutchin, an ALU organiser, whose photo has been prominently featured across major media outlets in recent weeks, in a meeting on May 7 said that he had been terminated for falling behind on productivity targets.
Dutchin sent screenshots confirming that he had been locked out of Amazon’s AtoZ app, which handles payroll and scheduling, the report said.
Meanwhile, on May 5, Amazon fired six senior managers who oversaw Amazon’s anti-union campaign at JFK8.