NEW YORK – Amazon.com has taken a big legal step by suing the New York State Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) to stop it from enforcing a new state legislation. The huge online store says the rule is an unlawful attempt to control how private sector workers get along, which is mostly the job of the federal government’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The case, which was filed on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn, says that New York is making a “unconstitutional power grab.” Amazon says that the new law, Senate Bill 8034A, changes federal labor law by assuming that state law applies to private-sector employers until the NLRB gets a court order to say otherwise. Amazon says that this makes a system that Congress wanted to avoid.
The firing of Brima Sylla is a good example.
The fight has already become worse. In its lawsuit, Amazon pointed out that PERB had already used the new rule to file a case against the firm for terminating Brima Sylla, a union vice president at the JFK8 facility in Staten Island, on August 9. This was done even though the NLRB was already looking into the same incident. This shows the “collision of state and federal authority” that Amazon’s lawsuit is trying to stop.
Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, signed the measure on September 5. She said it was needed to protect workers because the NLRB didn’t have enough members to make a decision. This problem came up after President Donald Trump ousted Democratic NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox in January, which left the board with hundreds of complaints that needed to be handled.
NLRB Gets Involved and Files Its Own Lawsuit
It looks like the federal government agrees with Amazon. William Cowen, the Acting General Counsel for the NLRB, said last month that federal law would probably stop any state actions that tried to take over federal jurisdiction. He stressed that even if the board didn’t have a quorum, NLRB regional offices were still working on cases.
The NLRB also filed its own complaint against New York on September 12 in Albany federal court. This lawsuit is similar to the one that New York filed, but it is different. The NLRB is likewise trying to stop the state legislation from being enforced. This lawsuit from both a big company and the federal labor regulator shows that there will be a big legal fight over who has the most influence in labor relations.