Amazon illegally fired 2 workers who criticized the company, labor board reportedly finds

The National Labor Relations Board has reportedly found that Amazon illegally retaliated against two activist workers by firing them last year.

The labor board came to this conclusion regarding the firing of Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa in April 2020, telling both workers that "it would accuse Amazon of unfair labor practices if the company did not settle the case," The New York Times reported on Monday.

While working as designers for Amazon, Cunningham and Costa had criticized the company over the working conditions of warehouse workers and called on it to take greater action to fight climate change. Amazon fired them after threatening to do so over violations of its external communications policy.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Cunningham celebrated the labor board's reported finding as a "moral victory," telling the Times it "really shows that we are on the right side of history and the right side of the law." An Amazon spokesperson, meanwhile, said "we support every employee's right to criticize their employer's working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against our internal policies, all of which are lawful." The spokesperson added that the workers were fired "not for talking publicly about working conditions, safety or sustainability but, rather, for repeatedly violating internal policies."

They weren't the only Amazon workers to allege they had been retaliated against by the company, though, as according to the Times, dozens of Amazon workers have spoken to the National Labor Relations Board in the past year.