Amazon ‘exploits’ union nix

An Amazon worker at an Alabama warehouse claimed the e-tail giant has been getting tougher with employees since it won a contentious labor vote there last month.

Darryl Richardson — a picker at the facility in Bessemer, Ala., that played host to the closely watched vote — testified at a Monday hearing that Amazon is now enforcing certain rules and policies after looking the other way when they were voting whether or not to unionize.

“Amazon is writing employees up for having their phone [out of their pockets], for damaged parts, missing items,” Richardson said during the video hearing before the National Relations Labor Board. “They are doing that now. They were not doing this during the election period.”

Richardson, who has worked at the facility since March 2020, helped to organize workers on behalf of the

Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. He was the union’s first witness in the hearing, which is expected to last a week or two, according to a RWDSU spokeswoman.

The union filed a complaint on April 19 objecting to the final outcome — which resulted in just 738 employees voting in favor of a union and 1,798 rejecting it — claiming Amazon “created an atmosphere of confusion, coercion and or fear of reprisals.”