The Amazon union buster was caught on tape making a threat to employees at JFK8, the company's largest New York City warehouse, during a mandatory anti-union meeting that took place on Wednesday, according to Vice. When describing the collective bargaining process for unionized workers with Amazon, the official stressed that "there are no guarantees … you can end up with better, the same, or worse than you already have," Vice said.
"There are no guarantees as to what would happen, right? … We can’t make any promises things will get better or stay the same. They could get worse. We can’t promise what’s going to happen. Amazon can’t promise you that they’re going to walk into negotiations and that the negotiations will start from the same [pay and benefits workers have already]," the official was quoted as saying by Vice.
Once pressed by the workers to admit it was a threat, the official tried to backtrack and changed the topic, the report said. Over the course of the 14-minute meeting, the official in a similar vein listed potential negative consequences of unionization, such as binding obligations and representation fees, Vice said.
Under the US labor regulations, interfering with or retaliating against workers who organize to form unions is illegal.
The union election will be held in the JFK8 warehouse on March 25 through March 30. It will be the second election at an Amazon warehouse in US history.