In today’s news and commentary, Amazon suspends dozens of ALU members, the NLRB brings complaints against Apple and Exxon, and the Missouri supreme court upholds a statute intended to undermine public sector unions.

The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) revealed this morning that at least fifty of its members at the organized Amazon facility in Staten Island have been suspended after engaging in what the union characterizes as a protected work stoppage. The action took place on Monday evening. It was reportedly intended to protest a fire at the facility. Information remains limited; videos of the incident depict a chaotic scene in which dozens of workers rally and chant in the cafeteria. The ALU has, for now, declined to file any charges in connection with the suspensions.

Region 2 of the NLRB, based in New York City, issued a complaint against Apple on Monday accusing the tech conglomerate of unlawfully discriminating against employees engaged in protected activity at a Manhattan retail store. The complaint alleges that the company discriminatorily invoked its no-solicitation policy to bar union supporters from placing flyers on breakroom tables. While NLRB caselaw broadly permits an employer to maintain and enforce a uniform no-solicitation rule, applying it selectively so as to inhibit Section 7 activity is impermissible.

In other labor law enforcement news, Region 16, based in Fort Worth, Texas, brought a complaint against Exxon Mobil last week, alleging that the oil company’s ten-month lockout of hundreds of employees at a Texas refinery was unlawful. The complaint alleges that during the lockout, which ended in March, the company told employees it would allow them to return to work if they agreed to decertify the union, a USW local. While instituting the lockout may have been lawful, the complaint asserts, leveraging it to secure decertification was not. A hearing is set for January 9, 2023.

On Tuesday the Missouri supreme court sustained a 2018 state law that strips thousands of public employees of merit system protections, exposing them to at-will termination. The statute was part of a broader legislative package the GOP-dominated legislature adopted that year at the urging of then-governor Eric Greitens, which aimed to dismantle the state’s public sector unions. Lower courts had blocked it on the ground that it “eviscerated” the state’s constitutional guarantee of public sector collective bargaining rights. But the state’s supreme court disagreed, concluding that the statute does not eliminate collective bargaining rights but “merely limits the terms and conditions of employment the State is authorized to bargain.” Thus, as the court framed it, the state remains “free to negotiate any and all employment terms and conditions that [the law] does not specifically restrict.”

For context, Missouri’s public employees are among the lowest paid in the country. And in recent months staffing shortages have forced some of the state’s agencies to shutter facilities, limit operations, and even entirely discontinue some services. These difficulties are not the result of any labor shortages in the area, as hundreds of Missourians cross the Mississippi River every day to work for the Illinois government, where jobs in the densely unionized public sector yield considerably higher wages.