In today’s news and commentary, Amazon suspends dozens of ALU members, the NLRB issues complaints against Apple and Exxon, and the Missouri Supreme Court upholds a statute targeting the state’s public sector unions.

The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) disclosed this morning that fifty employees at the Amazon facility in Staten Island have been suspended for engaging in a work stoppage on Monday evening. Videos of the action, which was reportedly intended to protest a fire in the warehouse, depict a chaotic scene in which dozens of workers rally and chant in the building’s cafeteria. An ALU attorney asserted that the suspensions transgressed federal labor law, but the union has so far declined to file any unfair labor practice charges in connection with the incident.

The NLRB issued a complaint against Apple earlier this week accusing the tech giant of unlawfully discriminating against union adherents at a store in Manhattan. The complaint avers that Apple exploited its no solicitation policy to bar only union supporters from leaving flyers on breakroom tables. Although Board caselaw, approved by the Supreme Court, permits a company to maintain a uniform no-solicitation rule, selectively enforcing it against protected activity runs afoul of the NLRA.

The Board also issued a complaint against ExxonMobil, which alleges that the oil company’s ten-month lockout of hundreds of employees at a Texas refinery constituted an unlawful attempt to displace the USW from the facility. Exxon initiated the lockout, which affected more than 650 employees, in May 2021, in response to a strike notice issued by the USW. During the lockout, which ended in March, the firm disclosed to certain employees that it would allow them to resume working if they voted to decertify the union. The original lockout may have been been consistent with federal labor law, the complaint asserts, but subsequently leveraging it to seek decertification was not. An administrative hearing on the matter is scheduled for January 9, 2023.

On Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld a statute the GOP-dominated state legislature adopted in 2018, which a lower court had blocked on the grounds that it impermissibly “eviscerated” public employees’ collective bargaining rights. The statute circumscribes the scope of the state’s merit system and subjects thousands of public employees to at-will discharge, and several unions challenged its legality under the state constitution. The trial court, sustaining the challengers, ruled that the law was inconsistent with the state’s constitutional provision guaranteeing public employees the right to collectively bargain. The state’s high court disagreed, however, reasoning that the law does not operate to curtail collective bargaining rights but rather “merely limits the terms and conditions of employment the State is authorized to bargain.” Thus, in the court’s view, the state remains “free to negotiate any and all employment terms and conditions that [the statute] does not specifically restrict.”

For context, public employees in Missouri rank among the lowest-paid in the nation, and in recent months staffing shortages have compelled some state agencies to shutter facilities and reduce or even discontinue services. Such difficulties are not necessarily the product of any labor shortages in the area, however, for hundreds of Missourians cross the Mississippi River every day to work for the government of Illinois, where organized public-sector jobs yield considerably higher wages.