Employee Participation
Employees at an Amazon logistics center in the U.S. state of Alabama want to organize themselves into a union - voting on the matter began there by mail ballot on Monday. At stake is the online retailer's Bessemer branch with about 5,800 employees, and the vote is expected to last until the end of March. If the vote is positive, it would be the first Amazon site ever to be represented by a union.
Amazon is seeking to block workers planning to unionize from voting by mail, demanding the 5,800 employees at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama to vote in-person. Amazon has requested to block a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that would allow employees to cast ballots by mail.
According to Motherboard, the US-based grocery delivery platform Instacart is laying off every employee who voted to unionize. The layoffs impact 10 unionized workers at a grocery store called Mariano’s, in addition to other Instacart employees. The group in Skokie, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, voted to unionize last year with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1546 (UFCW).
In a case about a lay-off because of a racist slur during a works council meeting, the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled, that an insult, which is not only offensive but "fundamentally degrading" is not covered by the freedom of speech, because it infringes the human dignity, which is the highest principle of the German constitution.
The founder and CEO of the startup bank N26 Valentin Stalf has publicly apologized on LinkedIn for the events of the past days as the management team around him has tried to prevent employees from moving forward with the process of forming a works council.
He stated that "As a founder, it has been hard to see how the discussion has evolved in the last days. This doesn’t reflect how we usually work together as a team. But ultimately, myself and my leadership team at N26 feel responsible for the way this debate has escalated. And we would like to apologize for the last couple of days" and adds later that he would prefer an "alternative to a traditional Works Council".
Despite the management obtaining to temporary injunctions to prevent two meetings on Thursday and Friday, a number of N26 employees have managed to legally gather and select and electoral board.
The management first had obtained a temporary injunction against the employee that planned on hosting the Thursday meeting. In order to circumvent this, the labor union Verdi stepped in as hosting party. For the second temporary injunction against Verdi to prevent the meeting on Friday, the labor union IG Metall stepped in as host.
The police showed up as an unknown person had called them on Friday "to check the safety measures of the meeting", according to the Twitter account of the works council. They added that the police "found no issue and have left the premises".
The founders of the German startup bank N26 have previously stated that a works council would be "against almost all the values in which we at N26 believe" while a group of employees has stated that the trust in the management of the company is "at an all-time low".
This group of employees had intended to elect a works council this week but the management has obtained a temporary injunction from the Berlin labour court on the grounds of a missing hygiene concept during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
The workers union Verdi has criticized the actions of the management while an N26 spokesperson has stated that "we would like to make it clear once again that neither the founders nor the management team of N26 are against employee representation and participation - in whatever form - or are taking action against them".