Amazon's Workplace Gag Order Violates Labor Law, Judge Says

Amazon.com Inc must rewrite several workplace policies after a National Labor Relations Board judge held the company forced employees to sign unlawfully restrictive agreements starting in 2020.

The handbook provisions, including confidentiality, non-solicitation, and non-interference policies, illegally restricted workers’ rights to discuss working conditions and organize, NLRB Administrative Law Judge Kimberly Sorg-Graves said in a decision Tuesday.

The rules, which were first disseminated in 2020, prevented workers from discussing with each other anything aside from their own terms and conditions of employment and prohibited them from encouraging other employees or business partners from terminating their relationships with Amazon, according to the decision.

Sorg-Graves held these policies to be overly broad, despite Amazon’s arguments that it amended the confidentiality rule in 2024 to include discussions of coworkers’ “wages, hours, working conditions, or terms of employment,” in the savings clause. The judge ruled that Amazon hadn’t amended their rule in a timely manner and couldn’t prove the alteration applied to all employees.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/amazons-workplace-gag-order-violates-labor-law-judge-says