Amazon illegally retaliated against two of its most prominent internal critics when it fired them last year, the National Labour Relations Board has determined.

The employees, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, had publicly pushed the company to reduce its impact on climate change and address concerns about its warehouse workers.

The agency told Cunningham and Costa that it would accuse Amazon of unfair labour practices if the company did not settle the case, according to correspondence that Cunningham shared with The New York Times.

“It’s a moral victory and really shows that we are on the right side of history and the right side of the law,” Cunningham said.

The two women were among dozens of Amazon workers who in the last year told the labour board about company retaliations, but in most other cases the workers had complained about pandemic safety.

“We support every employee’s right to criticise their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against our internal policies, all of which are lawful,” said Jaci Anderson, an Amazon spokeswoman. “We terminated these employees not for talking publicly about working conditions, safety or sustainability but, rather, for repeatedly violating internal policies.”

Claims of unfair labour practices at Amazon have been common enough that the labour agency may turn them into a national investigation, the agency told NBC News. The agency typically handles investigations in its regional offices.

While Amazon’s starting wage of $15 an hour is twice the federal minimum, its labour practices face heightened scrutiny in Washington and elsewhere. The focus has escalated in the past year, as online orders surged during the pandemic and Amazon expanded its US work force to almost one million people. Amazon’s warehouse employees are deemed essential workers and could not work from home.

This week, the national labour board is counting thousands of ballots that will determine whether almost 6,000 workers will form a union at an Amazon warehouse outside Birmingham, Alabama, in the largest and most viable labour threat in the company’s history.

New York Times News Service