“We support every employee’s right to criticize 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.”

Ms. Anderson, the Amazon spokeswoman, said the company disagreed with allegations made in Mr. Bailey’s case. “We are proud to provide inclusive environments, where employees can excel without fear of retaliation, intimidation or harassment,” she said.

> After Amazon told them that they had violated its external communications policy by speaking publicly about the business, their group organized 400 employees to also speak out, purposely violating the policy to make a point.

So, Amazon fired then for publicly speaking about the business. Their statement saying that it was for violating internal policy seems deliberately misleading, because the internal policy that was broken was to not speak publicly. That Amazon had a policy against speaking publicly is not a point in Amazon's favor.

Not to defend Amazon, but on this point, every job I've ever had included a policy that amounted to "do not speak publicly about the business."

Do others think this is unusual?

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/can-you-terminate-emplo...

> In a memo released on April 15, the agency evaluated a case where a company maintained a policy that prohibited employees from speaking to the media at any time. The NLRB found this rule to be unlawful and explained: “Employees have a statutory right to speak publically about their complaints or concerns with their terms and conditions of employment, including to the press, without employer authorization.”

> In other words, employees have a right under the National Labor Relations Act generally to discuss their employment – including with the press. Based on the finding that the policy was unlawful, the NLRB also found that the company violated labor law when it terminated two employees pursuant to the policy for speaking to the media about a workplace issue. A more narrowly tailored policy may have passed muster, but the broad media prohibition, in this case, crossed the line.

[0] This would have some pretty obvious 1A implications.

You say this like it's a bad thing.

a) As an employee, you are not allowed to make statements about internal matters on behalf of the company.

b) As an employee, you are not allowed to talk about internal matters outside the company.

If A, then I have no problem. Companies have PR teams and random employee #13554 might not have all the information about an issue.

If B, I have a huge problem as the first amendment is a thing that exists.

If engineer #34529, profiled liked to SpaceY says on Twitter that his group has lots of overtime. He could be fired in a case B situation. And yes, information like that could be coupled with other information to figure out what projects the company is working on.

It is my belief that confidentiality agreements and NDAs, along with non-compete clauses are overbroad and expand beyond what companies are allowed to ask of their employees.

Perhaps, in doing so, that journalist would discover that Amazon had no real argument for any internal policy being violated at all. Or perhaps they would discover that these employees did, in fact, violate some internal policy, whether or not their firing violated their rights.

Maybe after presenting all sides of the decision, an NYT reader might agree that the NLRB's decision was correct/valid; but with the way the article is written, it's impossible for that to happen.

Since they’re a public institution their decisions are published for anyone to look up, read, and understand the rationale behind their decision.

It seems NYT got the scoop on this particular case but you can expect the decision to be posted on the NLRB site when it’s finalized. I suspect the NYT (and the person who tipped them off) does not yet know the reason for the Board’s decision. It’s very likely no one involved in this article has read the document yet and, for now, they’ve only been informed as to the outcome. NYT, Amazon, and the aggrieved parties will probably have to wait to read the Board’s written decision along with the rest of us.

> now disproven legal theories

Disproven? According to whom? The whole point of the press is to show its work to the public. Maybe you're correct that it's disproven! But I would have no way to know how/why it's disproven as a NYT reader. Anyone that wants to demonstrate to voters that Amazon's legal theories are disproven needs to show their work.

Though, in the NYT’s case, they’ve been predictably going straight downhill since they adopted Fox News’ high level strategy of chasing, fanning and profiting from political and social polarization.

So, nobody’s holding their breath that NYT would rise to that challenge.

Do you expect the NYT to publish every failed, specious motion filed in standard court cases in the name of "both sides" after the case has been decided? No, you take statements from both sides, and report what the legal system has decided.

As a reader, I am interested to hear exactly how Amazon claims these former employees violated its internal policies. The article's lack of curiosity is interesting.

Amazon's POV is explained directly in the article. There's also this link [0] from the article elaborating on the firing.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/02/amazon-...

News doesn't do that anymore, but more importantly, Scrooge McDuck is not a villain.

30 years ago, I would have had that expectation from NYT and other trustworthy media sources. I haven’t had that expectation for at least a decade now.

>Amazon told the employees that they had violated its policy against solicitation, which forbids Amazon workers from asking their co-workers to donate to causes or sign petitions.

The article is part of a briefing with a headline about the airline industry, somewhat understanding how you would miss it.

That's a funny euphemism for "statement written by a corporate PR person who may not have any clue about what they are talking about, and may be repeating someone's lies."

This kind of “both sides” journalism has been weaponized by bad actors to the point it does a disservice to readers. They use it as a way to inject talking points into the public discourse. I think the last 10 years have showed us that there are definitely some points of view that are more valuable than others, and that treating all points of view as carrying equal weight is a false equivalency that simply creates openings for bad-faith actors (and Amazon is hardly the first company / politician to act in bad faith).