Today, Education and Labor Committee Republican Leader Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Republican Leader Richard Burr (R-NC), Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee Republican Leader Rick Allen (R-GA), and Employment and Workplace Safety Subcommittee Republican Leader Mike Braun (R-IN) sent a letter to National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo regarding the NLRB’s inappropriate interference in a case where an Amazon employee was fired for using a bullhorn to level degrading verbal abuse at a female coworker outside the company’s JFK8 warehouse:
In response to the NLRB’s petition to have this employee reinstated, the Members write: “We found the petition disturbing in many respects, not least in the manner to which it excludes relevant factual information. Incontrovertible evidence documents Mr. Bryson hurling a number of sexually charged, degrading obscenities at a female coworker on the picket line prior to his termination. For the NLRB to characterize such bigotry as protected concerted activity under Section 7 of the [National Labor Relations Act] demonstrates gross ignorance of federal civil rights law…"
The Members also write: “The conduct described is unacceptable in any modern workplace. Mr. Bryson, by hurling these epithets in a public forum via a loudspeaker so as to isolate and humiliate his female coworker, may have created a hostile, abusive work environment prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. … JFK8 was well within its rights to sanction Mr. Bryson for his abhorrent, bigoted behavior, as failure to take such corrective action may have led to legal liability. For the NLRB to assert in its petition that Mr. Bryson’s appalling, sexist behavior qualifies as protected activity requiring immediate reinstatement demonstrates severely misplaced priorities."
The Members conclude: “In response to these longstanding concerns, the NLRB issued a decision reversing the Board’s disturbing trend of conflating sexually and racially demeaning behavior with protected union activity… The decision of your office to pursue this petition shows a blatant disregard for the rights of employees to engage in a workplace free from harassment and discrimination."
Read the full letter here.
