Amazon fires 2 union organizers tied to first labor win

Amazon has fired two employees with ties to the grassroots union that led the first successful U.S. organizing effort in the retail giant’s history.

The company confirmed Tuesday that it fired Michal, or “Mat,” Cusick and Tristan Dutchin of the Amazon Labor Union on Staten Island, New York. But it claims the “cases are unrelated to each other and unrelated to whether these individuals support any particular cause or group.”

Cusick, who worked at a nearby Amazon warehouse from the one that voted to unionize last month, said he was fired due to COVID-related leave. He said he was informed by an agent from the company’s employee resource center that he was allowed to go on leave until April 29 but was later fired because leave period extended only until April 26.

“They now say after the fact, after they terminated me, that the COVIDleave actually only extended to the 26th,” said Cusick, an organizer who works as the union’s communications lead. “That discrepancy is how they fired me.”

Cusick said he was locked out of Amazon’s internal employee system on May 2 without any notice. The following day, he said he called the employee resource center and was told about his termination.

In a letter sent on May 4, the company told Cusick he was fired for “voluntary resignation due to job abandonment.” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement Tuesday that Cusick had “failed to show up for work since an approved leave ended in late April, despite our team reaching out to him and even extending his leave.”

On Monday, Cusick had told the AP his firing may have been an arbitrary decision by Amazon’s automated human resources system, which has been a subject of scrutiny in the past. “If they do not reverse what is a fairly obvious miscarriage of justice here, my presumption is that they are not doing it because they know that I am an Amazon organizer,” he said.