Amazon Considers Risk When Investigating Employee Misconduct

In a legal conference in March, Amazon Corporate Counsel Lee Langston stated that aggressive enforcement actions of the NLRB have impacted its internal investigations, as such investigations "could theoretically touch on protected concerted activity."  Langston, who heads up internal investigations for the company's one million North American employees, says that broad NLRB rulings discourage Amazon from conducting internal investigations in some situations. 

 Problems are also created by the fact that government entities often encourage or require corporate investigations, while other laws discourage employer investigations due to privacy and protected activity considerations.  If companies respond by prohibiting employees from discussing work on their own personal devices, they may run into conflict with NLRB rules on discouraging union and other protected concerted activities.  Langston concludes that Amazon "struggles with" these issues.  The NLRB policies sometimes even conflict with policies of other federal agencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), regarding rules promoting the privacy or confidentiality of harassment investigations.

This article is part of our May 2024 Newsletter. 

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