By Daniel Wiessner and Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A federal judge on Wednesday granted Amazon.com a preliminary injunction to block the New York State Public Employment Relations Board from enforcing a new state law that the online retailer considers an attempt to illegally regulate private-sector labor relations.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Eric Komitee in Brooklyn was the first test of a state law allowing the employment agency known as PERB to hear private-sector labor cases while its federal counterpart, the National Labor Relations Board, lacked the necessary quorum to make rulings.
Amazon and its lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment ahead of the Thanksgiving Day holiday. The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, which represented PERB, did not immediately respond to similar requests.
NEW YORK SOUGHT TO COUNTERACT NLRB CASE BACKLOG
Signed by Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul on September 5, the New York law was a response to a backlog of hundreds of cases at the NLRB after Republican U.S. President Donald Trump fired Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox in January.
California passed a similar law in October, and the NLRB has sued to strike down both states’ laws.
Komitee, a Trump appointee, cited a 1959 U.S. Supreme Court precedent in concluding that Amazon would likely succeed on its claim that federal labor law forbade New York from enforcing its law.
He said Congress expected the NLRB might lack a quorum from time to time, and there was no basis to believe the lack of a quorum would endure indefinitely.
Komitee said Amazon would also likely suffer irreparable harm absent an injunction, in part from the potential for inconsistent rulings by PERB and the NLRB.
CASE AROSE FROM FIRING OF A UNION VICE PRESIDENT
Amazon had been seeking to block PERB from hearing a case concerning the August 9 firing of Brima Sylla, a local union vice president at its JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, Amazon’s only U.S. facility to unionize.
The backlog at the NLRB includes dozens of cases where employers are challenging the outcome of union elections.
Wilcox has sued to be reinstated, but the U.S. Supreme Court allowed her removal while her case remains pending.
Trump has nominated two lawyers to fill NLRB vacancies and restore its quorum while securing a Republican majority.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Leslie Adler and Richard Chang)
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