A new complaint says that an Amazon confidentiality and non-compete agreement that affects employees at all U.S. locations is illegal.


The National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Amazon on Monday for having its employees sign a confidentiality agreement that the Board says restricts their rights to unionization. The complaint names Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, as well as two Amazon Prime Air supervisors, as people who required employees to sign the agreement.

The complaint comes in response to an unfair labor practice charge filed in May by the plaintiff, Cheddi Skeete, who formerly worked on Amazon’s drone delivery program out of the company’s office in Seattle. As a condition of Skeete’s employment, Amazon had him sign a “Confidentiality, Noncompetition, and Invention Assignment Agreement” in August of 2021, the complaint states. It then quotes the confidentiality agreement in full.

“During employment and at all times thereafter, Employee will hold all Confidential Information in strictest confidence and will not acquire, use, publish, disclose, or communicate any Confidential Information except as required in connection with Employee’s work without the prior written approval of an authorized officer of Amazon,” the agreement states.

The provision defines confidential information as: “proprietary or confidential information of Amazon in whatever form, tangible or intangible, whether or not marked or otherwise designated as confidential, that is not otherwise generally known to the public,” such as Amazon’s “business, projects, products, customers, suppliers, inventions, or trade secrets.” Some examples listed in the provision include “published and unpublished know-how…Amazon pricing policies…and future plans relating to any aspect of Amazon’s present or anticipated business.” Confidential information, the provision states, does not include the terms and conditions of the signer’s employment.

The Board alleges in the complaint that because the nature of the confidential information policy was so broad, it restricted workers’ rights to unionize.

“The language in Cheddi’s hiring agreement was overbroad,” said Seth Goldstein, a lawyer at Julien, Mirer, Singla and Goldstein, who represents Skeete. “It didn’t allow him to talk about anything at the company. You can’t talk about business functions, can’t talk about customers, can’t talk about anything at work. If you can’t talk about anything at work, it becomes very difficult to organize and engage in collective action, or speak out about anything.”

Goldstein said this agreement applies to “almost a million” corporate Amazon employees. Indeed, the complaint states that the alleged illegal labor practices “affect employees at all of [Amazon’s] U.S. locations” and demands that Amazon “rescind the unlawful confidentiality policy” and notify all its employees that it is no longer in effect.

Amazon spokesperson Mary Kate Paradis told Motherboard in an email that nothing in the agreement restricted workers’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act.

“Confidentiality agreements are a common business practice,” Paradis said. “In this instance, the NLRB is taking one line of our agreement out of context and we look forward to showing that through the legal process.”

Paradis also said that Amazon disagreed that Skeete had been retaliated against, and said he was terminated for poor performance.

Though the NLRB complaint focuses mainly on the confidentiality policy, Skeete was also asked to sign a non-compete agreement. The Board’s General Counsel recently decided that overly broad non-competition agreements are illegal, and retroactively rescinded. Such agreements, the Board said at the time, unduly restrict workers’ job opportunities.

“This is a huge development,” Goldstein said. “I don’t know if this would have happened six months ago. I think it’s a cautionary tale to employers that they’d better get with the program and start looking at their policies, because we’re looking at them, and if there’s any violations we’re going to be sending it over to the Board.”


    • ram@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Nah, that ruling was if they busted an already declared election, elections are (now) initiated by employers contesting the recognition of an established union.

      • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It must be a wonderful time at Amazon now. Literally all they have to do is get the workers on board and they’re unionized. They probably won’t even have to worry about the actual election because Amazon execs can’t take a shit without union busting. Can’t wait for the NLRB to drop the long dick of the law on em.

        • ram@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          It’s definitely a huge step up! But building a union is still quite difficult, getting 30% of employees to agree to unionize and sign union cards isn’t exactly a simple task. This, however, does make the final step (being recognized) a very surmountable task.

    • rayyyy@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      True but it works effectively to bully and send a message. All fall in line, while those that don’t find they get the shittiest jobs possible.

      • BottleOfAlkahest@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It also most heavily penalizes people who can’t afford prolonged legal action and attorneys fees. They are more likely to not even try and get around something like this even if it’s technically legally possible.

    • jrburkh@lemmy.world
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      A common way the NLRB examines these types of things is by how a reasonable person would perceive it. Even if a lawsuit was filed to challenge the enforceability of the NDA and it was found unenforceable, the NLRB would still be able to argue a “reasonable person” would believe it was enforceable, and accordingly any restrictions on protected rights presented by the NDA would be unlawful.

  • nicktron@kbin.social
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    NDAs are bullshit and the vast majority of them would be thrown out of court if they tried to take it that far. It’s scare tactics.

    • jrburkh@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s scare tactics.

      That’s exactly the NLRB’s point. The NDA doesn’t necessarily have to be legally enforceable to be unlawful.

  • roofuskit@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The best part about contracts with clauses that are illegal is that it voids it can void the entire contract. So all they’ve done besides trying to be bullies is void their own NDAs.

    Edit: This is more common with employment contracts.

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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      Their lawyers are really shitty if that’s the case.

      Any competently written contract would state that if any part of the contract is deemed to be unenforceable, only that provision will be striken and the remaining contract stays intact.

      • roofuskit@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Severability doesn’t always work with employment contracts like this. Google recently fucked around and found out.

      • roofuskit@kbin.social
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        There’s precedent in employment contracts when companies knowingly put illegal clauses in them. It happened to Google recently.