Amazon has been granted a preliminary injunction by a federal judge to block the New York State Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) from enforcing a new state law that the online retailer considers an attempt to illegally regulate private-sector labor relations. A state law recently signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul permitted PERB to hear private-sector labor cases while its federal counterpart, the National Labor Relations Board, lacked the necessary quorum to make rulings. U.S. District Judge Eric Komitee cited a 1959 Supreme Court precedent in concluding that Amazon would likely succeed on its claim that federal labor law forbade New York from enforcing its law. The online retailer had been seeking to block PERB from hearing a case concerning the August 9th firing of Brima Sylla, a local union vice president at its JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, Amazon’s only U.S. facility to unionize.
