All employers are making their case at all times, throughout hiring, with pay rate consistency or discrepancy, communication, management, and culture. Union votes are an outcome of the case an employer has already made for themselves. Once the vote's on, it's going to be very difficult to refute the case they've been making for years.

Taking ownership of the failures that led to the conditions which created support for the union vote in a substantial, committed, and convincing fashion is hard, but potentially an effective way for employers to change the direction of the case they've made to employees.

Directly instructing employees to vote "no", lying about how unions work in their area, lying about the voting timeline, installing an easily surveillable special mailbox for union votes, and pressuring the government to alter traffic controls to prevent employees from being able to spend time outside the workplace during the union voting period - this is how Amazon has chosen to make their case.

"As a trillion dollar company we can't afford better working conditions and pay for you"?

The only reason Amazon raised their fulfillment pay was because Bernie Sanders shamed them into it [1].

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+bernie+sanders+pay

Read TFA - it's not just that Amazon is encouraging workers to vote no, they've set up mailboxes on-site that they're encouraging people to send their ballots with, making union organizers wary that Amazon is trying to keep tabs on who votes, even though it's supposed to be anonymous.

They have a right to. They just can’t stop people from doing certain things. The purpose of unionizing is to say “this company has been treating us unfairly and we’re powerless to stop it. But together we could.” If Amazon was treating its employees fairly, they’d be less inclined to unionize.

I don’t think there’s a single labor activist who disagrees with you. We aren’t saying Amazon is forbidden from making their case, but rather that their specific behavior is unacceptably intimidating and misleading. We agree Amazon is allowed to argue that unions are bad (although I think the rank condescension and borderline dishonesty in the mailer is a legitimate news story - the thing about dues is a lie, Alabama is right-to-work).

The problem as I see it are the two other things:

- telling employees to vote by March 1st in a specific mailbox, even though the deadline is March 29th, is blatant intimidation (since management is clearly surveilling the mailbox and will know if you don’t comply). If that’s not illegal it really needs to be.

- “Protect what you have” is a very suspicious and threatening message that suggests retaliation if workers unionize (especially given the last page in the mailer). I would say this is paranoid if we weren’t talking about Amazon - they lost all presumptions of decency with the traffic light shenanigan.

If it were on equal grounding, or granted equal access, I'd agree.

In much the same way that political parties should get to make their case inside the voting booth.

Why? They are not part of the process.

Yes, for shame! When will America get to hear the side of the employer?

Mabye the executive of Amazon could be allowed to post a little column in paper like the Washington Post. Maybe the owner of that paper wouldn’t object to that idea.

do you think we should hear about tobacco health risks from cigarette companies?

do you think we should accept climate science from fossil fuel companies?

I mean you either believe in morality or you don't.

If you feel Amazon management isn't moral, they should repent and change their behavior, not "make their case."