Labor Board Finds Merit That Kickstarter Illegally Fired Union Organizer

Six months after Kickstarter workers voted in the first union at a major tech company in the U.S., a federal agency has found sufficient evidence that management violated the National Labor Relations Act by firing a union organizer.

By Lauren Kaori Gurley September 10, 2020, 8:00am

More than six months after Kickstarter employees made history—becoming the first major tech company in the United States to unionize—a federal agency has found merit to charges that the crowd-funding platform unlawfully fired an employee who played an instrumental role in the union drive, Motherboard has learned. This is an important step in an ongoing proceeding, but does not mark the closure of the case.

In September 2019, Kickstarter fired two workers active in the union drive over alleged job performance issues who then filed charges with the National Labor Review Board (NLRB) accusing the company of unlawfully retaliating them for organizing. At the time, Kickstarter CEO Aziz Hasan wrote a letter to Kickstarter creators denying that the firings were related to union organizing, but said that a "union framework is inherently adversarial."

The NLRB findings supporting the allegation that Kickstarter illegally fired one of those former employees, Taylor Moore, for his participation in the union drive, could serve as a powerful deterrent to other tech companies that consider pushing back against employee efforts to unionize. Two prior charges against Kickstarter have been withdrawn by Kickstarter's union, and a third charge is still pending, according to Kickstarter and Moore's attorney.

FULL story: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxqawn/labor-board-finds-merit-that-kickstarter-illegally-fired-union-organizer