Harry I. Johnson III

Since late November, Johnson has been extremely busy with one client. He represents Amazon in the effort by employees to unionize a large warehouse in Alabama.

In April, workers at the Bessemer, Ala., warehouse voted 1,798 against joining a union to 738 in favor. But the overwhelming vote did not end the biggest push ever to bring a union to Amazon.

“We are in a brief writing stage right now on this objection-hearing phase of the case,” Johnson said, referring to a May hearing to consider a list of 23 objections that the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union filed with the National Labor Relations Board over Amazon’s alleged conduct leading up to the vote. Amazon.com Services LLC, 10-rc-269250 (NLRB, filed Nov. 20, 2020).

Johnson, co-leader of his firm’s labor/management relations practice, was himself a member of the NLRB in 2013-15, appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Naturally, he is called in for big matters.

Amazon tapped him “the moment the petition got filed” seeking union recognition. First came hearings on how to conduct the election and now hearings on whether it was done properly.

“There are a lot of facts, a complicated fact pattern and a lot of legal theories involved, and some of them are novel,” he said. “It’s gone a lot longer than a case of this nature [usually does] because the facility is so large and the election is so large and, obviously, it involves that particular employer.”

From the viewpoint of that particular employer, the matter “was about the employees’ choice, … so if anybody won, it was really the employees,” Johnson said.

Earlier in the year, Johnson was also brought in to stave off preliminary injunctions sought by the NLRB against companies’ alleged anti-union activities. Both settled.

One in West Virginia was “pretty exciting,” he said, because he and his team had to file numerous pleadings on very short notice to rebut allegations that his client had been targeting union supporters for discipline. Denholm v. AWP Inc., 2:20-cv-00608 (S.D. W.Va., filed Sept. 15, 2020)

The second concerned the employer’s decision to withdraw recognition of the union following an altercation between workers on either side. Rubin v AirGas USA LLC, 2:20-cv-10009 (C.D. Cal., filed Oct 30, 2020).

“I’ve gotten dropped in to several short-notice situations in the last year to represent companies facing those situations,” he said.

Johnson said he spent about two-thirds of his time this past year on litigation. In a typical year, about 60 percent of his time involves counseling and advising employers. He did that recently for Fox Corp. and Spotify, he said.

He expects the year ahead to be very busy as well, thanks in part to the change in administration and in part to more activity from workers and unions.

— Don DeBenedictis