Amazon warehouse employees scored a victory towards the abusive e-commerce big this week, within the type of a settlement between the corporate and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). That agreement, first obtained by the New York Times through a public information request, places an finish to a longstanding firm coverage that, in contradiction to labor rules, made organizing off the clock near-impossible to do.

The settlement particularly sees Amazon agree to finish the illegal coverage that restricted employee entry to “non-working areas” of the warehouse amenities past a 15-minute window earlier than and after every of those employees’ shifts. Amazon additionally conceded to emailing present warehouse employees, together with anybody that’s been employed on the facility since March of this yr, to allow them to know their new rights.

Minutely monitoring employees’ schedules—even once they’re off the clock, on this case—is simply one of many many tactics Amazon’s adopted through the years which have raised accusations of outright union-busting from workers concerned. While Amazon’s traditionally denied a few of these allegations, the corporate isn’t quiet about its anti-union stance. According to the Times, this new settlement was the results of six separate instances of employees from warehouses in Chicago and Staten Island lodging complaints that each one alleged Amazon had stored them from organizing for prolonged durations anyplace adjoining to the warehouse—even within the close by car parking zone.

Not solely did Amazon comply with abolish these guidelines, nevertheless it additionally agreed to a bypass of the NLRB administrative listening to course of that’s normally concerned with these kinds of agreements. The transfer will make it much less of a trouble to analyze claims of Amazon failing to abide by these phrases.

This settlement comes on the heels of a fresh union petition filed by a gaggle of Amazon warehouse employees in Staten Island. The Amazon Labor Union, because the group calls itself, initially filed a request for a union vote three months ago, however that petition was later withdrawn after the NLRB determined that the roughly 2,000 signatures gathered didn’t meet the variety of employees wanted to type a correct unit.

We’ve reached out to Amazon in regards to the settlement and can replace this piece once we hear again.