Bryson’s termination centers on an altercation that occurred at a protest outside the warehouse in the early days of the pandemic.
According to court documents, Bryson was engaged in a heated exchange with another worker who disagreed with him that the facility should be shut down for COVID safety purposes. While both of them traded insults, only Bryson was fired. The other employee received a written warning.
Court filings show that both Bryson and the other worker exchanged profanities, and a recording detailed by NLRB shows that the woman tried twice to provoke Bryson into a physical altercation.
The woman, who is white, also told Bryson, who is Black, to “go back to the Bronx,” which the judge said could be construed as “racial” seeing that Bryson “might question why, other than his race, someone would assume he is from the Bronx.”
“I find it implausible that six individuals would view the argument and coincidentally provide these one-sided, exaggerated accounts unless such accounts were solicited from them,” the judge wrote.
“We do not tolerate that type of conduct in our workplace and intend to file an appeal with the NLRB.”
