Amazon settled with employees who said they were fired for their activism, avoiding a trial that could have exposed its labor practices

• Amazon has settled with former employees who said they were fired for their activism, CNBC reported.
• The NLRB had found that Amazon illegally fired the employees, Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham.
• The settlement lets Amazon avoid a trial and exposing its labor practices to greater scrutiny.

Amazon has reached a settlement with two former employees who the National Labor Relations Board found were illegally fired for publicly criticizing the company's labor practices and impact on the climate, CNBC reported.

The terms of the settlement weren't disclosed, according to CNBC.

The employees, Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham, filed a complaint to the NLRB last October, accusing Amazon of violating labor laws by firing them in April 2020.

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This April, the NLRB found that Amazon did act illegally by firing Costa and Cunningham.

NLRB administrative law judge John Giannopoulos announced the settlement at a virtual hearing Wednesday where he was expected to review the agency's formal complaint accusing Amazon of unfair labor practice violations.

By reaching a settlement, Amazon avoids a trial where witness testimony and other evidence could have put the company's labor practices under the spotlight.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Costa and Cunningham had worked for 15 years at Amazon's corporate headquarters in Seattle and were members of the group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. Amazon fired them after they helped organize an event for warehouse workers to speak out about working conditions during the pandemic.

Amazon's labor practices and firings of whistleblowers have increasingly come under fire from employees, regulators, and politicians in recent months amid major labor organizing efforts by employees at its warehouses in Bessemer, Alabama, and Staten Island, New York, among other locations.