Leaked Confidential Amazon Memo Reveals New Software to Track Unions
Amazon has long opposed the idea of its warehouse employees forming a union. Although, in the past, much of its anti-union strategies had stayed under wraps. However, recently a a confidential Amazon internal memo was leaked and revealed how Amazon is making significant investments in technology to track and counter the threat of unionization. The 11-page document details Amazon’s plans to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to analyze and visualize data on unions around the globe and other non-union threats to the company, such as crime and weather. Out of the numerous data points for analysis listed in the memo, around half of them were union-related or related to employee issues, like mandatory overtime and safety incidents. Furthermore, the memo requested staffing and funds to purchase software that would specifically help consolidate and visually map data from three different Amazon groups, led by employee relations, along with Amazon’s Global Intelligence Unit and Global Intelligence Program. This memo shows a trend of anti-unionization policies and practices within Amazon's executive management.
See "Leaked Confidential Amazon Memo Reveals New Software to Track Unions", Jason Del Rey and Shirin Ghaffary, Vox, October 13, 2020