Leaked: Confidential Amazon memo reveals new software to track unions

Amazon has long opposed the idea of its warehouse employees forming a union, though much of its anti-union strategies have stayed under wraps. But a confidential Amazon internal memo viewed by Recode reveals how the company is making significant investments in technology to track and counter the threat of unionization.

The 11-page document, dated February 2020, describes Amazon’s plans to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to better analyze and visualize data on unions around the globe, alongside other non-union “threats” to the company related to factors like crime and weather. Out of 40 or so data points listed in the memo, around half of them were union-related or related to employee issues, like mandatory overtime and safety incidents. 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 (which is part of human resources), along with Amazon’s Global Intelligence Unit and Global Intelligence Program.

The new technology system — called the geoSPatial Operating Console, or SPOC — would help the company analyze and visualize at least around 40 different data sets, the memo says. Among them are many related to unions, including “Whole Foods Market Activism/Unionization Efforts,” “union grant money flow patterns,” “and “Presence of Local Union Chapters and Alt Labor Groups.” Additionally, one of the potential use cases for the tool is described in the memo as “The Union Relationship Map,” though no other details are provided.

The memo offers evidence of how Amazon is dedicating significant time and resources to reduce the likelihood of unionization among its front-line workforce, which totaled nearly 1.4 million people across Amazon and Whole Foods from March through September 19, counting every employee who worked for the companies for any period of time. This is not a complete surprise: Amazon is now the second-largest private-sector employer in the US, only behind Walmart, and scrutiny of its labor practices has increased as it has rapidly expanded its warehousing network, even during the Covid-19 pandemic.

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/10/6/21502639/amazon-union-busting-tracking-memo-spoc?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4