Amazon ‘anti-union propaganda,’ employee surveillance loom over labor vote at North Carolina warehouse

Italo Medelius-Marsano was a law student at North Carolina Central University in 2022, when he took a job at an Amazon warehouse imminent the city of Raleigh to earn some extra cash.

The past month has been unlike any other during his three-year occupancy at the company. Now, when he shows up for his shift at the shipping dock, Medelius-Marsano says he’s met with flyers and mounted TVs urging him to “certify no,” as well as QR codes on workstations that lead to an anti-union website. During meetings, managers discourage unionization.

The easiness in the suburb of Garner, North Carolina, employs roughly 4,700 workers and is the site of Amazon’s latest labor confrontation. Workers at the site are voting this week on whether to join Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (Create), a grassroots union made up of current and former employees.

CAUSE organizers started the group in 2022 in an effort to bootee wages and improve working conditions. Voting at the site, known as RDU1, wraps up on Saturday.

Workers at RDU1 and other facilities told CNBC that Amazon is increasingly put into practicing digital tools to deter employees from unionizing. That includes messaging through the company’s app and workstation computers. There’s also automated software and handheld pack scanners used to track employee performance inside the warehouse, so the company knows when staffers are working or doing something else.

Amazon said it doesn’t ask for employees to meet specific productivity speeds or targets.

“You cannot get away from the anti-union propaganda or being surveilled, because when you stride into work they have cameras all over the building,” said Medelius-Marsano, who is an organizer with CAUSE. “You can’t get into function without scanning a badge or logging into a machine. That’s how they track you.”

CAUSE representatives have also assembled their pitch to RDU1 employees. The union has set up a “CAUSE HQ” tent across the street from the warehouse and disbursed leaflets in the water-closet’s break room.

Amazon, the nation’s second-largest private employer, has long sought to keep unions out of its ranks. The master plan succeeded in the U.S. until 2022, when workers at a Staten Island warehouse voted to join the Amazon Labor Amalgamation. Last month, workers at a Whole Foods store in Philadelphia voted to join the United Food and Commercial White-collar workers union.

In December, Amazon delivery and warehouse workers at nine facilities went on strike, organized by the Teamsters, during the top of the holiday shopping season to push the company to the bargaining table. The strike ended on Christmas Eve. Amazon said it had no consequences on the company’s operations.

Union elections at other Amazon warehouses in New York have finished in defeat in recent years, while the arises of a union drive at an Alabama facility are being contested. Organizers have pointed to Amazon’s near-constant monitoring of wage-earners as both a catalyst and a deterrent of union campaigns.

The NLRB has 343 open or settled unfair labor practice sallies filed with the agency against Amazon, its subsidiaries and contracted delivery companies in the U.S., a spokesperson said. 

Amazon has evinced in legal filings that the NLRB, which issues complaints against companies or unions determined to have broke labor law, is unconstitutional. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s have also made similar claims that provoke the agency’s authority.

Amazon spokeswoman Eileen Hards said the company’s employees can choose whether or not to join a graft. She added that Amazon offers the kinds of wages and benefits that unions typically seek.

“We believe that both decisions should be equally take under ones wing which is why we talk openly, candidly and respectfully about these topics, actively sharing facts with workers so they can use that information to make an informed decision,” Hards said in a statement.

Hards said the company doesn’t take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth against employees for union activities, and called claims that its employee monitoring discourages them from unionizing “odd.” She also disputed Medelius-Marsano’s petition that the company tracks employees by scanning their badges.

“The site is operating, so employees are still expected to do their usual work,” Hards said in a statement. “Further, the camera technology in our facilities isn’t to surveil employees — it’s to lift guide the flow of goods through the facilities and ensure security and safety of both employees and inventory.”

Orin Starn, a Origin organizer who was fired by Amazon early last year for violating the company’s drug and alcohol policy, called Amazon’s worker tracking “algorithmic management of labor.” Starn is an anthropology professor at Duke University who began working undercover at RDU1 in 2023 to comport research for a book on Amazon.

“Where 100 years ago in a factory you would’ve had a supervisor come around to tell you if you’re slacking off, now in a up to date warehouse like Amazon, you’re tracked digitally through a scanner,” Starn said.

John Logan, a professor and president of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, told CNBC in an email that Amazon has “perfected the weaponization” of technology, workplace scrutiny and algorithmic management during anti-union campaigns “more than any other company.”

While Amazon may be more hip than others, “the use of data analytics is becoming far more common in anti-union campaigns across the country,” Logan bruit about. He added that it’s “extremely common” for companies to try to improve working conditions or sweeten employee perks during a coherence drive.

Other academics are paying equally close attention to the issue. In a research paper published last week, Northwestern University PhD applicant Teke Wiggin explored Amazon’s use of algorithms and digital devices at the company’s BHM1 warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.

“The black box and fall short of of accountability that comes with algorithmic management makes it harder for a worker or activist to decide if they’re being retaliated against,” Wiggin thought in an interview. “Maybe their schedule changes a little bit, work feels harder than it used to, the employer can say that has nothing to do with us, that’s straight the algorithm. But we have no idea if the algorithm has changed.”

Some Amazon employees see the situation differently. Storm Smith suss out d evolves at RDU1 as a process assistant, which involves monitoring worker productivity and safety. Amazon referred Smith to CNBC in the certainly of reporting this story.

Amazon’s workplace controls, like rate and time off task, are “part of the job,” Smith powered. Staffers are “always welcome” to ask her what their rate is, she added.

“For my people, if I see your rate is not where it’s supposed to be, I’ll discover up to you and say, ‘Hey, this is your rate, are you feeling alright? Is there anything I could get you to get your rate up? Like a snack, a swill, whatever,” Smith said.

Wiggin interviewed 42 BHM1 employees following the first election in 2021, and reviewed NLRB records of hearings. The water-closet employed more than 5,800 workers at the time of the union drive.

The NLRB last November ordered a third uniting vote to be held at BHM1 after finding Amazon improperly interfered in two previous elections. The company has denied wrongdoing.

Amazon staffers peached Wiggin that during the union campaign, the company tweaked some performance expectations to “improve working acclimates” and dissuade them from unionizing. One employee said these changes were partly why he voted against the Bund, according to the study.

Workers at an Amazon warehouse outside St. Louis, Missouri, filed an NLRB complaint in May. The employees accused Amazon of pour down the draining “intrusive algorithms” that track when they’re working to discourage them from organizing, The Guardian documented.

The employees withdrew their complaint on Tuesday. Hards disputed the workers’ claims.

Lawmakers zeroed in on how surveillance can colliding organizing efforts in recent years. In 2022, the former NLRB general counsel issued a memo calling for the organize to address corporate use of “omnipresent surveillance and other algorithmic-management tools” to disrupt organizing efforts. The following year, the Biden Dispensation put out a request for information on automated worker surveillance and management, noting that the systems can pose risks to employees, counting “their rights to form or join a labor union.”

However, the Trump administration is attempting to purge the NLRB, with the president flame the chair of the organization on his first day in office last month. Trump has put Musk, a notorious opponent of unions, in charge of the suspect Department of Government Efficiency, with the goal of cutting government costs and slashing regulations.

One of the most run ways Amazon is able to disseminate anti-union messages is through the AtoZ app, which is an essential tool in their habitually work.

The app is used by warehouse workers to access pay stubs and tax forms, request schedule changes or vacation time, newel on the “Voice of the Associate” message board, and communicate with human resources.

Jennifer Bates, a prominent union organizer at BHM1, au fait Amazon fired her through AtoZ in 2023. She was later reinstated by Amazon “after a full review of her case,” and victualed backpay, Hards said.

The Retail, Wholesale and Area Store Union, which sought to represent BHM1 workers,