Garfield Hylton has lengthy known that Amazon monitors and logs all infinitesimal of his operating day. Every merchandise he scans, all second he takes between scans, all period his scanner is briefly idle – all of it is tracked, recorded, and used to set efficiency targets and predictions.
But what 62-year-old Hylton didn’t cognize is that Amazon apparently additionally monitors possible “dissent” in the Coventry storage anywhere he works, using AI to surveil posts on social media and the company’s inner personnel bulletin board.
Internal documents made community as part of a court battle between Amazon and a Canadian union propose the tech elephantine uses Atlas, an in-house AI forecasting tool, to foretell how apt its storage personnel in the US, Canada and the UK are to attempt to form a union, phase a sit-in, or behavior another “disruptive labor events”.
The documents, which appear to be training resources for Amazon managers in Canada, merge an appendix stating Atlas amasses “hundreds of data points” – including posts on Reddit forums and employees’ responses to inner feedback surveys, as fine as wider data on the office and any former manufacturing act – to award warehouses a hazard mark of between 100 and 900 for union activity.
The lesser the score, the additional apt Atlas believes workers – whom Amazon calls ‘associates’ – in that storage are to unionise or obtain another actions that could effect Amazon’s efficiency or profitability. The document states that for the company’s leadership, higher scores are “better”.
This “makes it apparent that they think the union is bad”, Michael Newman, a partner at London-based law resolute Leigh Day, told openDemocracy. Newman stated it tells “a extremely distinct story” from Amazon’s former assertions that it does not search to forestall workers from joining a union.
Warehouses appear to be categorised into five tiers according to their Atlas score, anywhere Tier 5 is “no contiguous perceived risk” and Tier 1 is “future action is imminent”. The document suggests this measure can be used to “inform staffing decisions, asset planning, norm actions, and ownership to mitigate risks to Amazon labor structure”.
An Amazon spokesman refuted the characterisation of Atlas as “individual employee monitoring or surveillance”, stating: “This is site/building flat action only.”
They added that the business does “not track idiosyncratic employees’ opinions, affiliations or union membership”, or any “personal data”, and stated Atlas is not used to detect dissent, but to “help us comprehend anywhere associates need additional assistance and to justify we’re addressing issues that they raise”.
In total, 16 Amazon warehouses throughout the US, Canada and the UK are “Tier 1”, according to the document. Two are in the UK: a £500m robotic-fulfilment centre in Sutton Coldfield, north-east Birmingham (referred to by Amazon as EMA4), and the storage anywhere Hylton plant near Coventry (BHX4).
Hylton, whose function involves receiving products into the storage and dispatching them on to another warehouses, is a associate of the GMB union. He believes the degree of the data Amazon has collected on his colleagues creates a huge power imbalance, alongside workers having lone their own experiences to defend themselves.
“It’s not correct in a democracy… the director should not be interfering,” he said, speaking to openDemocracy shortly following learning concerning the Atlas tool from GMB. “Workers have to be allowed to decide if they desire to choose to unionise,” he continued, adding: “If you're afterward monitoring, you're undermining a procedure deliberately and willfully.”
Rachel Fagan, an organiser for GMB, told openDemocracy: “It’s fairly apparent from these documents that these sites are being monitored for union activity. Everyone knows that Amazon is dense on surveillance, but this becomes additional personal.
“Amazon is using this innovation to basically outwit or manoeuvre workers that desire to organise [a union]. Nothing in this combat against Amazon is an equal playing field; they have all the wealth, all the technology, everything to their disposal and they use it,” she added.
GMB has lengthy tried to unionise Amazon workers in the UK, coming closest to winning ceremonial acknowledgment in Coventry in July 2024. Employees at the storage became the archetypal in the nation to obtain strike action against Amazon in January 2023, and about 2,600 took part in an authoritative ballot for union acknowledgment at the location six months later, which GMB lost by fair 28 votes.
The union and Foxglove, a tech fairness non-profit, have accused Amazon of using “dirty tricks” to sway the ballot in its favour. These contain the bulk hiring of non-unionised workers and allegedly plastering QR codes that workforce could scan to cancel their GMB affiliation complete screens, cafeteria tables, and toilet doors in the storage in the run-up to the vote.
Foxglove and Leigh Day are representing two workers in a lawful difficulty against Amazon’s use of ‘click-to-quit’ QR codes. They contend that the tool was an attempt to “bully” workers into ending their union membership.
The documents revealing Amazon’s Atlas AI tool were disclosed as part of a lawful difficulty by Canadian union Unifor and shared alongside US non-profit publish Truthout. The British Columbia Labour Board ultimately ruled that Amazon had violated multiple local labor laws, following an before ruling that established the business had unlawfully imposed a pay freeze on unionised workers at a storage exterior Vancouver.
Rosa Curling, co-executive director of Foxglove, described the flat of surveillance detailed in the document as “highly intrusive”, showing that Amazon has a “very intentional guideline to try and bust organising, bust unionising efforts, and they are using all sorts of tools to do that”.
Curling continued: “We are actively reviewing these documents to see what additional arguments, if any, we have to be adding to our existing assertion to unlawful inducement, or certainly on akin this ongoing breach of workers' entitlements to organise, which is a well-respected correct in UK-made laws.”
Amazon told openDemocracy that a example called Atlas is not currently used in the UK. The business had not responded to our inquiry concerning whether it uses a akin scheme alongside a distinct name at the period of publishing.
Commenting on the AI system, Leigh Day’s Newman added: “Now we cognize Atlas is used by Amazon, we’ll be asking additional questions concerning what data points are used, how these scores were reached.”
Amazon has earlier been established blameworthy of “excessive” surveillance of its workers. In 2022, French data watchdog CNIL fined the business €32m (£27m) for breaching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules by tracking employee action so exactly that an vigilant was triggered if workers were idle for between one and 10 minutes.
Asked whether Amazon’s Atlas tool is an suitable flat of employee surveillance, a authorities spokesman said: “Employers and workers have a shared involvement in office monitoring technologies being used transparently and in ways that are fair, accountable and reliable, so that they can assistance efficiency and fine administration during maintaining rely in the workplace.
“We anticipate all employers to regard workers’ entitlements to obtain part in lawful commerce union activity.”
An Amazon spokesman said: “The GMB's characterisation is wrong. This isn’t surveillance. Like any liable employer, we have many ways for our squad to provision us alongside feedback, and we use that feedback to acknowledge anywhere we can enhance the day-to-day cognition of our employees.
“Our workforce continually have the choice of whether or not to associate a union. What matters most to us is the straightforward association between our teams and their managers – it method all person’s sound is heard, not fair a few, and that whenever person spots a way to enhance their job, we can act on it quickly. We’ve made genuine advancement in latest years on the things that matter, akin pay and safety, and we cognize there’s continually additional to do. That’s our focus: getting improved all day.”
