Algorithmic surveillance helped Amazon crush unionizing effort

The 2021 union vote at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama ended with employees voting against unionizing. A new study says the tech giant manipulated the process using algorithmic tricks.

In April 2021, after most workers in Bessemer, Alabama, voted against joining the union, some workers told the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that the company had created “an atmosphere of confusion, coercion, and/or fear or reprisals” before the vote. Complaints changed nothing.

Now, in a critical study titled "Weaponizing the Workplace: How Algorithmic Management Shaped Amazon's Antiunion Campaign in Bessemer, Alabama," Teke Wiggin, a researcher at Northwestern University, says that Amazon might have pressured workers to vote in a certain way.

According to Wiggin, Amazon might have leveraged “the specific control technique of algorithmic management to repel (not just prevent) collective action by workers.”

“The findings reveal that employers can weaponize elements or effects of algorithmic management against unions via repurposing devices that algorithmically control workers, engaging in 'algorithmic slack-cutting,' and exploiting patterns of social media activity encouraged by algorithmic management,” the paper says.

What’s “algorithmic slack-cutting?” Wiggin uses the term to describe the softening of the “electronic whip” – automated, software-driven oversight.

When workers are given this proverbial carrot, they allegedly feel such a relief that they think they were awarded a benefit – even though, for example, Amazon’s Time-Off-Task tracking system is hardly respectful to the employees. That’s what happened in Bessemer.

Based on Wiggin’s interviews with 42 workers who said they worked at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer and transcripts of hearings held by the NLRB, the report also details how Amazon used its A to Z app “to send anti-union messages to workers.”

Amazon workers use the app to clock in and out, request time off, receive company announcements, and more.

Wiggin says he was told that workers were pressured to turn on the app's notifications and then bombarded with “anti-union propaganda.”

Moreover, in Amazon’s case, scanners and computers are “constitutive elements of its algorithmic tracking and disciplinary apparatus,” adds Wiggin. Supervisors monitor workers' performance based on indicators generated by the scanners.

That’s not really news, of course. However, interviewees told Wiggin that Amazon supervisors and HR officers “weaponized” such “algorithmically assisted discipline” to further pressure workers and discourage them from voting to form a union.

As expected, an Amazon spokesperson strongly challenged the study’s findings and suggestions that the company manipulates its workers.

“Like most employers, we do expect employees to be working the majority of the time they’re clocked in, and that’s not an unreasonable expectation,” says a statement sent to The Register.

To be fair, though, Amazon has long been criticized for the quality of its working environment and treatment of its workforce. Unsurprisingly, workers of this particular corporation have attempted to form trade unions and defend their rights.

But the giant has fiercely opposed unionization drives, especially in its infamous warehouses.

In 2018, Amazon even distributed union-busting training videos, telling managers to watch out for signs of worker organization, such as employees “suddenly hanging out together” or showing interest in concepts like “living wage.”

So far, the independent Amazon Labor Union, representing some 5,500 workers in Staten Island, NY, is the only such organization of Amazon workers.

We're fighting to make Amazon recognize our union, & as a result of our win, they’re in federal court arguing unions are unconstitutional.

If they win, a century of worker rights could be undone. Public support is vital to keep up the fight—can you help?https://t.co/XgGTnnLZCz pic.twitter.com/fjCztZCvgC

undefined Amazon Labor Union IBT (@amazonlabor) September 28, 2024

The company – which is the second largest employer in the US, employing more than 1.5 million workers across the world, has refused to recognize the union and continues to legally challenge its very existence.