Amazon workers face ‘Anti-Sindical Propaganda’ in Garner, North Carolina

Italo Medelius-Marsano was a law student at North Carolina University 2022, when he took over the job in Amazon Warehouse near the town of Raleigh to make extra money.

The past month was not unlike any other during his three -year term in the company. Now, when he appears for his dismissal at the dock, Medelius-Marsano says that he has met flyers and mounted TVs who begging him to “vote”, as well as QR codes at the workstations leading to the union website. During meetings, managers discourage the association.

The Garner suburbs in North Carolina employs approximately 4,700 workers and is the place of the latest work of Amazon. Workers at the site They vote this week It will be joined by Carolini Amazona united to solidarity (cause), a wide Union made up of current and former employees.

The cause of the organizer launched a group 2022 in an effort to increase their wages and improve working conditions. Voting on the site, known as RDU1, ends on Saturday.

RDU1 and other facilities workers told CNBC that Amazon is increasingly using digital tools to distract employees from association. This includes sending messages through a company and computer computer at a workstation. There are also automated software scanners and hand packages The effect of employees in the warehouse was once monitored, so the company knows when employees do or do something else.

“You cannot move away from anti-gray propaganda or be monitored, because when you get to work, they have cameras all over the building,” said Medelius-Marsano, who is an organizer with the cause. “You can’t go to work without scanning a badge or logging into a machine. That’s how you follow you.”

The cause of representatives also made their employees RDU1. The union set a tent for the “cause of the shade” across the street from warehouse and paid leaflets in the facility interruption room.

Amazon, the second largest private employer in the country, has long tried to prevent unions outside his ranks. The strategy has succeeded in the United States by 2022When workers at State Island warehouse voted to join the Amazon Union. Last month workers at the Whole Foods Store in Philadelphia voted to join The United Federation of Food and Commercial Workers.

In December, the Amazon workers and warehouses in nine facilities continued in December strikeOrganized by teams, during the peak of the holiday season to push the company to the negotiating table. The strike ended on Christmas Eve.

The union elections in the other warehouses of Amazon in New York have ended in the defeat in recent years, while challenging the results of the Union Drive facility in Alabama. The organizers pointed to Amazon’s almost constant supervision of employees as a catalyst and distracting from union campaigns.

The NLRB has 343 open or settled unjust expenses of working practice filed with the Agency against Amazon, his branches and contracted shipping companies in the United States, a spokesman said.

Amazon argued in legal sub -enlightenment that the NLRB, which issues complaints against companies or unions found that they had violated the Labor Law, was unconstitutional. Spacex Elon Musk, Starbucks And Joe traders also made similar claims that challenge the authority of the agency.

Amazon spokeswoman Eileen Hards said that the company’s employees can choose whether to join the union.

“We believe that both decisions should be equally protected, which is why openly, openly, we talk about these topics, actively sharing facts with employees so that they can use this information to make an informed decision,” the hards statement said.

Hards said that the company did not take revenge on employees for union activities and called the claims that the supervision of employees discouraged them from the association of “unusual”.

“The web site is operating, so it is still expected that employees do their usual work,” Hards said in a statement. “Furthermore, the camera technology in our facilities is not for employee examination – this will help guide the flow of goods through facilities and ensure safety and safety and employees and stocks.”

Orin Starn, the organizer of the cause that Amazon released earlier last year due to a violation of drugs and alcohol policy, called Amazon’s “Algorithmic Work Management Algorithm.” Starn is a professor of anthropology at Duke University, who began to work secretly on RDU1 in 2023 to conduct a research for the Amazon book.

“Where you would have a supervisor at the factory 100 years ago to tell you if you agree, now in a modern warehouse like Amazon, you digitally follow you through the scanner,” Starn said.

Other academics are paying an equally great attention to that question. In a Research work Posted last week, a candidate for doctorate of Northwestern University, Teke Wiggin, investigated Amazon’s use of algorithms and digital devices at BHM1 warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.

“The black box and the lack of responsibility that comes with the algorithmic management make it difficult for a worker or activists to decide if they have revenge,” Wiggin said in an interview. “Their schedule may change a little, the work is feeling harder than it used to be, the employer can say that it has nothing to do with us, it is just an algorithm. But we have no idea if the algorithm has changed.”

Some Amazon employees see the situation differently. Storm Smith works on RDU1 as an assistant of the process, which includes monitoring the productivity and safety of workers. Amazon sent Smith to CNBC while reporting on this story.

Amazon’s workplace controls, such as a ranking and time task, “part of the job,” Smith said. The staff are “always welcome” to ask her what their rate is, she added.

“For my people, if I see that your rate is not where it should be, I will contact you and say, ‘Hey, this is your rate, do you feel good? Can you make you a grade?

Wiggin interviewed 42 BHM1 employees after the first elections in 2021 and examined the NLRB records of hearing. At the time of the Union Drive, the facility employed more than 5800 workers.

NLRB last November ordered a third union vote maintain on BHM1 after Amazon was irregularly distracted to two previous choices. The company denied injustice.

The Amazon staff said Wiggin that during the Union campaign, the company had adapted to some of their successes to “improve the working conditions” and distract them from the association. One employee said these changes were partly because he voted against the Union, the study said.

Workers in Amazon Warehouse Outside St. Louisa, Missouri, have been filed an Appeal on NLRB In May. Employees accused Amazon of using “intrusive algorithms” that they seek when working on discouraging from organizing, The guardian reported. The employees withdrew their appeal on Tuesday.

Hards said Amazon does not require employees to fill in specific speeds or productivity goals.

MPs have renounced how supervision can influence the organization of effort in recent years. In 2022 issued a memorandum Calling to a group to address the corporate use of “ubiquitous supervision and other algorithmic management tools” to disturb the efforts in organizing. Next year, the Biden management has thrown out a Request for information Automated supervision and management of workers, noting that systems may pose a risk to employees, including “their rights to form or join the work union.”

However, Trump’s administration is trying clean the nlrbGiven that the President fired the president of the organization on the first day last month. Trump has Put Musk, the infamous opponent of the union, in charge of the so -called Ministry of Government Efficiency, with the aim of reducing the costs of the Government and the decay of regulations.

Jennifer Bates, a prominent union organizer in BHM1, learned that Amazon fired her Through Atoz 2023. She was later back Amazon “After a complete examination of her case,” Backpay provided, Hards said.

Retail, wholesale and department store, which sought to represent BHM1 workers, said The ATOZ app can access user GPS, photos, cameras, microphone and WiFi-computing. The union also claims that “Amazon can sell data collected to all third -party companies and that data cannot be deleted”. Technology causes several concerns, including that he can suppress “the right to organize,” RWDSU said.

Hards said that RWDSU claims were incorrect and rejected that the company sells any information associated with the use of ATOZ. She said that atz users have to allow an app to access things like their GPS location.

In the Garner plant, the ATOZ app has been laid back with “anti-systemic propaganda” since the RDU1 elections were announced last month, Medelius-Marsano said.

One ATOZ message suggested that employees’ fees could be in danger if they voted in the union, while the other was described as a “external party” that “claims to be a union”.

RDU1 web site leader Kristen Tettemer said in another message that a group like the cause “can interfere with the way we work together” and that “once in, the union is very difficult to remove.” Smith said that Amazon’s response to Union Drive focused on “expressing facts and telling you to do your research.”

Medelius-Marsano said that all this was the environment of intimidation.

“No doubt about it,” Medelius-Marsano said. “If we lose, fear will be a reason.”

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