- Amazon workers in Alabama have voted in a union election
- Google workers formed the first union in the big tech group earlier this year
With reports of employees urinating in bottles, fainting in warehouses and big-brother systems that monitor every minute that is “time off task”, it is a wonder that Amazon (US:AMZN) has been able to fend off unionisation for so long. Or perhaps not, given the internal anti-union campaigns it has mounted over the years.
“We are not anti-union, but we are not neutral either,” says a smiling cartoon Amazon manager in a leaked training video shared with WholeFoods in 2017, after the grocer was absorbed into the e-commerce giant. “Our business model is built upon speed, innovation, and customer obsession—things that are generally not associated with union. When we lose sight...we jeopardize everyone’s job security.”