Amazon employees say the company uses “intrusive algorithms” as part of a surveillance system to stop workers from forming a union at work. People who work in a Missouri warehouse are suing the National Labor Relations Board for unfair labor practices.
According to a copy of the charge, Amazon has “maintained intrusive algorithms and other workplace controls and surveillance that interfere with Section 7 rights of employees to engage in protected concerted activity.”
Several stories say that Amazon is keeping an eye on workers to see if they are organizing or doing other things related to unions. This includes HR watching message boards and software that keeps an eye on union threats. They’ve even put up job ads for analysts who will watch out for “labor organizing threats.”
Wendy Taylor, a packer at Amazon’s STL8 fulfillment center in Saint Peters, Missouri, said, “This charge will hold Amazon accountable because we filed it together.” We don’t want this to become commonplace. It’s getting out of hand.
Amazon keeps an eye on everything we do. They can see everything you do, even when you’re not working. They keep an eye on you with cameras. They can keep an eye on you with their computers because they can look at your profile and see that a bar changes color when you’re not working. Taylor told me.
“Many people are hurt, and it feels like you’re in jail because you’re being watched.” We just want people to know that we have the right to get together with other workers, start a union, and have a safer place to work.
Basically, they said that AI can be used in the facilities to keep an eye on the workers at all times through video and voice footage. “It lets employers control, record, monitor, and use that data to discipline hundreds of thousands of workers in a way that no human manager or group of managers could even do,” said Seema N. Patel, a fellow and lecturer at Stanford Law School.
Many of Amazon’s workers have complained to OSHA and other organizations about the unsafe places where they work because of the way the company does business.
