Amazon tool scores warehouses on union risk, documents show
Amazon says the tool works at site level only and is not in use in the UK at this time.
Claimed, not confirmed
Documents from a court dispute in Canada suggest that Amazon uses an AI tool, Atlas, on warehouse staff. Atlas gives each warehouse a score from 100 to 900 for the risk that staff start a union. Amazon says Atlas looks at sites only and does not monitor one worker. The documents give no test results on how the scores are made.
What the documents show
The documents say Atlas uses hundreds of data points. These include posts on Reddit and answers to staff surveys.
Atlas gives a low score to a site where it sees more risk of union work. The documents put each warehouse in one of five tiers. In Tier 1, the documents say, future activity is imminent.
The documents say 16 warehouses in the US, Canada and the UK are in tier 1.
What Amazon says
Amazon says Atlas works at the level of a site only.
Amazon also says the Atlas system is not in use in the UK at this time. It did not say if it uses an equivalent system with a different name.
What others say
- Lawyer Michael Newman says the scores show that Amazon thinks unions are bad.
- Organiser Rachel Fagan of the GMB union says Amazon monitors sites for union work.
What to do
A French data regulator fined Amazon €32m in 2022 because it monitored workers too much. Leaders who use AI on staff data must know the data that goes in and who can see the scores.
Sources
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