Amazon spent greater than $3 million on anti-union consultants final yr in its persevering with effort to maintain organized labor out of its supply community, in line with disclosures filed Saturday with the Labor Division.
The Seattle-based retail big has been ringing up a big tab hiring “persuaders” who attempt to persuade staff to not type unions. It doled out greater than $14 million on such consultants final yr as nicely.
Employers are required to disclose such spending when the consultants converse on to staff about unionization. The figures cited within the types usually wouldn’t embrace cash Amazon spent on in-house work in opposition to unions or authorized recommendation aimed toward undermining organizing efforts.
Corporations typically pay $3,000 or extra for every persuader per day, as a HuffPost investigation detailed final yr. The consultants usually maintain group and one-on-one conferences the place they paint the union in a unfavourable gentle, typically forward of a union election or whereas organizers try to assemble union playing cards.
Amazon has grown to be the most important warehouse employer within the nation, and its expenditures on anti-union consultants are unusually excessive in comparison with others.
Mary Kate Paradis, an Amazon spokesperson, mentioned in an electronic mail that the corporate was “proud to take a position tens of billions of {dollars} in issues like free school tuition, healthcare, good pay, and security packages.”
“We additionally know that there are outdoors organizations working laborious and spending closely to unfold inaccurate details about us to our groups,” Paradis added. “So ― like many different firms ― we additionally work to make sure our workers are absolutely knowledgeable about their rights and the way selections about outdoors illustration may impression their day-to-day lives working at Amazon.”
Michael M. Santiago through Getty Photos
The biggest beneficiary of Amazon’s spending in 2023 was Michigan-based advisor Penne Familusi, whose agency, the Rayla Group, introduced in $1.3 million. Amazon paid Familusi’s agency $7.6 million the earlier yr.
The second highest-earning advisor final yr was labor lawyer Katie Lev, who obtained $1.1 million from Amazon. An administrative regulation decide on the Nationwide Labor Relations Board dominated in January 2023 that Lev had made an unlawful risk in opposition to Amazon staff by telling them their pay can be frozen and others would obtain raises whereas they tried to barter a contract.
The retailer mentioned in its filings that it employed Familusi, Lev and different consultants “in response to massive scale union organizing efforts.” Their roles have been to “educate workers” and assist Amazon in “expressing the corporate’s opinion on union illustration.”
Amazon is battling labor teams on a lot of fronts lately.
The Worldwide Brotherhood of Teamsters has been attempting to arrange the corporate’s subcontracted supply drivers, whereas each the Amazon Labor Union and the Retail, Wholesale and Division Retailer Union have carried out campaigns inside its warehouses.
Solely the ALU has managed to type a union at one in every of Amazon’s huge achievement facilities, although the group remains to be struggling to barter a primary contract two years after its election victory on the JFK8 warehouse in New York Metropolis.
The RWDSU misplaced an election at a warehouse in Alabama in 2021, however the Nationwide Labor Relations Board tossed out the outcomes after discovering Amazon violated the regulation and tainted the vote. The union misplaced a rerun election by a extra slim margin the next yr.
In the meantime, a gaggle of subcontracted supply drivers in California unionized final yr with the Teamsters.
The drivers technically labored for an outdoor agency that was a part of Amazon’s “supply service accomplice” community. The union has argued that Amazon is dictating the working circumstances and will subsequently should cut price immediately with drivers, even when they’re paid by a 3rd social gathering.
This story has been up to date with remark from Amazon.
