How Amazon Workers Beat The Union Busters At Their Own Game

In response to union organizing efforts in Alabama and New York City, Amazon hired a bunch of anti-union consultants.

An unknown number of consultants used to work at the JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island. Many of them had misfortune crossing paths with him.

The Amazon Labor Union, a new independent labor group that stunned the country last week by winning an election and creating the first union inside Amazon's U.S. operations, is led by a tier 1 associate at JFK8 who is also the vice president of membership. He was determined to see the union beat the consultants at their own game and had no prior experience in labor organizing. In what is already considered to be one of the greatest labor victories of the last century, workers voted 2,654 to 2,131 in favor of unionizing.

In an interview with HuffPost, he explained how he and his friends pulled it off.

It makes it difficult for the consultants to do their job when they are exposed for what they are.

The above-ground campaign consisted of large and the below-ground campaign consisted of small. Employees have no choice but to attend these meetings.

The consultants were in charge of the below-ground campaign. The consultants worked the warehouse floor, pulling workers aside for one-on-one conversations. They were usually white or Latino, with the bilingual ones focusing on Spanish-speaking workers. They were flying back and forth between New York and Alabama, where a separate Amazon union campaign was underway.

Some were nice. Some weren't. Their goal was to turn workers against the union.

Like an organized person, Spence gathered as much information as he could on them. Consultants who have direct contact with workers in an organizing campaign have to report their arrangements to the Labor Department. Although these documents only give a glimpse of past work, the friends of Spence were able to create unflattering dossiers to show workers that the consultants get rich and convince poor people to stay poor.

“We turned the internal systems against [Amazon] in ways even some managers wouldn’t know how to do.”

- Connor Spence, organizer with the Amazon Labor Union

The most prolific union busters in the warehouse were identified by creating flyers listing where they are based and how much money they have earned on union busting campaigns. They put stacks of flyers in break rooms so everyone would see them and know how much Amazon was spending to fly anti-union consultants.

Spence urged union supporters to try to figure out the names on the visitor badges that the consultants concealed. When one consultant named David refused to give his last name, Spence found it on a warehouse list of third-party vendors.

Even some managers wouldn't know how to turn the internal systems against them.

The union sent out an alert on the matter, with his photo and disclosure forms. According to Spence, Acosta told him he was impressed that he had figured out his last name. The questions from HuffPost were not immediately responded to by Acosta.

Another time, the account blasted out a photo of a consultant in the warehouse identified as Juan Cruz, saying he hides his name and is very angry about the picture. It has been shared almost 5,000 times.

Hi everyone. This is Juan Cruz, a union buster. He tries to hide his name and lie about who he is to workers at Amazon. He is very mad about this picture too, please help us spread it around because once a union buster is exposed, they can’t do their job. Thank you 😊 #amazon pic.twitter.com/looQiEbDU1

— Amazon Labor Union (@amazonlabor) February 1, 2022

Some consultants were never able to be identified by Spence.

Some were more effective than others. All the guys in her department were in love with her, according to Spence.

She made nearly $20,000 for just one week of union avoidance work.

He said that they felt betrayed.

The consultants around the warehouse would give workers copies of their Labor Department filings, showing their $300-per-hour fees.

Their eyes would get wide. He said that the best way to destroy them was to ask how they got this job.

Some consultants broke labor law by making threats or interrogating workers on their union sympathies, which is against the law, according to union organizers. They started filing unfair labor practice charges at the National Labor Relations Board with the help of a labor lawyer who was advising the campaign.

“I thought Amazon was flabby and stupid in some of things they did. They made a lot of mistakes.”

- Seth Goldstein, labor attorney who advised the Amazon Labor Union

Dozens of ULP charges were filed against Amazon, including some that implicated the consultants. The campaign succeeded in getting the labor board to pursue a case against Bradley Moss, a consultant who allegedly called organizers and suggested unionizing would be futile.

Under pressure from the labor board, Amazon entered into a national agreement that it wouldn't retaliate against workers trying to organize.

Amazon made a lot of mistakes. They have a lot of money, but we were able to expose the union busters.

The Office and Professional Employees International Union's local affiliate has an attorney named Goldstein. He worked with the Amazon workers on a pro bono basis and only received a T-shirt.

The weak penalties for unfair labor practices could hurt both Amazon and the consultant. After a consultant spoke with a worker, Spence would approach the worker and ask them to memorize everything the consultant had said. When it seemed a line may have been crossed, he would ask workers if they were willing to talk to the National Labor Relations Board.

The culture of boldness was crucial. Workers are often afraid to put their names to charges because of fear of being retaliated against, but as the campaign grew, more workers became willing to do so. As the unfair labor practice charges piled up, the more aggressive consultants started talking less about the union and more about working at Amazon.

The campaign was being brave and not capitulating to fear.

The cunning element was there.

The consultants were trying to lay traps. As a union buster was making his rounds one day, he approached a trio of union sympathizers he knew the consultant would speak to. He told one of them to be pro-union, another to be anti-union, and the third to be fence-sitter. To figure out which one of the three Archetypes was most likely to be charged with unfair labor practice, the consultant spoke to the three Archetypes differently.

I wanted to see if we could trip these guys up.

Many experienced organizers would recognize such strategies, but they were learning andDeploying them on the fly. The Amazon Labor Union was short on resources but had credibility because it was a campaign of all Amazon employees. Chris Smalls, a former JFK8 worker, was fired in 2020 after leading a strike over safety issues. The company planned to ruin him.

Smalls was one of the most popular topics in one-on-one talks.

Chris is going to be a millionaire when we win. He is going to buy a car with our dues. He said that it would never be said in a captive audience meeting.

The captive audience meetings were usually left to Amazon managers. The speakers would walk workers through the details of collective bargaining, paying union dues, negotiating a contract, but always with the anti-union subtext that is the hallmark of these meetings in any campaign.

The captive audience meetings were turned into opportunities as the union committee grew. They would record the talks so they could later correct the information for workers or file a charge if they believed a speaker crossed a legal line. They would openly challenge the talking points they were fed, a common organizing tactic meant to show everyone in the room that union supporters weren't afraid.

The goal was to completely shut it down once we had an organizers in the meeting. Even milder people who were pro-union started speaking out.

Amazon tried to remove union supporters from the room.

They got frustrated and started throwing our members out.

The organizers won't get a full picture of how much Amazon spent to defeat the campaign. The company did not respond to the request for comment. Disclosure forms Amazon filed last week show it gave out $4.3 million to union-avoidance firms last year, but that figure would not include most of its legal work, or the anti-union messaging it plastered around its warehouses through posters and televisions. The results of a separate election at the BHM1 fulfillment center are too close to call. Hundreds of challenged ballots could still tip the balance in the union's favor.

The lead of JFK8 will be followed by more Amazon facilities. If the organizers inside a warehouse show their willingness to everyone around them, anything is possible.

He said that the idea was to lead by example.