Amazon Is Hiring an Intelligence Analyst to Track 'Labor Organizing Threats'
By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, VICE
03 September 20
Amazon is looking to hire two people who can focus on keeping tabs on labor
activists within the company.
Amazon is looking to hire two intelligence analysts to track "labor
organizing threats" within the company.
The company recently posted two job listings for analysts that can keep an
eye on sensitive and confidential topics "including labor organizing threats
against the company." Amazon is looking to hire an "Intelligence Analyst"
and a "Sr Intelligence Analyst" for its Global Security Operations' (GSO)
Global Intelligence Program (GIP), the team that's responsible for physical
and corporate security operations such as insider threats and industrial
espionage.
The job ads list several kinds of threats, such as "protests, geopolitical
crises, conflicts impacting operations," but focuses on "organized labor" in
particular, mentioning it three times in one of the listings.
Amazon has historically been hostile to workers attempting to form a union
or organize any kind of collective action. Last year, an Amazon spokesperson
accused unions of exploiting Prime Day "to raise awareness to their cause"
and increase membership dues. Earlier this year, the company fired Christian
Smalls, a Black employee who led a protest at a fulfillment center in New
York over Amazon's inadequate safety measures in the early days of the
COVID-19 pandemic. During a meeting with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, company
executives discussed plans to smear Smalls calling him "not smart, or
articulate."
These job listings show Amazon sees labor organizing as one of the biggest
threats to its existence.
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After this story was published, Amazon deleted the job listings and company
spokesperson Maria Boschetti said in an email that "the job post was not an
accurate description of the role- it was made in error and has since been
corrected." The spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions about
the alleged mistake. The job listing, according to Amazon's own job portal,
had been up since January 6, 2020.
Dania Rajendra, the Director of the Athena Coalition, an alliance of dozens
of grassroots labor groups that organize amazon workers, criticized the
listing.
"Workers, especially Black workers, have been telling us all for months that
Amazon is targeting them for speaking out. This job description is proof
that Amazon intends to continue on this course," Rajendra told Motherboard
in a statement. "The public deserves to know whether Amazon will continue to
fill these positions, even if they're no longer publicly posted."
On Monday, the Open Markets Institute, a nonprofit that studies monopolies,
published a report on Amazon's employee surveillance efforts, claiming that
these practices "create a harsh and dehumanizing working environment that
produces a constant state of fear, as well as physical and mental anguish."
After a week of the jobs being posted online, 71 people have applied to the
Intelligence Analyst position, and 24 people to the Sr Intelligence Analyst
job, according to Linkedin. The first job was posted in the Amazon Jobs
portal in January, the second job on July 21, according to the company's
site.
