Amazon Used AI Tool Atlas to Track Union Risk in UK Warehouses

Internal Documents Reveal Atlas AI Tool

Internal documents disclosed as part of a legal challenge by Canadian union Unifor suggest Amazon uses an in-house AI forecasting tool called Atlas to predict how likely warehouse staff in the US, Canada and the UK are to attempt to form a union or stage other "disruptive labour events." The documents, which appear to be training resources for Amazon managers in Canada, contain an appendix stating Atlas amasses "hundreds of data points" including posts on Reddit forums, responses to internal feedback surveys, and information on previous industrial action.

Warehouses receive a risk score between 100 and 900. The lower the score, the more likely Atlas believes workers are to unionise. Warehouses are categorised into five tiers, where Tier 5 indicates "no immediate perceived risk" and Tier 1 means "future activity is imminent."

UK Sites Among Highest Risk

According to the document, 16 Amazon warehouses across the US, Canada and the UK are classified as Tier 1. Two are in the UK: a £500m robotic fulfilment centre in Sutton Coldfield, referred to by Amazon as EMA4, and a warehouse near Coventry known as BHX4.

Garfield Hylton, a 62-year-old GMB union member who works at BHX4, said the extent of data collected creates a significant power imbalance. "It's not right in a democracy... the employer should not be interfering," he told openDemocracy. "Workers should be allowed to decide if they wish to choose to unionise. If you're then monitoring, you're undermining a process deliberately and willfully."

Union and Legal Response

Rachel Fagan, a GMB organiser, said the documents show sites are being monitored for union activity. "Amazon is using this technology to essentially outwit or manoeuvre workers that want to organise," she said. GMB came closest to winning formal recognition in Coventry in July 2024, when around 2,600 employees took part in an official ballot and the union lost by 28 votes. Workers at the site became the first in the UK to take strike action against Amazon in January 2023.

Foxglove co-executive director Rosa Curling described the surveillance as "highly intrusive," stating Amazon has a "very intentional policy to try and bust organising, bust unionising efforts." Foxglove and law firm Leigh Day are representing two workers in a legal challenge against Amazon's use of "click-to-quit" QR codes, which allegedly allowed employees to cancel GMB membership by scanning codes placed around the warehouse. Amazon's Atlas documents were shared with US non-profit publication Truthout.

Amazon's Defense

An Amazon spokesperson refuted the characterisation of Atlas as "individual employee monitoring or surveillance," stating: "This is site/building level activity only." The company said it does not track individual employees' opinions, affiliations or union membership, and that Atlas is used to "help us understand where associates need more support." Amazon also stated that the Atlas framework is not currently used in the UK, but had not responded to whether a similar system operates under a different name.

Michael Newman, a partner at Leigh Day, said the documents tell "a very different story" from Amazon's previous assertions that it does not seek to prevent workers from joining a union. "Now we know Atlas is used by Amazon, we'll be asking more questions about what data points are used, how these scores were reached," he said. In 2022, French data watchdog CNIL fined Amazon €32m for GDPR breaches related to "excessive" worker surveillance.

Sources: Hacker News