Leaked audio shows Amazon official threatening workers over union election

An Amazon union avoidance official threatened workers with minimum wage and warned that things might get worse if they unionised and enter negotiations with the company.

The Vice reported on Thursday, citing leaked audio from an Amazon meeting that it obtained.

The Amazon union buster was caught on tape making a threat to employees at JFK8, the company’s largest New York City warehouse, during a mandatory anti-union meeting that took place on Wednesday.

This is according to Vice, describing the collective bargaining process for unionised workers with Amazon, the official stressed that “there are no guarantees you can end up with better, the same, or worse than you already have”.

“There are no guarantees as to what would happen?”

“We can’t make any promises, things will get better or stay the same.”

“They could get worse. We can’t promise what’s going to happen.”

“Amazon can’t promise you that they’re going to walk into negotiations and that the negotiations will start from the same pay and benefits workers have already,” the official was quoted as saying by Vice.

Once pressed by the workers to admit it was a threat, the official tried to backtrack and changed the topic, the report said.

Over the course of the 14-minute meeting, the official in a similar vein listed potential negative consequences of unionisation, such as binding obligations and representation fees, Vice said.

Under the U.S. labour regulations, interfering with or retaliating against workers who organise to form unions was illegal.

The union election would be held in the JFK8 warehouse on March 25, through March 30.

It will be the second election at an Amazon warehouse in U.S. history.