Amazon claims their delivery drivers are third-party. So why are they paying union avoidance professionals to “educate” them?
Records show one of the union avoidance firms Amazon has hired in recent months is the Florida-based firm RoadWarrior Productions.
Labor consultant and Florida Man, Russ Brown, has worked with the e-commerce giant Amazon for years, flexing his extensive career in the multimillion-dollar union avoidance industry to keep labor unions from establishing a foothold in the workplace.
Charging rates that exceed $3,000 per day, his anti-union labor relations firm, RoadWarrior Productions, has been hired by Amazon multiple times over the years to convince Amazon workers all across the country that they don’t need a union — from workers in union strongholds such as New York and California to workers in the deep South of Bessemer, Alabama who, despite the odds, launched a bold campaign in 2021 to unionize with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Alabama, like Florida, is a right-to-work state with below-average union density — but that doesn’t mean unions don’t exist in Alabama, or that workers cannot form or join one.
Evidently threatened by the campaign, Amazon fought the union drive so aggressively — enlisting multiple union-busting firms to squander support for the union — that a federal labor judge ordered a re-do election for workers, not just once in 2022, but a second time as well in recent weeks, after previous elections resulted in a fairly substantial and then a much narrower loss for the union. The judge’s order, based on allegedly unlawful conduct from Amazon, has received a mixed reaction from the RWDSU, since the order doesn’t grant the union’s request for certain remedies.
Convincing workers they don’t need a union is lucrative work. Last year, Amazon paid Brown’s firm alone roughly $500,000 for his firm’s third-party “education,” with the company altogether reporting more than $3 million in expenses on union avoidance services. Such services generally involve conducting mandatory anti-union meetings (which the National Labor Relations Board is seeking to outlaw in a last-ditch effort that could be reversed under a less worker-friendly Trump administration), passing out anti-union literature, and training management on how to slyly urge workers not to unionize without blatantly breaking federal labor law. Under the National Labor Relations Act, threatening, retaliating against, or coercing workers as it pertains to their union rights is strictly prohibited — although that hasn’t stopped employer representatives from doing so, anyway.
What’s recently caught the eye of the union-buster watchdog group LaborLab, however, are recent reports filed with the Department of Labor’s Office of Labor Management Standards that reveal Amazon hasn’t only been hiring consultants like Brown to obstruct organizing activity among their direct employees — but also drivers employed by Amazon’s third-party delivery service partners (DSPs). This is notable because Amazon has repeatedly claimed in confrontations with federal labor officials that they are not responsible for bargaining with DSP drivers, who nonetheless deliver packages in Amazon-branded vans and are subject to various terms and conditions of the job that are set by Amazon.
“The question has to be asked, “if DSP drivers aren’t employees, why is Amazon hiring consultants to discourage those very same employees from organizing?”” LaborLab questions, in their newly-released report on Amazon and its expenditures on union avoidance services.
Public disclosure reports filed by Brown, and others, are submitted under penalty of perjury, the report notes, and suggest that Amazon “exerts significant control over these drivers, challenging its assertion of non-employment.”
Under federal law, third-party consultants like Brown who are hired to “persuade” workers during union drives are required to file reports with the federal Office of Labor-Management Standards within 30 days of entering into a formal agreement with an employer (although many, due in part to insufficient enforcement, do not).
When filled out correctly, these reports offer a snapshot of what these third-party consultants have been hired to do, and how much money they’re getting out of it. Employers are similarly required to file reports disclosing their union avoidance spending annually.
The report from LaborLab finds that Amazon recently hired anti-union labor consultants to counter organizing drives by DSP drivers in at least four locations: Amazon’s DAX5 facility in California; Amazon’s DBK4 facilities in Queens, New York; and Amazon’s BOS5 and DAS7 facilities in Massachusetts. Since the grassroots Amazon Labor Union — infamous for its victory at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island — formally affiliated with the Teamsters earlier this year, Amazon employees and DSP drivers across the country have gone public with several organizing drives — including those Amazon has strategically hired union avoidance specialists to infiltrate.
Records show Brown’s firm has been hired to counter at least three campaigns involving DSP drivers, dispatching other Florida-based consultants for the job that include a former organizer for a Teamsters local in Orlando who was kicked out of the union under admittedly-dubious circumstances and allegedly corrupt leadership. As Dave Jamieson reported for HuffPost in a series on the persuader industry, a number of today’s union busters are former union officials who are able to tout their union backgrounds as an asset for employers once they’ve switched sides.
Now, from where I live in Orlando, Brown is essentially a neighbor. Or, that’s how he described our relationship in an email he sent me in April, expressing disapproval of an article I wrote about union busters in Central Florida that received money from Amazon last year (I emailed Brown to request an interview, but did not receive a response).
In fact, several anti-union consultants that Amazon has a working relationship are neighbors, of sorts, and often justify their work by arguing that they aren’t “union busters” per se, but individuals who wish to share the reality of what unions can and cannot do, and what they can reasonably accomplish — or not.
“What made me successful, I believe, is my passion, and what makes me successful now that I moved to this side, right, is the passion,” said Roger Allain, a former Teamsters organizer from Orlando, speaking earlier this year on the business podcast Survive HR. “You’ve got to believe in what you’re talking about.”
Survive HR, sponsored by Brown’s affiliated company RWP Labor, is co-hosted by Steve Nail, an attorney who started his career with the National Labor Relations Board more than forty years ago before later becoming an attorney representing employers in labor relation matters. Allain was contracted through Brown’s firm in September to “educate” DSP drivers at one of Amazon’s facilities in Massachusetts at a rate of $475 per hour, or $3,800 per day, according to the firm’s agreement with Amazon, plus transportation, lodging, and meal allowances expensed to the company on top of that.
Allain, a second-generation Teamster originally from Massachusetts, explained on the podcast that he was recruited to the industry by Rebecca Smith, another former Teamster who was on the ground for Amazon’s anti-union counter campaign in Bessemer. “She was after me for years,” he shared.
After getting kicked out of the Teamsters, Allain said he “had a change of heart” on whether to take her up on the idea. “I said, You know what? I’m gonna go for it. I can do, still do a job, still help people — that’s what I love to do: help working people. And I can still help working people by educating them on how to stay away from corrupt unions.”
“Listen, I’m not an anti-union guy,” he shared. “I believe some companies deserve to have a union. You treat your people that horrible? You probably deserve to have a union.”
He’s not the only persuader who frames the overarching objective of unions in this way. Framing unions as an unnecessary band-aid to fixable workplace problems — rather than as a vehicle to build power and advocate for stronger labor standards to support working families — is a common refrain vocalized by today’s persuaders. “People unionize against bad managers, not bad companies,” Nekeya Nunn, chief executive of the Orlando-based firm Labor Pros, told The Intercept in 2022. “People work for companies that make them feel valued and included, so if that’s a tactic to not have a union, then so be it.”
Nunn was also reportedly spotted on-the-ground during Amazon’s counter campaign in Bessemer in 2021, according to an internal consultant that University of California-Davis labor history professor Dr. John Logan spoke to for an article he wrote after the first election. I reached out to Logan about this last year, and he confirmed this was an observation — there’s no actual record (that I know of) that Nunn was there.
She was reportedly seen “in passing” during the union drive, as one of several Black anti-union persuaders on-the-ground in Bessemer, where more than 80% of the organizing workforce were also Black. Her firm, and others, have weaponized diversity initiatives and language as a tool for union busting. She’s also ignored my requests for comment on her firm’s work in the past.
Amazon, a company placed on the hot seat for their labor practices on multiple occasions in recent years, has been questioned about their relationship to their contracted delivery drivers. A group of mostly Democratic U.S. Senators sent letters to Amazon earlier this year — one in January and then another in June — alleging that Amazon had intentionally misrepresented this relationship with drivers to “avoid legal liability for the persistent mistreatment of DSP drivers,” who provide last-mile transport for packages.
“As we noted in our initial letter, Amazon is facing allegations of flagrant violations of the National Labor Relations Act,” the June letter reads. “As members of Congress, we have the responsibility to ensure that Amazon is working to address shortcomings in the DSP program and placing the utmost importance on workers’ rights and safety.”
The letter, led by U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), was lauded by the Teamsters, a labor union roughly 1.3 million members strong. They joined senators in demanding Amazon provide more information about their DSP program, since Amazon had, according to senators, been evasive on the issue.
Drivers for Amazon’s network of over 3,000 delivery service partners have organized walkouts, marched on the boss, and gone to press to share their views on current working conditions and why they’re organizing to join the union. “I have three kids of my own and I struggle to make a paycheck, but they don’t care,” Brandi Diaz, a delivery driver at Amazon’s DAX8 station in Palmdale, California told The Guardian last November. “They put so much fear in employees. I had major surgery and only took two days off from work because I was afraid they were going to fire me. It shouldn’t be that way.”
Jessie Moreno, also an Amazon driver in Palmdale, told the pro-union publication Labor Notes, “Amazon can no longer dodge responsibility for our low wages and dangerous working conditions, and it cannot continue to get away with committing unfair labor practices. We are Amazon workers and we are holding Amazon accountable.” Palmdale drivers went on strike earlier this year over Amazon’s refusal to recognize and bargain with their union.
When reached for comment on LaborLab’s new report, the Teamsters reiterated their call for Amazon to own up to their legal obligations under federal law. “Amazon is a corporate bully willing to waste millions of dollars in a pathetic and failed attempt to keep its drivers from exercising their right to organize with the Teamsters,” a spokesperson told me over email. “Rather than respecting workers and raising their wages, Amazon chooses to dump money into the hands of lowlife for-hire union busters to do their dirty work.”
Amazon employees, they added, are organizing with the Teamsters at “an unstoppable pace across the country” — from DSPs to warehouses and air hubs. “Amazon has a legal obligation to recognize these workers’ demands for recognition and bargain union contracts—and rest assured—the Teamsters will hold them accountable.”
Recommended readings:
Mickey and the Teamsters: A Fight for Fair Unions at Disney by Mike Schneider
Senators Allege That Amazon Lied to Them About Delivery Drivers by Luke Goldstein for The American Prospect
Crushing Unions, by Any Means Necessary: How Amazon’s Blistering Anti-Union Campaign Won in Bessemer, Alabama by Dr. John Logan for the New Labor Forum
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