Amazon’s Anti-Union Training Video Leaked - Exposes Systematic Union Suppression Program

On September 26, 2018, Gizmodo published a leaked 45-minute union-busting training video that Amazon had distributed to Whole Foods team leaders, exposing the company’s systematic program to identify and suppress worker organizing before it could take root. The training video, titled “Labor Organizing: Staying Union Free,” provided managers with specific tactics to detect “warning signs” of union activity, including workers using terms like “living wage,” showing interest in company policies, or “hanging out together” after shifts. The leak revealed Amazon’s explicit strategy to prevent unionization across its expanding empire, demonstrating that even as the company publicly claimed to be “not anti-union,” it operated a sophisticated surveillance and suppression apparatus designed to stop workers from organizing.

The Training Video’s Contents

The 45-minute video, divided into six sections, takes place in an animated Amazon fulfillment center and provides managers with comprehensive instruction on identifying and responding to union organizing. The video opens with a clear statement of Amazon’s position: “We are not anti-union, but we are not neutral either. We do not believe unions are in the best interest of our customers, our shareholders, or most importantly, our associates.”

The training explicitly frames unions as threats to Amazon’s business model: “Our business model is built upon speed, innovation, and customer obsession—things that are generally not associated with union. When we lose sight of those critical focus areas we jeopardize everyone’s job security: yours, mine, and the associates’.” This framing positions any worker organizing as a threat not just to management but to workers’ own employment.

“Warning Signs” of Union Activity

The video’s fourth section, entitled “Warning Signs,” teaches managers to identify behaviors indicating “associate disengagement, vulnerability to organizing, or early organizing activity.” The training provides specific examples that managers should report immediately:

Language to Monitor:

• Use of terms like “living wage,” “steward,” or “grievance”
• Workers discussing wages, benefits, or working conditions with each other
• Employees voicing concerns on behalf of coworkers rather than themselves
• Showing “unusual interest” in company policies, benefits, employee lists, or other company information

Behavioral Indicators:

• Workers “hanging out together” or “suddenly spending time together”
• Employees loitering in break rooms after their shifts
• Workers asking for lists of employees or facility rosters
• Increased interest in labor rights or workplace regulations

The training includes an interactive component where managers listen to ten hypothetical employee conversations and must identify whether each represents a “warning sign” or “innocent interaction.” Workers complaining about the absence of a living wage, asking for employee rosters, or remaining in break areas after shifts all fall into the “warning sign” category requiring immediate escalation to HR and general managers.

Managers Encouraged to Express Anti-Union Views

The video explicitly encourages managers to share anti-union opinions with workers, stating: “Opinions can be mild, like, ‘I’d rather work with associates directly,’ or strong: ‘Unions are lying, cheating rats.’ The law protects both!” This remarkable statement—captured verbatim in the leaked video—demonstrates Amazon’s willingness to foster hostile attitudes toward unions and encourage managers to express those views, however extreme, to workers.

The training emphasizes that any detected warning signs must be immediately reported through proper channels. Managers are instructed to escalate concerns to HR and general managers as soon as potential organizing activity is identified, enabling rapid response before organizing can gain momentum.

Targeting Whole Foods After Acquisition

The video was distributed to Whole Foods team leaders in September 2018, approximately one year after Amazon acquired the grocery chain for $13.7 billion. The timing was significant: Whole Foods workers had no history of union organizing, but Amazon apparently viewed the acquisition as requiring preemptive anti-union indoctrination. By extending its union suppression program to Whole Foods immediately after the acquisition, Amazon signaled its determination to prevent any inherited workforce from organizing.

The distribution of the video to Whole Foods represented Amazon imposing its anti-union culture on a workforce that had not previously been subjected to such intensive surveillance and suppression. Workers at Whole Foods would now be monitored for “warning signs” like using the phrase “living wage” or expressing interest in company policies—activities that in any democratic workplace would be considered normal employee engagement.

Public Revelation and Amazon’s Response

After Gizmodo published the leaked video, Amazon issued a defensive statement claiming the reporter had “clearly cherry-picked soundbites from the video to meet his editorial objective and do not align with our view on how to create career opportunities for employees.” The company did not dispute the video’s authenticity or disavow any of its specific content, including the reference to unions as “lying, cheating rats” or the instruction to monitor workers for using terms like “living wage.”

Amazon’s response attempted to reframe union suppression as creating “career opportunities,” but failed to address the fundamental contradiction the video exposed: a company cannot simultaneously claim to be “not anti-union” while operating a sophisticated program to detect and suppress any sign of worker organizing before it can develop.

Labor Advocates’ Response

Labor rights organizations and union advocates condemned the video as evidence of illegal union busting. The training’s instruction to monitor workers’ speech and associations, and to immediately report workers who showed interest in wages or working conditions, raised potential violations of Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, which protects workers’ rights to discuss working conditions and organize collectively.

The revelation that Amazon encouraged managers to call unions “lying, cheating rats” shocked even labor experts familiar with corporate anti-union tactics. The explicit endorsement of extreme anti-union rhetoric suggested a corporate culture where hostility toward workers’ organizing rights was not just tolerated but actively cultivated by management.

Significance: Systematic Surveillance Infrastructure

The leaked training video revealed that Amazon’s opposition to unions was not ad hoc or reactive, but systematic and proactive. The company had created infrastructure—training programs, warning sign catalogs, reporting channels, escalation procedures—designed to identify and suppress organizing at the earliest possible stage. This approach treated normal worker behaviors—discussing wages, expressing interest in policies, spending time together—as threats requiring surveillance and intervention.

The video demonstrated that Amazon’s business model relied on preventing workers from organizing collectively to improve conditions or negotiate for better wages. By framing unions as incompatible with “speed, innovation, and customer obsession,” Amazon positioned worker organizing as an existential threat to the company rather than as a legitimate expression of labor rights protected by federal law.

The training’s emphasis on detecting organizing “early before it becomes problematic” revealed Amazon’s understanding that once workers began seriously organizing, the company’s ability to suppress them decreased. The strategy was therefore to create a surveillance state where managers constantly monitored workers’ language, associations, and interests, enabling rapid response to any sign of collective action.

Pattern of Anti-Union Tactics

The leaked video was part of a broader pattern of Amazon anti-union activities that would intensify in subsequent years:

• 2020: Amazon fired Christian Smalls for organizing a COVID safety protest, with leaked memos revealing executives’ plan to smear him as “not smart or articulate”
• 2021: Amazon spent millions on consultants and mandatory meetings to defeat union drives at Bessemer, Alabama, engaging in tactics the NLRB later found illegal
• 2022: Despite workers at Staten Island’s JFK8 facility voting to form the first Amazon union, the company refused to negotiate and filed appeals to delay recognition for over a year

The 2018 training video exposed the foundation of this anti-union strategy: a comprehensive program to surveil workers, identify organizing before it could develop, and rapidly deploy suppression tactics. The video’s existence demonstrated that Amazon’s aggressive responses to later organizing efforts were not reactive but reflected long-standing corporate infrastructure designed to keep workplaces union-free.

The leak provided rare documentary evidence of systematic corporate union busting, offering insight into how Amazon—and likely other large corporations—operationalized opposition to worker organizing through manager training, behavioral surveillance, and cultivation of anti-union culture among supervisory staff.