- Documents filed with the US Department of
Labor show howAmazon has engaged anti-union consultants. - One document suggests Amazon engaged consultants at a weekly rate of up to $20,000 each.
Amazon engaged anti-union consultants at a weekly rate of up to $20,000 each to work at its warehouses in
The consultants were "engaged to represent the interests of Amazon relative to labor matters" at the company's Staten Island facilities, according to an October 2021 letter from Amazon to Lev Labor, a consultancy that $4 itself as specializing in "collective bargaining,
The presence of anti-union consultants had been noted by workers inside
Amazon is now facing a swell of union organizing activity. A $4 starting on April 25. Meanwhile, $4 reported that a warehouse in New Jersey had obtained enough worker signatures to hold a union election.
The October 2021 letter to Lev Labor from Amazon is accompanied by a "scope of work" document from Lev Labor. This document says Lev Labor's "proposed intervention" is to provide Amazon with "three to five" on-site consultants, for a minimum of five days a week, to "interact directly" with Amazon employees. It says Lev Labor's consultants would interact with workers through "meetings," "walk-through's," and "focus groups."
The estimated cost per consultant, per week would be "17k-20k," at an hourly rate of $400 per consultant, the document says.
Amazon and Lev Labor didn't immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.
Lev Labor doesn't appear to have been the only company engaged by Amazon to provide anti-union consultants. Documents held by the DOL highlight several engagements since January 2021 between Amazon and four other consultancies.
Some of the documents relate to Amazon's warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Workers at the Bessemer warehouse $4, but the National Labor Relations Board on November $4, saying Amazon had illegally tampered with the process.
The publicly-available DOL documents were highlighted on $4 by Terri Gerstein, a workers' rights specialist and director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at Harvard Law School.
Gerstein said the documents probably provided a snapshot of the kind of money Amazon spends on anti-union consultants, as not all consultancy firms file forms with the DOL.