Whole Foods workers demand that 'dystopian' Amazon severs ties to ICE
- Some Whole Foods employees are demanding that Amazon cut ties with Palantir, a tech company that reportedly provides software to government agencies to help gather data on undocumented immigrants' employment information, phone records, and immigration history.
- "We're a group of current and former Whole Foods employees, known as Whole Worker, attempting to organize and unionize under the dystopian rule of Amazon," reads a statement posted online on Monday. "Now we're here to show solidarity with our undocumented sisters, brothers, and siblings."
- Whole Foods and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A group representing Whole Foods employees is demanding that Amazon sever ties with the big data company Palantir, which works with federal agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
"We're a group of current and former Whole Foods employees, known as Whole Worker, attempting to organize and unionize under the dystopian rule of Amazon," reads a statement posted online on Monday. "Now we're here to show solidarity with our undocumented sisters, brothers, and siblings."
"We ... stand with our co-workers inside Amazon AWS demanding Jeff Bezos cease all business with Palantir and any other company involved in the continued oppression of marginalized groups."
Whole Foods and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Palantir runs on Amazon's cloud services, also known as Amazon Web Services (AWS). More than 100 Amazon employees have circulated a letter demanding that Amazon cut ties with Palantir. The company reportedly provides software to government agencies to help gather data on undocumented immigrants' employment information, phone records, and immigration history.
Business Insider confirmed that the statement was posted by the Whole Worker campaign, which has been organizing Whole Foods employees since last year.
The statement was signed by the "Whole Worker Organizing Committee," which consists of several dozen people who are mostly current Whole Foods employees, according to a person involved in the campaign who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. There are more than 280 people involved in internal communications within the group, this person said.
"We thought it was a good idea for us to speak up, given what has happened recently - especially the recent raid of workers in Mississippi, which is really frightening," this person said, referring to an ICE raid of a food processing plant that involved the arrest of more than 600 workers.