Unions are using drones and secret agents to investigate Amazon's labor practices

• Labor groups are pursuing a multipronged strategy attacking Amazon as it fights union elections.
• Unions infiltrated Amazon construction sites in Oregon and Washington seeking regulatory violations.

On a frosty morning in February 2021, Tom Tanner walked into an under-construction Amazon warehouse in eastern Washington seeking work. He had driven by, seen the steel framing for the warehouse going up, and wondered if the contractor BZI Construction needed any extra hands. BZI hired him almost immediately.

But the relationship didn't last long, Tanner later told a state investigator. He quit two days later.

Tanner wasn't just a footloose employee. He's an organizer for the Ironworkers' union, representing workers who build steel-framed structures. During his short-lived employment at BZI, Tanner was working undercover in an attempt to smear one of the most powerful companies in the world: Amazon.

Campaigns to organize Amazon warehouse workers have grabbed national headlines. But labor is simultaneously attacking Amazon less overtly. Unions are needling the company with a barrage of regulatory complaints, fighting Amazon in local zoning meetings, digging deep through federal data to attack Amazon's safety record, and even using undercover spies and drones to gather evidence.

Experts say that pursuing a multipronged strategy against Amazon gives unions more chances to win. Those wins energize members, deepen ties with allies, and prove to Amazon and its workers that they should take unions seriously.

Amazon spends millions on union-avoidance consultants and employs high-powered labor attorneys to fight union victories. The company has been adept at combating organizing activity in its warehouses, quashing union votes in New York and Alabama and aggressively appealing labor's sole successful union election at Amazon's JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island.

Meanwhile, union elections, overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, take place on a regulatory playing field tilted heavily toward employers.

"It's really difficult if not impossible to win an NLRB election at Amazon under the current rules," said John Logan, a labor professor at San Francisco State University. Amazon warehouses often employ thousands of people, and turnover rates are high, while Amazon has "virtually unlimited resources with which to fight the union," Logan added.

Janice Fine, a labor professor at Rutgers University, said that in the face of Amazon's "overwhelming power and ubiquity," organizers are "looking for things that are going to keep workers hopeful, that are going to keep them moving forward and getting somewhere."

"Having campaigns along the way gives allies and volunteers a sense of their own power," Fine added.

Spies and drones

For months, Ironworkers in western states gathered intelligence linking BZI Construction, the company Tanner worked for in Spokane, to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamist cult whose leaders have racked up allegations of wage theft and child-labor-law violations at companies they control.

Then the Ironworkers released footage, business records, and other information to regulators and the public, arguing that Amazon didn't adequately supervise who its developers and contractors hired to build its warehouses.

Steve Pendergrass, the president of the Ironworkers Northwest District Council, said that if Amazon's warehouses were instead built by union labor, the company wouldn't have to worry about being linked to a cult.

"We're trying to leverage what we can to get Amazon to do the right thing," he said.

Wendell Jeffson, a former FLDS member, has said BZI Construction has previously employed minors on Amazon job sites — Jeffson told Insider he used to be one such teenage worker.

BZI previously told Insider that Jeffson had "misrepresented" his employment at the company but declined to say how. An Amazon representative told Insider that the company does "not tolerate any illegal labor practices" and expects its contractors and suppliers "to treat their workers with respect and dignity and to abide by respective local, state, and federal laws."

Tanner said he didn't find much during the six hours he worked for BZI. He scanned the job site for evidence of safety and labor violations and photographed the sign-in sheet. Otherwise, he said, he left empty-handed.

But he returned to the under-construction warehouse more than a dozen times over the subsequent three months, mounting a phone to the side of his car window to surreptitiously capture photos and videos of alleged labor violations on the site.

"You gotta get your hands dirty to be a good organizer," Tanner said. The Ironworkers sent Tanner's photos to Washington state's workplace regulator, urging it to investigate.

Washington's investigation went nowhere; BZI had by that point left the state. The Ironworkers turned to another Amazon job site in Woodburn, Oregon, 30 miles south of Portland. As BZI erected the steel frame for what is set to be one of the largest Amazon warehouses in the country, another Ironworkers organizer, Paul Diaz, took to the skies. Diaz said he obtained a drone pilot's license and flew a camera over the job site for weeks, taking photos and videos that the Ironworkers believe suggest BZI was underpaying workers. (BZI has denied those allegations.)

While BZI was hired by general contractors like Clayco and Layton to build Amazon warehouses in Spokane and Woodburn, respectively, Amazon previously told Insider that it was in regular contact with developers and contractors to oversee construction projects.

Earlier this year, the Ironworkers launched a website, AlarmingAmazon.com, detailing BZI's links to the polygamist cult. The website asks readers to sign a petition demanding Amazon "sever ties with their unsafe, exploitative, and extreme project partners" and hire "safe and reliable contractors who treat workers with dignity and respect."

Another Ironworkers council in California operates a similar website, GrimDelivery.com. "Does Amazon do any due diligence on the companies it brings into our communities to build their fulfillment centers?" the website asks.

The Ironworkers' complaints prompted an ongoing investigation from Oregon's labor bureau into whether BZI committed wage-theft violations at the Woodburn job site.

Experts say that regardless of the investigation's outcome, its existence is a win for unions. James Brudney, a labor professor at Fordham University, said that each blow against Amazon galvanizes union members and deepens support for organized labor.

Tanner added, "Everybody wants to be part of a victory."

Zoning battles

Other battles are fought in more prosaic arenas.

Unions, particularly the Teamsters, whose diverse membership includes 340,000 UPS delivery drivers, are weaponizing local zoning boards to derail new Amazon facilities. The Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of national labor unions that includes the Teamsters, has been at the forefront of analyzing federal workplace-safety data indicating that Amazon's logistics operations injure workers at disproportionately high rates.

An Amazon representative said the company is making "measurable improvements" in reducing injuries and disputed the labor coalition's methodology, saying the company's recordable injury rate declined by more than 13% from 2019 to 2021.

The Teamsters' campaign focuses on halting the construction of Amazon warehouses and air hubs that could take jobs from UPS drivers and on slashing tax breaks local jurisdictions would otherwise offer to Amazon. Other unions, including the United Food and Commercial Workers, representing grocery-store workers, and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, representing warehouse workers, have also campaigned against new Amazon facilities.

"We're not doing the traditional organizing way. We're making sure Amazon is being held accountable in cities and states," Sean O'Brien, the Teamsters president, told Insider. "And if they're not going to do the right thing in those communities, we're going to stop them from settling down in those communities."

Labor can't stop every new Amazon facility, though it had some success upsetting Amazon's building plans in New Jersey, Colorado, and Indiana. In California, labor groups successfully pushed for moratoriums on new warehouse construction that targeted Amazon specifically. And federal prosecutors this summer opened investigations into whether Amazon's pace of work leads to high rates of worker injuries. An Amazon representative said the company would cooperate with investigators and believes it will show the concerns are "unfounded."

Meanwhile, momentum for more union votes at Amazon facilities is growing, even though union organizers have so far notched only one, tenuous election victory. Workers at a facility in California's Inland Empire last week filed for a union vote.

Racking up victories outside of union votes, Fine said, helps convince labor supporters that even in the face of Amazon's vast resources, "it's not inevitable that you're going to lose."

Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip? Contact reporter Katherine Long via phone or the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-206-375-9280) or email (klong@insider.com).