Amazon Tracking Whole Foods Employees to Anticipate Possible Unionization

The Amazon-owned grocery store Whole Foods is allegedly tracking employees and scoring stores that it deems at risk of unionizing according to a recent report. The company is allegedly using a variety of metrics to grade stores resulting in a “heatmap” showing locations most at risk of unionization.

Business Insider reports that according to leaked internal documents and inside sources, Amazon-owned grocery store Whole Foods has been tracking and scoring stores it deems at risk of unionizing. Whole Foods scores each location on more than two dozen metrics including racial diversity, employee loyalty, “tipline” calls, and violations reported by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

The company tracks local economic and demographic factors such as the local unemployment rate and the percentage of families in the area living below the poverty line. The stores’ scores are then fed into a “heatmap” which is a geographic map of the United States with red dots indicating high-risk Whole Foods stores.

A statement on the map describes its purpose as specific to monitoring unionization among its employees which the company refers to as “team members.” The statement reads:

The [Team Member] Relations Heatmap is designed to identify stores at risk of unionization. This early identification enables resources to be funneled to the highest need locations, with the goal of mitigating risk by addressing challenges early before they become problematic.

In a statement to Business Insider, Whole Foods claimed that an “overwhelming majority” of its employees prefer a “direct relationship” with the company over union representation, saying:

Whole Foods Market recognizes the rights of our Team Members to decide whether union representation is right for them. We agree with the overwhelming majority of our Team Members that a direct relationship with Whole Foods Market and its leadership, where Team Members have open lines of communication and every individual is empowered to share feedback directly with their team leaders, is best.

Our open-door communication policy allows us to understand and quickly respond to the needs of our workforce, while recognizing, rewarding, and supporting the goals of every member of our team. At Whole Foods Market, we’re committed to treating all of our Team Members fairly, creating a safe, inclusive, and empowering working environment, and providing our Team Members with career advancement opportunities, great benefits, and competitive compensation, including an industry-leading starting minimum wage of $15/hour.

The Whole Foods heatmap reportedly states that lower rates of racial diversity increase unionization risk. Stores with lower diversity and lower employee compensation are reportedly at higher risk of unionization.

It seems that this form of workforce tracking is becoming increasingly common in recent years. Walmart reportedly hired an intelligence-gathering service from Lockheed Martin and ranked its stores by labor activity when it faced protests eight years ago from the union-backed activist group OUR Walmart. Celine McNicholas, the director of government affairs and labor counsel for the Economic Policy Institute, said: “Employers spend millions of dollars a year to hire union avoidance advisers to see how susceptible they are to their workers organizing.”

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