Scrutinizing Amazon’s Response to Labor Organizing

Catherine Fisk
Catherine Fisk

A new report published by Berkeley Law’s Center for Law and Work (CLAW) and the UC Berkeley Labor Center finds Amazon’s recently announced “freedom of association policy” doesn’t meet international human rights standards for workers involved in union organizing. 

Authored by international labor law expert Lance Compa, Failure to Deliver: Assessing Amazon’s Freedom of Association Policy under International Labor Standards is a legal analysis of Amazon’s March 2022 policy, which pledges to fulfill International Labor Organization (ILO) and United Nations norms protecting the rights of organizing workers, even when an individual nation’s labor laws don’t require those standards to be met. Amazon’s policy is, in fact, not compliant with those global norms, Compa finds, and the anti-union campaign tactics used by Amazon management continue to violate international standards.

Amazon’s policy makes no specific reference to ILO Conventions 87 and 98, which Compa calls the “polestar international standard” and prohibit interfering with organizing efforts through pressure, threats, or discrimination. Amazon’s own campaigns, however, have aggressively sought to impose pressure and spark fear in workers considering supporting union representation. 

“The findings of this analysis should prompt Amazon to develop a genuine freedom of association policy that safeguards workers’ organizing rights and moves the company toward a healthy collective bargaining relationship when its employees choose union representation,” says Professor Catherine Fisk, Berkeley Law professor and CLAW’s faculty director.