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Amazon is allegedly surveilling the Flex delivery drivers in private Facebook groups
Amazon tracks private social media channels used by Amazon Flex staff to share their working practices. According to official corporate records found online by Vice, the supermarket giant hires workers to map and categorize conversations in private Facebook communities , public sub-reddits, and Twitter. Such messages are then "escalated" to the internal Amazon departments and to the executives of the organization.
As Vice states, these reviews are evidently collected specifically to find and respond to feedback from Flex delivery drivers about items like glitches in the company software. But Amazon also seems to keep tabs on more sensitive discussions.
Those collecting the reports are advised to remember the obvious tone of the posts and to search for Flex staff to exchange news stories where Warehouse employees [are] moaning about bad working conditions or to explore planning for any strike or demonstration against Amazon.
Amazon has acknowledged that the security videos released by Vice are authentic but have sought to downplay its operations. In a statement to The Verge, the company's spokeswoman indicated that Amazon had not recently been aware of the monitoring of closed Facebook accounts, and that it had "discovered" the actions of a single team. Vice, however, claimed that the surveillance of closed groups has been taking place for "years" as part of a larger initiative to keep track of workers' conversations, involving staff at both Amazon's headquarters in Seattle and those in India.
As we were notified, we found a group within our delivery team that aggregated information from closed groups, the spokesperson said. While they were trying to support drivers, that approach doesn’t meet our standards, and they are no longer doing this as we have other ways for drivers to give us their feedback.
Amazon 's statement does not answer a variety of concerns posed by Vice 's report, including whether or not surveillance of unclosed Facebook groups will proceed, and why Amazon is obviously tracking employees ' efforts to coordinate demonstrations. We reached out to Amazon with some more questions, but we still have to hear back.
Amazon is well known for using violent tactics against employees attempting to mobilize or demonstrate. They dismissed employees who lead protests, or even tweeted corporate outrage, and used heat maps to measure pro-union feeling through their Entire Grocery stores. Just this week, amazon listed job listings for the "Security Specialist" position in order to track the "Work Coordinating Risks." Amazon immediately deleted the ads and claimed they had been placed in error.
Monitoring the conversation between Flex drivers on social media will be in line with this past activity. Flex drivers are not government employers but self-employed workers who make deliveries from their own vehicles.
They pay in hourly blocks, and Amazon says they make between $18 and $25 an hour, depending on the tips and the number of deliveries they make. Flex drivers do not offer incentives such as dental care or maternity leave provided to full-time workers.
In countries like the US, where the job market has been hit hard by the pandemic, reports suggest that competition for this kind of gig work is fierce. In recent months, Amazon Flex drivers have allegedly resorted to tactics such as using programmed bots or even hanging their phones in trees near dispatch centers to demand exceedingly unusual delivery slots.
According to the documents provided by Vice, Amazon's social media surveillance of Flex drivers includes hundreds of communities in the United States , the United Kingdom and Spain. This include private Facebook accounts such as Amazon Flex Las Vegas and Real Amazon Flex Drivers of Portland. You can learn more about the surveillance process, including a complete list of the groups under observation. We reached out to Amazon to comment on the story and will update this article if we hear more.
