Leaked Amazon documents show warehouses ranked by union risk

Internal Amazon documents disclosed during a British Columbia labor dispute show the company ranks its warehouses by risk of union organizing and trains managers on how to respond once activity is detected, according to The Logic.

The four documents surfaced in hearings before the British Columbia Labour Relations Board, where Unifor, the union representing workers at Amazon’s YVR2 fulfillment center in Delta, asked the board to consider them as evidence in unrelated complaints against the company. The board ruled in May that the documents could not be used, finding they did not address issues raised in Unifor’s original complaints. Amazon had argued the documents were “legally irrelevant.”

The materials sort warehouses into tiers: Tier 1 sites have advanced union organizing already underway, while Tier 2 sites show early warning signs such as negative posts on the company’s internal feedback platform or worker activity on Reddit. Delta’s YVR2 facility was classified as Tier 1. Managers are instructed to identify union supporters among staff, share the company’s views on unionizing, and lean on “informal leaders” within a workforce to influence coworkers, while avoiding conduct that would cross into illegal threats, interrogation, surveillance or promises of benefits.

“They’re training folks on how to manipulate, harass workers into making a specific choice, which is that you don’t need a union,” Unifor director of organizing Justin Gniposky told The Logic. Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said “employees have a legally protected right to discuss the union with each other and share facts.”

The documents emerged from the same organizing drive that led the labour board to grant Unifor remedial certification at YVR2 on July 11, 2025, covering roughly 800 workers, according to The Maple. The board granted certification without a workplace vote after concluding Amazon’s anti-union conduct during the campaign was “deliberate, calculated, and pervasive” and would have made a fair vote impossible. Among the conduct cited was a 32% increase in hiring at the facility, compared with the 25% to 33% post-holiday-season staff reductions Amazon had made in prior years, which the board found was used to dilute union support among the workforce.

Amazon has said it plans to appeal the certification decision. Under British Columbia law, the company must bargain in good faith with Unifor regardless of the pending appeal, and either side can seek first-contract arbitration if no agreement is reached within a year of certification. More than a year after certification, the two sides have not reached a first collective agreement.

Labor advocates have pointed to Amazon’s response to an earlier union drive in Quebec as a sign of how the company can respond even after workers organize successfully. A Laval, Quebec warehouse of roughly 250 employees unionized in May 2024; Amazon announced in January 2025 that it would close all seven of its Quebec facilities, laying off about 1,700 permanent and 250 temporary employees, according to CBC News. Amazon said the closures were driven by cost savings and a shift back to third-party delivery, not the union vote. McGill University sociology professor Barry Eidlin told CBC that closing every Quebec facility, rather than only the unionized one, gave the company cover against claims the shutdown was retaliatory.