Greta Thunberg is 'honoured' by reports Amazon treats her eco movement as a 'threat'

Greta Thunberg said she is ‘honoured’ by reports that Amazon considers her environmental activism a threat to their business.

The 17-year-old climate change activist urged Amazon to ‘reconsider its priorities’ following reports of the online retail giant’s ‘obsessive monitoring of organized labor and social and environmental movements’.

Leaked internal Amazon reports from 2019 claimed that Amazon hired operatives from the Pinkerton detective agency to keep tabs on social justice groups – including Ms Thunberg’s climate group Fridays4future.

Fridays4future consists of pupils who skip school – mainly on Fridays – to take part in protests demanding more global action on climate change and has garnered world-wide support.

The reports – seen by Motherboard – state that Ms Thunberg’s movement is ‘increasing their influence especially on young people and students’ and ‘growing and attracting more and more people rapidly.’

Ms Thunberg shared media coverage of the report on Twitter, writing: ‘We’re very honoured by this! But in all fairness, if you consider schoolchildren fighting for the right to a safe future to be a “threat to your business”, then you seriously need to reconsider your priorities…’ 

Vice’s technology publication Motherboard described a trove of internal Amazon reports that it said outlined the online retail giant’s ‘obsessive monitoring of organized labor and social and environmental movements’.  

The reports leaked to Motherboard were written in 2019 by intelligence analysts with Amazon’s Global Security Operations Center, the security division that is responsible for protecting employees, vendors and assets at its facilities worldwide.  

They revealed how Amazon recruited operatives from Pinkerton, a US-based spy agency with a decades-long record of infiltrating labor unions to thwart strikes, to monitor workers’ labor and union-organizing activities around Europe.  

Jeff Bezos’ firm also tracked European activists – including Fridays4future, the Yellow Vest movement in France and Greenpeace – because they believed those demonstrations were a threat to their business.

Some of the documents suggested that Amazon could be using the same surveillance tactics in the United States, Motherboard said.  

Lisa Levandowski, a spokesperson for Amazon, confirmed to Motherboard that it had hired Pinkerton to gather intelligence on its workers. 

‘Like any other responsible business, we maintain a level of security within our operations to help keep our employees, buildings, and inventory safe,’ Levandowski said. 

‘That includes having an internal investigations team who work with law enforcement agencies as appropriate, and everything we do is in line with local laws and conducted with the full knowledge and support of local authorities. 

‘Any attempt to sensationalize these activities or suggest we’re doing something unusual or wrong is irresponsible and incorrect.’ 

Levandowski denied the assertion that Pinkerton operatives were working on the ground – contradicting one internal report from November 2019.  

In that report, an analyst wrote that a Pinkerton operative was ‘inserted’ in an Amazon warehouse in Poland to investigate whether management was coaching job applicants on how to succeed in interviews, Motherboard reported.

Amazon and Pinkerton did not immediately return DailyMail.com’s requests for comment on Monday. 

Internal GSOC emails obtained by the outlet also showed that analysts received detailed updates about labor organizing activities at warehouses around the world. 

The updates pinpointed the exact date, time and location of those activities, as well as who reported them and how many people were involved, Motherboard reported. 

Other documents allegedly showed how analysts kept tabs on how many warehouse workers attended union meetings and specific grievances they shared about their work conditions.   

Christy Hoffman, general secretary of UNI Global Union, compared Amazon’s recruitment of Pinkerton to tactics used by industry tycoons who went to great lengths to crush workers’ strikes in the 19th century – sometimes with the help of the same detective firm.  

‘For years people have been comparing big tech bosses to nineteenth-century robber barons, and now by using Pinkertons to do his dirty work, Bezos is making that connection even clearer,’ Hoffman told Motherboard.

Hoffman further asserted that Amazon’s anti-union tactics are creating a ‘global human rights crisis’.  

‘Most American companies that try to succeed in Europe have adapted to the fact that there are strong unions here,’ she said. ‘Those that haven’t, such as Walmart and Toy R’ Us have left. But Amazon is an outlier.

‘This isn’t the way companies operate in Europe — ignoring the law, spying on workers, using every page of the US union busting playbook, as if they don’t have enough power and money on their own. 

‘They need to know they’re not going to get away with that in Europe.’

The allegations outlined in Monday’s report joined a string of evidence of Amazon’s robust efforts to monitor and crackdown on its workers unionizing. 

It follows reports in September that Amazon bosses were spying on delivery drivers to see if they were preparing to protest working conditions at the height of the pandemic. 

There were also claims in Recode that Amazon used a software to decipher whether Whole Foods staff would unionize. 

Amazon has been approached for comment.