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Amazon-owned Whole Foods is quietly tracking its

employees with a heat map tool that ranks which stores are
most at risk of unionizing
Hayley Peterson Apr 20, 2020, 4:52 PM

Whole Foods is tracking stores at risk of unionization with a heat map. Samantha Lee/Business Insider

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Amazon-owned Whole Foods is tracking and scoring stores it

deems at risk of unionizing, according to ve people with
knowledge of the e ort and internal documents viewed by
Business Insider.

The scores are based on more than two dozen metrics, including
racial diversity, employee loyalty, "tipline" calls, and violations
recorded by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
GOLDMAN SACHS: These are
In response to this story, Whole Foods said: "Whole Foods the top 11 companies to watch
Market recognizes the rights of our Team Members to decide as we enter the best stock-
whether union representation is right for them. We agree with the picking environment in over a
overwhelming majority of our Team Members that a direct decade
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
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team leaders, is best."

Tracking active or potential unionization is a common practice

among large companies, according to labor experts.

If you are an employee of Whole Foods and have information to

share, contact this reporter at hpeterson@businessinsider.com.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

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Whole Foods is keeping an eye on stores at risk of unionizing operations. Here's the pitch
through an interactive heat map, according to ve people with deck.
knowledge of the matter and internal documents viewed by
Business Insider.

The heat map is powered by an elaborate scoring system, which

assigns a rating to each of Whole Foods' 510 stores based on the
likelihood that their employees might form or join a union.

The stores' individual risk scores are calculated from more than two
dozen metrics, including employee "loyalty," turnover, and racial
diversity; "tipline" calls to human resources; proximity to a union
o ce; and violations recorded by the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration.

The map also tracks local economic and demographic factors such
as the unemployment rate in a store's location and the percentage of
families in the area living below the poverty line.

The stores' scores on each metric are fed into the heat map, which is
a geographic illustration of the United States peppered with red
spots to indicate high-risk Whole Foods stores.

The heat map reveals how Whole Foods is using technology and
data to help manage its vast workforce of more than 95,000
employees.

It also provides a rare look into corporate labor-tracking activities, a

common practice among large companies but one rarely discussed
publicly.

A statement on the map describes its purpose as speci c to

monitoring unionization among its employees, which the company
calls team members.

"The [Team Member] Relations Heatmap is designed to identify

stores at risk of unionization," the statement reads. "This early
identi cation enables resources to be funneled to the highest need
locations, with the goal of mitigating risk by addressing challenges
early before they become problematic."

Whole Foods did not respond to questions about what sort of

resources are funneled to the "highest need" stores.

In a statement provided to Business Insider, the company said an

"overwhelming majority" of its employees prefer a "direct
relationship" with the company over union representation.

"Whole Foods Market recognizes the rights of our Team Members to

decide whether union representation is right for them," the
company said. "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,"
the statement continued. "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 bene ts,
and competitive compensation, including an industry-leading
starting minimum wage of $15/hour."

How Whole Foods calculates a store's risk

of unionizing

Business Insider/Hayley Peterson

Whole Foods uses the heat map and related scores to determine
where stores must take action to address risks, according to the
documents and people familiar with the map.

Overall, higher scores indicate lower risks of unionization.

The map monitors three main areas: "external risks," "store risks,"
and "team member sentiment."

Some of the factors that contribute to external risk scores include

local union membership size; distance in miles between the store
and the closest union; number of charges led with the National
Labor Relations Board alleging labor-law violations; and a "labor
incident tracker," which logs incidents related to organizing and
union activity.

Other external factors include the percentage of families within the

store's zip code that fall below the poverty line and the local
unemployment rate.

Whole Foods' heat map says lower rates of

racial diversity increase unionization risks

The second group of metrics in the scoring system, called store risks,
aren't a direct cause of risk "but can predispose a store to risk,"
according to documents.

Store-risk metrics include average store compensation, average total

store sales, and a "diversity index" that represents the racial and
ethnic diversity of every store. Stores at higher risk of unionizing
have lower diversity and lower employee compensation, as well as
higher total store sales and higher rates of workers' compensation
claims, according to the documents.

The third area of metrics is "team member sentiment." These

metrics, which include items like employee loyalty and
engagement, are "designed to be the most actionable," the
documents show.

The "sentiment" data is pulled from internal employee surveys and

"is likely to be the rst score to improve based on your e orts."

These measures assess employees' feedback on the quality and

safety of their work environment and whether they feel supported
and respected, among other things.

Tracking potential unionization is common

among large companies

With the heat map, Whole Foods appears to be trying to identify and
address circumstances ripe for employee unrest that could lead to
attempts to form a union.

This type of workforce analysis is something large companies have

done for decades, albeit without some of the technology available
today that can automate parts of that process, according to labor
experts.

Walmart, for example, hired an intelligence-gathering service from

Lockheed Martin and ranked stores by labor activity when it faced
protests eight years ago organized by the union-backed activist
group OUR Walmart, according to a 2015 Bloomberg Businessweek
story citing thousands of court documents.

"Employers spend millions of dollars a year to hire union avoidance

advisers to see how susceptible they are to their workers
organizing," Celine McNicholas, the director of government a airs
and labor counsel for the Economic Policy Institute, said.

Why some companies closely track union

activity

"A preponderance of the business community [has] a total allergy to

unionization," Wilma Liebman, who served on the National Labor
Relations Board under Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton, said.

Unions give employees more bargaining power over things such as

wages and health bene ts, she said. They could also increase the
chances of employee strikes, which can disrupt business.

Companies "don't want anything that's going to interfere with their

autonomy and their ability to act unilaterally" and "sometimes
they're convinced [unions] are going to cost them more than they
can a ord," Liebman said.

Research shows unionized workers tend to earn higher wages and

are more likely to have access to certain bene ts like employer-
sponsored healthcare.

Critics of unions argue, however, that the organizations can harm

companies economically, forcing layo s or job outsourcing, and that
they don't have workers' best interests in mind.

That's why some companies monitor their workers to try to address

any signs that employees might organize head-on.

US labor law protects employees' right to unionize. It's legal,

however, for a company to monitor and address labor organizing as
long as it doesn't threaten, coerce, restrain, or interfere with e orts
to unionize.

Overall, US companies spent at least $100 million on consulting

services for anti-union campaigns between 2014 and 2017, according
to data from the Economic Policy Institute based on disclosure
forms led with the US Department of Labor.

McNicholas said using a data-powered heat map to monitor for

unionization risks "is just the next frontier of employer opposition to
unions."

If you are an employee of Whole Foods and have information to share,

contact this reporter at hpeterson@businessinsider.com.

SEE ALSO: Costco, Walmart, and Target are barred from

selling items like clothing and toys in some parts of the US.
Here's what's considered 'nonessential' and where. »

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