Why would you use a work-provided chat app to discuss things the company may not like? For example, do you not expect your employer to know if you're browsing for another job over company provided Internet on company provided laptops?
If they were spying on the guest Wifi, that's another thing.
Maybe because union organizing is protected by law?
It doesn't count as working so Amazon can get away with this as long as they prohibit all non-work conversation, but if they're specifically targeting union organizing then it looks like they're breaking the law:
I'm amused by the implication that they're willing to break the law (specifically forbidding discussion of unions) and inadvertently impede work conversation (forbidding code snippets that include a union type).
Sometimes I wonder where these arguments will lead us if the the technology develops further...
Why would you use work-provided air to transmit voice to discuss things the company may not like at the office? Don't you know they have smart microphones in the walls and use Active Noise Control to 'cancell' any words you say that they don't like?
For example, do you not expect your employer to know if you are thinking about another job while you are using their devices? They track you microscoping eye movement and body language to tell if you are dissatisfied with your job, to tell what products you might want and sell that information to marketing agencies, and they use machine learning to guess with 70% accuracy what you might be thinking about
Employees with Neuralink devices can get $10/month in amazon store credit if they turn on thought monitoring. Thought monitoring will collect keywords like "union", "pay raise", and "slavery labor" to enable precise employee interventions. Breaching the employee guidelines is a serious offense and repeated violations can result in termination. Employees can always find another job after all. :)
You don't even need to go further, just go sideways. Consider the difficulty of Uber or Lyft drivers organizing together. They don't know each other and can't easily interact at work or via work, unless the company chooses to provide a communiction platform.
Even more difficult for Uber and Lyft, since their workplace is distributed there can't be any picket line to cross. All you can do is yell loudly enough on social media that anyone who installs a specific app is a scab.
> Why would you use a work-provided chat app to discuss things the company may not like?
In a digital company like Amazon, I can imagine that it is very hard to reach your co-workers in any other way.
Most likely there will be no public list of email addresses or phone numbers, so what other options do they have if they want to bring up unionizing to their co-workers? Nowadays you cannot just catch people at the factory gate.
