Amazon spent more than $26 million on anti-union labor consultants in 2025, according to new federal disclosure forms, marking the largest such expenditure by a U.S. employer reported in a single year.
The filings with the U.S. Labor Department show Amazon hired at least six firms that specialize in helping corporations defeat union organizing campaigns. The company issued hundreds of payments throughout the year, averaging more than $56,000 apiece — higher than the average annual wage of one of its warehouse workers.
Asked about the hefty tab, an Amazon spokesperson told HuffPost the company was merely trying to counter bad information coming from labor unions.
“Last year, the Teamsters and other groups worked really hard and spent a lot of money to spread misinformation,” the spokesperson, Eileen Hards, said in an email. “We think it’s important that our teammates and partners understand the truth, so we’ve continued to work with experts in the field who are able to share objective facts about what it actually means to have an organization like the Teamsters speak for you.”
Matt McQuaid, a Teamsters spokesperson, said Amazon would rather pay “third-party interlopers to threaten, intimidate, and harass” workers than bargain with a union.
“The malicious union busters this trillion-dollar behemoth hires have been found guilty of violating federal law on numerous occasions, and the millions of dollars that it spends on these shameless hacks is money wasted ― over 10,000 Amazon workers have organized with the Teamsters,” McQuaid said in an email.
“If anyone says workers at Amazon aren’t interested in organizing, I think those numbers show otherwise.”
– Bob Funk, LaborLab
Amazon has spent years battling union campaigns by the Teamsters, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and other labor groups. Early on, much of that organizing focused on the retail behemoth’s fulfillment centers, where workers pick, pack and ship orders, but has since spread to its distribution hubs and subcontracted driver network.
U.S. employers routinely hire “persuaders” to help convince their employees not to unionize. As HuffPost detailed in a 2023 series, companies typically pay more than $1,000 a day for each consultant’s services, often through shadowy limited-liability companies — expenditures that both the employers and consultants are required by law to report to the Labor Department.
Amazon has racked up some eye-popping tabs in years past — $14 million in 2022, nearly $13 million in 2024 — but none as big as last year’s. It can’t be known for certain if the $26.3 million for 2025 is the largest by a company ever, since the totals are self-reported to the Labor Department and many employers fail to disclose them.
Bob Funk, the executive director of LaborLab, a nonprofit that tracks the anti-union consulting industry, described the Amazon spending as “huge.” He also noted that the persuader work captured in the federal filings typically does not include spending on labor attorneys who fight union campaigns through the National Labor Relations Board, which is often more expensive.
“It’s at least the biggest report that’s ever come in, but it’s probably just a fraction of what they’ve spent” on the overall campaign, Funk said. “If anyone says workers at Amazon aren’t interested in organizing, I think those numbers show otherwise.”
Workers at Amazon’s JFK8 fulfillment center in New York City made history in 2022 when they voted to join the Amazon Labor Union, which later affiliated with the Teamsters. But four years later, Amazon still has not bargained with the union, arguing at the labor board and in federal court that the union’s win was illegitimate.
Connor Spence, the president of the ALU, told supporters in an email earlier this week that organizing Amazon was “the greatest challenge facing our labor movement today.”
“Amazon’s greed, surveillance, and speed-hungry algorithms are models that corporations across industries are seeking to emulate for profit,” Spence said.
This story has been updated with comment from the Teamsters.