Tech giant Amazon appears to be trying to prevent its workers from unionising in the company’s new Western Sydney warehouse – but it may not be against the law. New South Wales Labor’s industrial relations spokesperson, Adam Serle, said NSW workplace surveillance laws are outdated and have not kept up with advances in technology.

This week it was reported Amazon had published ads for two jobs in its global security operations team for intelligence analysts that would monitor “labour organising threats against the company”.

Within hours of the job postings being reported, Amazon removed the links, and has claimed it was not representative of what the role entails.

“The job post was not an accurate description of the role – it was made in error and has since been corrected,” an Amazon Australia spokeswoman said.

The ad has caused alarm due to its implications for workers in Australia – in particular for the company’s 200,000sq metre western Sydney warehouse due to open at the end of 2021. NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said in June that the warehouse, near Kemp’s Creek, will create 2,000 jobs.

Searle said NSW law was unclear on whether analysts who are sifting through data collected about employees would be in breach of the state’s workplace surveillance laws.

“There is a real question about whether what I will call data mining of the workforce, through observation, would constitute workplace surveillance, or whether workplace surveillance in the law is really simply around literally recording when people are stealing from the tea room and stuff like that,” Searle said.

Workplace surveillance laws vary from state to state. In Victoria, workplace surveillance comes under the Surveillance Devices Act, and prevents cameras or listening devices in workplace bathrooms.

In the ACT the legislation is more broad, and prevents tracking and data surveillance devices, but not listening devices.

In NSW, there is a prohibition on optical surveillance, computer surveillance and tracking surveillance, but data surveillance isn’t covered.

An Open Markets Institute report released this month examined Amazon’s workplace surveillance practices and found the company’s data analysis allowed it to predict which locations were likely to start unionising before they even had the chance to organise.

“Amazon analyses more than two dozen internal and external variables from data collected from a variety of sources, including the percentage of families below the poverty line, a ‘diversity index,’ and team member sentiment, to determine which Whole Foods stores are at a higher risk of unionising,” the report stated.

“Amazon used its collected data to create a heat map, indicating to management the stores that were at a higher risk of unionising.”

Amazon’s spokeswoman said the company “respects its employees’ right to choose to join or not join a union”.

“Amazon maintains an open-door policy that encourages employees to bring their comments, questions, and concerns directly to their management team for discussion and resolution,” she said.

Under Australian law, employers cannot interfere with the rights of workers to join or not join a union.

However, in other jurisdictions, particularly the US, Amazon has been accused of heavy handed tactics in cracking down on labour organising and protests over pay and conditions at its warehouses.

In May, an Amazon vice-president, Tim Bray, resigned in protest at what he called the company’s “chickenshit” decision to fire colleagues in the company’s warehouse division who had highlighted safety issues.

Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market in the US coached managers on how to watch out for warning signs of union activity and to tell possible union members that joining a union is a “roll of the dice”.

Searle is part of a NSW parliamentary inquiry looking into the impact of technology on the future of work, and included in the inquiry’s terms of reference is a review of the workplace surveillance legislation.

Submissions to the inquiry closed on Monday, and Searle said it would be instructive if Amazon were to give evidence to the inquiry.

Peter Lewis, director of the Centre for Responsible Technology, said the ad might be gone but “no one seriously believes it has withdrawn its employee-relations model of using technology to restrict workers’ right to organise.

“While Amazon is new to Australia, we are already seeing a model of obstruction to union involvement in the workplace,” he said.

“As a company that collects mountains of data on worker movement, it is really concerning Amazon are building the capacity to log workplace interactions into their business model.

“It highlights why regulation for workplace surveillance is so important.”

Amazon was approached for comment.