
Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer - minimaxir
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dm8bx/leaked-amazon-memo-details-plan-to-smear-fired-warehouse-organizer-hes-not-smart-or-articulate
======
barryrandall
This Vice story is just part of the smear campaign.

Strategy: “We should spend the first part of our response strongly laying out
the case for why the organizer’s conduct was immoral, unacceptable, and
arguably illegal, in detail, and only then follow with our usual talking
points about worker safety,” Zapolsky wrote. “Make him the most interesting
part of the story, and if possible make him the face of the entire
union/organizing movement.”

As applied: “I was frustrated and upset that an Amazon employee would endanger
the health and safety of other Amazonians by repeatedly returning to the
premises after having been warned to quarantine himself after exposure to
virus Covid-19,” he said. “I let my emotions draft my words and get the better
of me.”

~~~
anigbrowl
_“I let my emotions draft my words and get the better of me.”_

What a pathetic excuse from the General Counsel of one of the world's most
powerful firms when caught engaging in employee retaliation. This isn't
acceptable from _any_ lawyer.

~~~
throwanem
Lifting it from one of my comments downthread:

Better to make the world's worst excuse than lie in a way that'll instantly be
revealed in discovery for any case that comes of this.

The surprise is that he let himself be reached for comment at all. Between
that and the "yeah, I sure goofed it, huh?" style of what he said when he was,
I wouldn't be too astonished to see a golden handshake eventuate in the
fullness of time.

------
choward
All I wanted to do was read the memo and I couldn't find the link. I'm not
sure if I missed it or what but this is a common problem I run into on "news"
sites. They quote (often out of context) parts of something but give no links
to the actual source.

~~~
throwawaysea
That's very much by design, in order to paint a certain picture, generate
outrage, and ultimately clicks. Recall when the James Damore story was
breaking? Many outlets like Motherboard (owned by Vice, authors of this story)
circulated quotes and even modified documents that didn't show the full list
of research references quoted by Damore, in an attempt to paint a certain
picture.

Unfortunately this is the low bar set by a lot of modern journalism. We need a
way out of it back to neutral, factual reporting.

~~~
DubiousPusher
> Unfortunately this is the low bar set by a lot of modern journalism. We need
> a way out of it back to neutral, factual reporting.

Creating fact focused journalism is a laudible goal but I'd be curious of what
specific time in history you think that this was generally the case?

~~~
downerending
Not OP, but it was my impression that quality journalism was generally the
case in the 1980s (in the US at least). What I was reading then certainly
seemed to be. Separation of church and state was taken very seriously.

These days, you can't start with the assumption that a story is written to J
standards. Rather, you need to start with the assumption that it's pushing
narrative, and hope to be surprised.

~~~
DubiousPusher
I think you should consider the possibility that the news wasn't necessarily
any better just more people had faith in a few sources such as broadcast news
and national papers, leading to less contention of the facts.

~~~
downerending
There definitely was bias then, but it was far more limited (with a few
scandalous exceptions). As an example, TV news couldn't strongly push an
agenda lest they risk losing their broadcast license. Mixing church and state
at the NYT was a great way to get fired.

More personally, I took a J class during this period and wrote for a school
newspaper. The instructor talked about J standards the way NRA instructors
talk about gun safety--it was practically a religion.

These days, if you want facts, you have to plumb the cesspools of the right
and the left and work it out for yourself.

~~~
DubiousPusher
You really don't think they teach the same high-minded stuff in journalism
classes these days? I would bet you that if you sat in on meetings at the NYT
or broadcast news outlets you would hear the exact same kind of intent as you
attribute to them in yesteryear.

I could be wrong but I think the far bigger difference from then to today is
not the quality of the journalism out of mainstream outlets but that the
plethora of outlets available has removed the necessity of consensus myth
making. Instead of a collected national myth that Americans share they can now
choose their own myth.

They used to have to bend their views somewhat towards the major news because
people seek to resolve their cognitive dissonance. Now they can change the
channel. As an example, my parents are conservative and when Walter Cronkite
criticized the Vietnam War and journalists put direct images of the conflict
on TV they praised that. Yet when mainstream news which had generally backed
the war in Iraq began to report on things going wrong there my parents were
livid. When news outlets began reporting on soldiers dying and reading the
names of the dead they were even angrier. Nevermind that the news was unable
to air the kinds of direct footage of war they had in the 60s because the
military had become much savier about the kinds of situations they let
reporters into.

I think major news had almost the exact same, pro establishment, upper middle
class ivy league bias it has today. I just think it's easier to confirm a
contrary opinion. If Fox News existed in the sixties I think it would've run
with slander stories about MLK for example and might've hampered Civil Rights.
But they didn't exist and general regard for MLK as a hero became the default
myth.

Again, I could be wrong but I think it's a perspective worth putting up
against the common narrative.

~~~
downerending
I'm not sure. Simple mechanics like writing a good lede or headline seem to
have almost disappeared.

And it seems to have become acceptable (on both left and right) for a news
room to try to "get" a sitting President that they don't like, even if the
result is sloppy journalism.

My impressions is that serious retractions (or worse, serious errors without
retractions) are far more common now than thirty years ago.

As for MLK, even knowing what we do now, I still consider him a hero. But
yeah, journalistic coverage of him back then was pretty uncritical.

------
ahelwer
The quote from Zapolsky is especially funny, because it exactly follows the PR
strategy outlined in the leak notes the paragraph prior. What an incredibly
fake, dishonest person. Not really the best candidate to be calling a union
organizer "not smart, not articulate".

~~~
emmelaich
Funny thing, people using the word "articulate" are generally misusing it!

They mean _eloquent_ , not "articulate".

~~~
thu2111
articulate: "Expressing oneself easily in clear and effective language"

That meaning is fine. What makes you think Zapolsky is wrong?

As far as I can tell this guy is a freaking PR genius. He managed to turn a
leak into another chance to ram home his message.

The entire Vice article is ridiculous. People trying to organise a union smear
their employers all the time, it's rather inherent in the task. Employers
smearing back is now shocking behaviour? Double standards are rife.

------
j4nt4b
What are the legal implications for Amazon from these revelations? I already
know it's illegal to discourage union activity, but I'm curious about how this
evidence affects the situation.

~~~
binarymax
If admissible, this may be evidence in a wider case for a labor law violation.
The NY Atty General was notably unhappy about what had transpired:
[https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824423595/new-york-
attorney-g...](https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824423595/new-york-attorney-
general-seeks-investigation-over-fired-amazon-warehouse-worker)

...Until events unfold more, we cannot speculate as to the charges (if any)
will be brought against Amazon.

~~~
imglorp
NYAG also called for NLRB to weigh in, which isn't going to happen. They've
been offlined at the worst time.

[https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/nlrb-suspends-unionizing-
am...](https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/nlrb-suspends-unionizing-amid-
covid-19-crisis/)

------
MattGrommes
Amazon really could be just as big as they are without going down the Walmart
route of being actively shitty / evil. It sucks that they're choosing not to
do that.

~~~
gentleman11
It’s why I cancelled my prime a few months back

~~~
CaptainZapp
It's why I never shopped at Amazon and don't plan to ever do it.

The exception was in the very beginning a few books. After they apruptly
changed their privacy policy that did it for me.

------
creddit
I know that that's the title of the article but I read the article and came
away mostly thinking nothing was all that bad. Is it because the notes said
the organizer isn't eloquent or smart that there is reason to be upset?

~~~
inerte
Not because they said the organizer isn't eloquent or smart, but because
Amazon wants to make this person the face of the movement.

They're trying to make the whole movement look dumb by proxy, or that anyone
who joined the movement is dumb because they're following a dumb guy. The
public PR angle is that only a dumb stupid babbling person would deny the
goodness that Amazon does for its employees and try to organize a walkout.

I think it's interesting the contrast with the SVP who said he let his
emotions got the better of him. If the union guy says something not-smart,
he's dumb and the whole movement is dumb. If the SVP says something not-smart,
he was just trying to protect the workers.

~~~
malandrew
How is this any different than the liberal media making Trump the voice of
conservatives in the 2016? (which backfired spectacularly and led to his rise
and eventual win in the election).

Before liberals downvote me. Conservative media does this too. In fact,
journalism these days regardless of political views is riddled with making
someone look bad to score cheap points. One of the most toxic more recent
developments is taking particularly unflattering still images from high
definition video to present someone as dumb, stupid, angry or any of the
myriad emotions one might present in the course of existing while filmed.

Making your opponent look bad is sadly par for the course pretty much
everywhere these days from politics to corporate PR to social media debates on
facebook and twitter. Heck, you see it here on HN too these days. Certainly
far more than in the past.

~~~
inerte
It is no different. All communication is biased, and everybody has an angle.
It is the joy of being a thinking social animal :)

------
gentleman11
I worked warehouse and factory jobs once. The good ones are unbelievably
better and safer than the bad ones. I feel bad for everyone who was not able
to find one of the good ones

------
brnt
Ah, Amazon. Classy, as always.

I'm wasn't counting, but I must be close to a 3 year no-Amazon streak. Who's
with me?

~~~
Der_Einzige
What do you expect when the CEO is a _literal vampire_ for the purpose of
staying young.

It was fucking horrifying reading up on that practice. It freaks me out to
even type out this stuff but it's all true.

~~~
meowface
If I could afford it, and if it really work, I'd be a vampire, too. Pay some
young people to donate a bit of their blood to a facility, get a transfusion,
and you might retain your youth for longer, with a longer quantity of life and
longer + higher quality of life? I'm below 30 now, but I'd sign up for such a
thing without hesitation even if it bankrupted me - if it truly works and is
safe.

Of course it'll be many years or decades before we have any real clarity on
that, but if it works, and if it's a negligible, non-risky amount of blood
donated by each person which also isn't risky for the recipient, and if it can
be afforded, it really feels very ignorant not to sign up, to me. They just
need to lower the costs so ordinary people can easily partake as well, not
just super wealthy people.

~~~
yaitsyaboi
Wait, is this real? It seems deeply weird to me. I think they have a carve out
for plasma, but surely selling your literal blood is illegal? If not, why
can't people sell organs? I think this just introduces a sort of inequality
that even American society can't stomach.

~~~
meowface
Yes, it's real. And yes, it's plasma, not blood. (It's just more
sensationalistic to call it blood because then you get the vampire analogies
and "blood boys" from the Silicon Valley show. I find it amusing, personally.)

Obviously giving away an organ is far more health-adverse than giving away a
small amount of plasma. Unfortunately, lots of people already do donate plasma
in exchange for money because they desperately need the money, and that's just
for plasma that goes to sick people. In my opinion, if rich people are
offering those same plasma donors 10x or more than the amount they'd get from
donating to a typical blood bank, then it's at least a big improvement over
the current situation. And hopefully they put limits and ID checks in place to
ensure people never donate above a certain amount of plasma per day/week/month
and risk their health.

Hopefully we'll one day be able to grow or synthesize the youth-preserving
compounds in the plasma without requiring the donors.

------
jshevek
I'd have a lot more faith in this story if I could see the memo for myself.
Vice is not above twisting people's words and taking them out of context.

------
thosmos
We the customers can exert influence on its ethics and character by engaging
in a consumption strike. Put your money where your ethics are.

[https://cancelprime.com](https://cancelprime.com)

------
meowface
>You ideally want to take measures to reduce the likelihood of a given
recipient seeing anyone else's copy and thus having a chance to spot the
variance, but there are ways to do that

How, exactly? If you know someone else received what you believe to be the
same document, what's the disincentive?

Is it mostly a matter of attempting to not give away any indication of who
else may have received it, so that no one knows who could be a candidate to
compare with? Or including some amount of explicitly-marked data specific to
the recipient which they somehow would have difficulty censoring before
sharing?

------
ipsocannibal
Called it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22740540](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22740540)

------
sct202
I wonder if Amazon is throwing Zapolsky under the bus.

~~~
ignoramceisblis
Ever the victim.

He threw himself under the bus.

------
jmull
I don't really see a problem here. It's not smearing, just PR strategizing.
They think Smalls is going to hurt himself and his cause and they want to let
him do that. (If he really did break 14-day isolation early it's going to work
too.)

------
Zooper
Damage control really ate these comments.

------
jdkee
As I have said elsewhere, Amazon needs to have the full force of anti-trust
law thrown at them and be broken up.

------
voz_
Bezos and Amazon are examples of the worst parts of our modern take on
capitalism. Shame on them.

~~~
Smoosh
You might like to read this opinion article:
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/01/amazon...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/01/amazon-
coronavirus-new-york-chris-smalls-dismissed)

------
throwawaysea
This article's title is sensationalist. Based on the article's content itself,
there doesn't seem to be anything in here about "smearing" at all.

Definition from
[https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/smear...](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/smearing):
"to publicly accuse someone of something unpleasant, unreasonable, or unlikely
to be true in order to harm their reputation"

Second definition from [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/thesaurus/smearing](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/thesaurus/smearing): "the making of false statements that damage
another's reputation "

From the article itself, which quotes meeting notes written ostensibly by
"Amazon General Counsel David Zapolsky":

> “He’s not smart, or articulate, and to the extent the press wants to focus
> on us versus him, we will be in a much stronger PR position than simply
> explaining for the umpteenth time how we’re trying to protect workers,”

This statement from the notes is not accusing the former employee in question
of anything, and it is not making false statements about him either. It is
expressing an opinion. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Furthermore, this article and others from Vice, Vox, Huffington Post, and
others are proving why Amazon does not want to explain for the "umpteenth
time" what they are doing in response to the virus. There is only so much that
can be done within the confines of a physical operation like an Amazon
warehouse, and it is crucial that online stores keep operating at this time,
so that shoppers stay home.

And yet, all these articles make it seem like Amazon has done nothing. In
actuality, apart from providing industry leading wages for warehouse workers,
Amazon has increased baseline pay, overtime pay, and enacted numerous
reasonable changes to alter the operations of their warehouse. Vice buries one
of the most interesting bits, which is how Amazon has been trying to get PPE
but has had difficulties:

> Zapolsky’s notes imply the company’s attempts to purchase N95 masks from
> China fell through. “China has deemed N95 masks as ‘strategic,’” Zapolsky
> wrote. “They’re keeping them for optionality. They also want to use them for
> ‘diplomacy.’ The masks in China that we thought we had probably got
> redirected by profiteers.”

Even the "protests" outside Amazon's warehouses in response to this news story
are overblown. For instance [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-fires-chris-
smalls-walko...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-fires-chris-smalls-
walkout-staten-island-new-york-warehouse/) notes that although activists
claimed there were 50 employees protesting, the actual count was 15, and only
9 of those were Amazon employees. Yet mainstream left-leaning media keeps
amplifying this story.

In actuality, it appears Amazon has been continuously attempting to improve
working conditions, and were finally able to get masks based on orders they
placed weeks ago - well before the recent social media / left-leaning
journalists' attacks on Amazon began. See
[https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/02/amazon-begins-running-
temp...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/02/amazon-begins-running-temperature-
checks-and-will-provide-surgical-masks-at-warehouses/) for more on that:

> Amazon has already described some precautions it’s been taking, including
> mandatory paid 14-day quarantines for employees who test positive, as well
> as increased cleaning and sanitation efforts of facilities and
> infrastructure. The new measures to be introduced next week include taking
> temperatures of employees at the entrances to warehouses, with any
> individuals with a fever of more than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit to be sent
> home, where they’ll have to have three consecutive days without fever to
> return to work. Employees will also be provided with surgical masks starting
> next week, the company says, once it receives shipments of orders of
> “millions” placed a few weeks ago.

Lastly, everyone seems to ignore that this employee violated a direct work
order to not come on site, because he had been in contact with someone who
tested positive for COVID-19. Regardless of what people speculate about
Amazon's reasons for firing this person, no one seems to be disputing that
this employee violated a requirement to not come to the work site. That is
clearly grounds for termination, irrespective of other considerations.

So can we please stop sharing these low quality articles over and over on
Hacker News?

~~~
Pfhreak
> Lastly, everyone seems to ignore that this employee violated a direct work
> order to not come on site...

Keep asking why. Why was this worker ordered to stay home. Was it because he
had a brief, 5 minute contact with a covid-19 patient? Other news outlets say
that Smalls was unique in his being sent home.

Or maybe was it because he was pushing for a union and the company wanted to
find a way to keep him out. Given the article, the latter seems FAR more
likely.

~~~
glitcher
The arguments that Smalls was singled out and that it was already 18 days past
his contact seem like notable things to look into further.

The "5 minute" contact argument doesn't make any sense to me, and only works
to weaken his case. To my knowledge there is no minimum time requirement for
virus transmission, so this argument comes across as naive.

~~~
kevingadd
The "5 minute" contact argument essentially boils down to "on that basis the
entire facility should be shut down". For some reason it wasn't, and only the
union organizer was sent home. How strange.

If five minutes of exposure is really that big of a threat - perhaps it is? -
then why does Amazon care about their employees so much that they waited weeks
to act and then only sent a tiny number of people home?

------
claudeganon
I know many good people work on tech at Amazon and that treating low-wage
workers, organizing to defend their health and safety this way, is not
something you all would embrace.

Now is your chance to organize and prove this is true. Google employees did it
and so can you.

------
jseip
The definition of smear: "to damage the reputation of (someone) by false
accusations; slander." Where is the 'smear ' here? Amazon has not made, or
planned to make, false accusations against this worker.

~~~
claudeganon
I listened to an interview with Smalls. He seemed perfectly intelligent and
articulate to me. Demonstrably more than these people or his bosses, who put
his coworkers in danger, while he’s trying to protect them.

It’s thus hard not to see attempts to frame him as “not smart” or “ not
articulate” as classist and racist dog whistles intended to discredit a
courageous man.

~~~
rijoja
Racist dog whistle give me a break. All of this paranoia about hidden racists
is just mind blowing. To me it seems as you have a problem with other "races"
_, if you hear "not smart" or "not articulate" and immediately starts thinking
of the color of someones skin.

_ not a term that is scientifically accepted when discussing humans

~~~
claudeganon
Referring to the way working class people talk (and especially working class
black people) in this way is something the rich and powerful have always done
to discredit them. Go read all the blood spilt by right-wing hacks about the
“legitimacy” of AAVE, for example.

If you want to be a credulous dupe and think that the richest man in the world
and his highly-paid PR team don’t understand this history and context, be my
guest.

