Of course, and with good reasons. Before you wrote your comment, did you stop to think why people work inside Amazon's warehouses if the working conditions are so oppressive?
It's because the alternatives are still worse. And now they'll lose those jobs and have to face those alternatives.
Of course those of us who perceive this as an injustice will complain. The complaint is not directed at Amazon only, it's at the injustice of systemic oppression of the working class.
Can I just clarify: you're saying that Amazon, despite offering jobs which are (apparently) less bad than other alternatives, are participating in systemic oppression of the working class?
In your view, what should Amazon do to not systemically oppress the working class?
Some people believe, much like there's a minimum wage and below that you're not allowed to hire someone (even if both employer and employee consent and it's market rate) and minimum safety standards (again, irrespective of mutual consent and market conditions) there should be minimum levels of working conditions.
This what interests me (genuinely - I'm not just trolling here!)
If an employer has need for employees to perform a specific type of manual physical work --be it 'picking' for Amazon, or building houses, or working in agriculture, or whatever-- and they pay market rates, and adhere to health-and-safety laws... what other reasonable working conditions must be met?
For example, it's difficult to build houses without exposure to inclement weather.
Googling 'Amazon working conditions' produces a variety of reports.
Regular ambulance call-outs. Timed toilet breaks. Top floors at very high temperatures in summer. Workers doing heavy lifting complaining of back pain. Mandatory overtime of 60 hours a week. Performance targets calibrated for the young and healthy meaning pregnant women get fired for underperforming. Firing people for taking sick leave, even with a doctor's note. Wasting doctors' time by forcing employees to get doctors' notes for trivial ailments. Firing workers automatically without human intervention.
All of these would be unusual in a white-collar job; the biggest complaint I have at work is when the free bean-to-cup coffee machine breaks down and only instant coffee is on offer.
Aside from wages, it sounds like you agree with the sentiment of 'minimum working conditions', just perhaps disagree on the specifics of what that means.
I don't disagree - I really don't know what standard Amazon (in fact, all employers) are being held to here.
And I see a major challenge (logical and practical) for employers whose business requires employees to perform tasks that others find unacceptable, or "inhumane", but which are legal according to H&S standards.
Yes, I am saying precisely that. The key word here is "systemic". It doesn't mean that "Amazon is systemically oppressing the working class", as you put it in your second question. It means that Amazon participates in a larger system that oppresses the working class. It follows that Amazon cannot, on its own, completely eliminate that oppression. That, however, does not mean that there's nothing Amazon can do to make things better.
Others in this thread have already given a few examples and explanations of what is wrong with those jobs, as they are now. Much has also been written and reported about it. All in all, there's not much I feel the need to add to that.
Instead, I would like to point out that systemic oppression that is tightly entangled with economy is not a new thing that Amazon invented and that humanity is facing all of a sudden. A few examples would be child labor, sex tourism and drug cultivation. We all want to get rid of those, but history has shown that trying to do so in the most direct way possible only makes things worse. Nobody's arguing that we should stop trying, just that the solution is not as straightforward as most people imagine.
Sorry, I had limited time to type out that particular comment, so I didn't have the time to place a footnote there that would offer a more nuanced view.
No, we don't all want to get rid of drug cultivation. We do all want to ensure that substance abuse doesn't affect our lives and our families. Of course, that's a vague sentiment and it's hard to get everyone to agree on the specifics of what it means. That didn't stop certain politicians from exploiting that and manipulating general opinion and passing laws and foreign policies that ended up creating a whole lot of suffering for a whole lot of people in different parts of the world.
As a result, there's a whole lot of systemic oppression involved in drug cultivation these days. Unlike child labor, it's not the drug cultivation itself that we should strive to get rid of, but that doesn't negate my original point, which is that just trying to solve the problem in the most direct way possible is going to make things worse.
If you think about it, the other two examples I gave can also be adapted to become something that isn't pernicious in and of itself. If you legalize prostitution and make it a safe profession that adults can choose, instead of resorting to out of necessity, then sex tourism isn't necessarily something you want to get rid of. Similarly, if my kid wants to mow neighborhood lawns to get some money or sell lemonade or babysit other kids, that's not the kind of child labor we're trying to get rid of.
Going back to the topic of drug cultivation, I would recommend reading "Lacrónica" by Martín Caparrós. In one of the chapters, he describes the situation in Bolivia in 1991. One of the many things that fascinated me in his account was the fact that, at that time, a farmer could get 100-150 bolivianos (local currency) for a hand-carried load of coca leaves or 1 boliviano for a hundred oranges. That meant that, to make the same amount of money for one load of coca, a farmer would have to sell 15,000 oranges and there's no way -- even if there's enough demand -- to carry 15,000 oranges in one trip.
I mention this because I think it's a fascinating insight into the systemic oppression I've been talking about. These farmers were not getting rich off their drug cultivation. On the contrary, they lived in quite precarious conditions and they had to cultivate coca leaves to be able to feed themselves and their families.
So yeah, maybe we don't all want get rid of all drug cultivation, but we definitely want to get rid of it in its present form.
I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that co-ops are supposedly more profitable than autocratic workplaces. Co-ops still compete in the marketplace but they distribute ownership and profit among the workers in a democratic fashion, typically on the basis of their contribution.
The parent comment asked how Amazon could stop systematically oppressing their workers, not how workers could stop being the targets of systematic oppression. Amazon could accomplish this goal by distributing corporate ownership among the workers and giving them a democratic platform to make decisions about their workplace in an egalitarian way.
I guess (economics aside) that a wage increase is a simple concept to grasp.
But I'm interested how Amazon's working conditions are "inhumane"? I've read about 'picking' jobs which require lifting, bend, and walking for many miles per shift, but this doesn't seem more inhumane than many other jobs requiring manual labour? And I've read about complaints about the rate of workplace accidents (this was highlighted in the UK recently) but it's hard to tease out more details here.
> During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn't quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.
> An emergency room doctor in June called federal regulators to report an "unsafe environment" after he treated several Amazon warehouse workers for heat-related problems. The doctor's report was echoed by warehouse workers who also complained to regulators, including a security guard who reported seeing pregnant employees suffering in the heat.
Thanks - that's a great example. As a non-expert, I'm frankly amazed that such working conditions aren't already outlawed by health and safety regulations.
However, to be specific, it does seem somewhat geography- and time-dependent - i.e. it's not so much a standard condition experienced when working for Amazon, and so perhaps not an example of Amazon's warehouse job conditions being consistently "inhumane".
It is, however, an interesting example that would support that Amazon perhaps cares too little for its workers, and/or is insufficiently responsive to changing conditions in safeguarding their well-being.
In many cases and locations they are illegal conditions.
It however is [maybe] [some] company practice to push the boundaries as far as they can be pushed, as a cultural motive. Often pressure from the top down, not with explicit instruction, but implicit general direction that X needs to be done to meet Y requirement. "Shit rolls downhill" as the saying goes. Then it just happens that Joe on the end of the line doesn't get to take a washroom break for 8 hours, every day—and if Joe were to ask about it, Joe would be fired, and Joe [like most] can't afford to be fired.
I've seen it in other industries. It's not unique to Amazon. Amazon's notoriety comes from its size and ubiquity in North American life.
The question is whether that's an achievable thing, or whether people will always complain that whatever Amazon does is a non-living wage and inhumane working conditions.
It's because the alternatives are still worse. And now they'll lose those jobs and have to face those alternatives.
Of course those of us who perceive this as an injustice will complain. The complaint is not directed at Amazon only, it's at the injustice of systemic oppression of the working class.