Not quite doublespeak, but forced language, like how "shellshock" was changed to "battle fatigue" and then to "post-traumatic stress disorder" (George Carlin has a great set about that).
But it's really effective in changing the mindset. You're not just an employee or a laborer, you're a partner, we're in this together!
Or another take on it; in Scrum, during the retrospective, you don't list things that were shit, you list things that could be improved. This immediately puts you into a different mindset, not of things that are bad (and thus immutable), but how you can improve things. Thinking in solutions instead of problems.
Or in internet terms: removing the dislike button. Only positive enforcement, no negatives. Negatives are bad for business and conversion.
PTSD is a better term because it can come from a wide variety of sources, many of which have nothing to do with war or combat. It also recognises the disorder part explicitly (most people who go through traumatic experiences don't end up with PTSD) as well as its place in time (after the trauma, not during it, which is very unclear with 'shellshock' or 'battle fatigue').
Before employees, partners, and associates it was workers. All part of the same old euphemism treadmill. "Städare" (cleaner) becoming "lokalvårdare" (environment caretaker) is a personal favourite from my childhood in Sweden. Same darn job and pay; that fancy new name cost your employer nothing other than a new badge of course.
Just to be clear: we use those exact English words in German. "Manager" in this case is just a euphemism although normally "Manager" is used exactly as in English (i.e. someone overseeing other people).
The ostensible root of it is about maintaining the theoretical legal division between contractors and first-party employees while still addressing them as the same group. The cohort of 'Amazon associates' includes for example seasonal contract workers and contracted delivery agents, neither of whom are (generally speaking) directly employed by Amazon.
