> This move also blindsided higher-tier employees who communicate with warehouse workers on a daily basis, and threatened to impede daily functions for onsite medical and security staff.
This cannot POSSIBLY go wrong in any way, can it? I'm struggling to understand how that could ever have been approved.
Companies make radical and damaging changes like this when the threat of not doing so is existential. Amazon does not feel it can survive being held to standards of basic human rights in handling its employees.
Amazon also just got caught stealing millions of dollars in tips from drivers they're also being sued for paying less than minimum wage.
Amazon would absolutely burn their entire infrastructure to the ground, salt the earth and piss on the ashes before giving an inch of power to their employees that they couldn't take a mile of back at their leisure, a power dynamic which unions would deny them. That's just who they are.
Yes I do, I don't believe Amazon violates basic human rights, at least not on a regular basis, but their business model depends on having the option of getting as close to doing so as the law and market will allow when business needs demand it. And like any large company, they will break laws and occasionally people if the cost/benefit analysis works in their favor.
You are reducing employee mistreatment to a removed from reality statistic. As if staying close to not breaking the law is some kind of Bible scripture that makes it all ok. Lots of horrible things were legal in history and are legal today. Just because a company wants to “survive” doesn’t mean we can’t point out the things that are wrong and push for change. If you want to be cynical why not go the other way and say who cares if Amazon survives. Let someone else fill in that role that will prioritize their people. It’s easy to talk about statistics when you’re not the one at the bottom of this thing you’re so eloquently dismissing
>You are reducing employee mistreatment to a removed from reality statistic. As if staying close to not breaking the law is some kind of Bible scripture that makes it all ok.
No, I'm arguing that corporations aren't moralistic entities, but legalistic entities, and will make decisions based on profit risk versus legal risk instead of morality versus immorality. I never said I thought it was ok.
Amazon pays better than many jobs in their market, and they have a generous health and insurance package. They constantly give training and tutorials about wellness and safety, and they're fastidious about following regulations, sometimes to a Kafkaesque degree. And when no one is looking they'll push you in front of a bus to get to a dime on the sidewalk.
>It’s easy to talk about statistics when you’re not the one at the bottom of this thing you’re so eloquently dismissing
I'm closer to the bottom than you might think. Not everyone here is a SV bubble baby making six figures.
> No, I'm arguing that corporations aren't moralistic entities
But they are, aren't they?
Don't you understand that corporations are a bunch of person organized into a hierarchy?
Why would anyone claim that people working within a hierarchy are free to make any immoral decision because they manage some people but answer to other?
At most, you're only arguing that some hierarchies refuse to respect morals or legalities because no one is held accountable and were found to have zero consequences.
That which they can get away with is the precedent for the new normal, aka acceptable.
Companies like Amazon and Facebook re-write the norms of individual consumer and worker dignities in their favor, and then push to make them global. Because people will dismiss objections to these changes as contrivances.
>Isn't the propensity to violate basic human rights in such a casual and nonchalant way albeit not systematic... Extremely damning and concerning?
Absolutely, and Amazon has some blood on their hands in that regard. But let's not forget that in a capitalist society, incentives start with the consumer. The market doesn't fit for employee quality of life, but consumer quality of life. If people cared as much about labor rights in the US as they do getting their stuff a day earlier and a dollar cheaper, their wallets and their votes would speak for themselves.
>I mean, what is there to say about the sentence "I know they commit crimes that hurt people and society, but not on a regular basis"
You want to know what I really think?
Agriculture and service industries depend on the maintenance of a permanent illegal labor underclass, militias wielding machetes and AK-47s conscript slaves for the mines that supply the world with gemstones and components for the electronics, and those electronics are assembled by children in factories that have no labor laws, but plenty of nets to catch suicides. Every branch of the entertainment industry is lubricated by prostitution and pedophilia. The tech industry exploits neurodivergent people and grinds temp workers and foreign labor into dust to make billionaires out of whatever sociopath can best figure out how to consume the minds, lives and freedoms of the public this week, and it will fight to the death to preserve the ego of a single pedophile apologist and serial harasser rather than be corrupted by the influence of women, people of color and any other marginalized group that would dare take offense, because its puerile morals were founded on and have never matured beyond 4chan.
And then there's the stuff governments get into, legally and with public consent. And then there's the illegal stuff they get away with. And then there's Maude.
What is there to say? For the most part, we're ok with all of it, because we have to be. We wanted these evils, we created them, nurtured them and praised the brutal elegance with which they rent the flesh, and now we're all caught inside the belly of Moloch and there's nothing to do in here but complain about the weather. Hot today, isn't it?
This comment will probably be flagged, and I'm OK with that. I understand.
Yes. With all the stories there has been published over the years about Amazon warehouse working condition "slave camp" is the term that springs to my mind when I hear the word Amazon. Being an Amazon warehouse worker must be hell. That Amazon pays so little in tax only shows, to me, that the company Amazon's only concern is to get money and that they don't care about society or humans.
>With all the stories there has been published over the years about Amazon warehouse working condition "slave camp" is the term that springs to my mind when I hear the word Amazon.
Have you considered that it might be propaganda? Correct me if I'm wrong, but all the employees choose to work at Amazon, right? What are the other jobs like, if people still choose Amazon over the alternatives?
Amazon has been systematically destroying local businesses preventing any alternatives. So low skill workers that used to work for smaller local stores involved in the community now have to work for the replacement. I would bet if there was an alternative people would prefer higher quality of life and pay over the scraps Amazon is willing to share.
Which local businesses does Amazon destroy? That’s a pretty wild accusation. I just visited several places last year before COVID. Pretty much all the businesses that hire warehouse skilled workers are still there. As a matter of fact, most of those places still pay the actual federal minimum wage, not $15/hr with benefits.
This comment you’ve made is propaganda at best and an intentional lie at worst.
Slave camp? That is an extraordinary claim, which requires extraordinary evidence.
>That Amazon pays so little in tax only shows, to me, that the company Amazon's only concern is to get money and that they don't care about society or humans.
Businesses are always going to spend maximum effort to reduce their tax bills. Perhaps instead of an infinite game of cat and mouse we should consider revamping the tax code to eliminate business taxes. We're not getting the money, we likely never will, and because of the corporate taxes we have special capital gains tax rates. Trying to get Amazon to "pay their fair share" is equivalent to pissing into the wind.
A third world country would indeed just run a slave camp. First world countries are more sophisticated and achieve the same result within the legal framework. They do it because they love mental gymnastics. Amazon comes to a 3rd tier town, wipes out competition by undercutting them, becomes the only employer in town and then tells the workers to bend, and they do because Amazon has made sure they have no choice.
MIT has a living wage calculator[0], and in most locations in the US $15/hour is a living wage for a single adult.
Amazon can't alter their wage scale based on your family situation. They aren't even allowed to ask about your family situation, it's a protected class.
There's a phenomenon (which must have a name) where large companies are held to a different standard. We see this with: Amazon (there are doubtless jobs with worse conditions). Tesla (quality problems sure, but there's also some real nit-picking). Apple (class-action lawsuits around the most minor defects). Google (unbelievably clean compared to other companies and ad networks that handle personal data)
I think [1] is related. It seems that the internal tool that was modified was the big company directory. Cutting off employees in different FC's from each other by removing them from the tool seems to be an effort to isolate the unionization contagion. Its pretty stupid, social media exists, employees will still find each other, most of what this does is make every Amazon employee believe in those leadership principles Amazon loves to bandy about a little bit less. Day 2 has arrived.
Disclaimer: First amendment people, I am not saying my opinion is correct, but this is just how I personally feel.
If this will prevent Amazon from becoming overly-political like Google, I am not going to feel too bad about it. They can still chat using Chime/Slack, just don't have full access to emails/phones of everyone in the company. And it doesn't look like it will impact the unionization efforts either, as employees within the same facility can still chat and communicate normally within themselves.
I think the major concern is the motivation behind the change. From the report HR's response to pushback on this change was basically "we don't care what this breaks deal with it, we are not reverting, implement a workaroud, end of discussion". This seems highly unusual for what seems essentially to be a technical change. For starters, why is HR involved at all in this change?
I don't think anyone is claiming this is a pure technical change, not even the HR. The response tone is expected and must have been pre-approved before the change was put in place.
Of course it will affect unionization, that's the #1 sought effect - to silo unionization efforts into individual locations and atomize them.
As for companies becoming "overly political", mega corporations will ALWAYS get involved in politics. The question is whether it's public or in the shadows. The other side is corporations trying to PR their way out of abuses so they can keep a good image and lessen progressive opposition.
Silos are standard in all big organizations, full access is/was the exception in Amazon. Why should it be the corporation's duty to make it easier for employees to organization a union if it's not something that the executives deemed in the best interest of the corporation?
(I am not anti-union per-se at all, you can silence me by downvoting but you'll also be creating your own echo chamber in the process)
> Silos are standard in all big organizations, full access is/was the exception in Amazon. Why should it be the corporation's duty to make it easier for employees to organization a union if it's not something that the executives deemed in the best interest of the corporation?
Nobody's forcing Amazon to not be siloed, but now they are losing a competitive advantage, because this disrupts communication within the company. There's a reason for why its leadership made a conscious choice to not be a siloed firm - and its because silos are less efficient.
It's much like a repressive society that shuts down the internet, because people are using it to organize against the regime. Sure, it's free to do so, but this has negative consequences for its ability to conduct bureaucratic and economic activity.
The difference between a government and Amazon is that Amazon does not have any control over non-work communication channels their employees use - so this move isn't even going to help much.
I don't think they're doing anything out of ideological reasons. Their bonuses and compensation is always tied to their competitive performance. I am sure the higher-ups weighed the potential loss of competitive advantage when making the decision, and given their successful track record, I am inclined to believe it's not going to be as bad as the article is portraying it.
> I am sure the higher-ups weighed the potential loss of competitive advantage when making the decision, and given their successful track record, I am inclined to believe it's not going to be as bad as the article is portraying it.
I'm sure they haven't - and are just reacting in the way that any C-suite American executive reacts to a union forming in their company - by making every attempt, sensible or senseless, to suppress it.
They're the business owners and responsible for their business decisions. I don't think we have the decades of experience they have managing trillion-dollar organizations.
This is the first time I am seeing that many people claiming they're upset because Amazon made a decision they think is bad for its own business.
Senior Executives aren’t the Jedi council or whatever. Someone probably discovered somebody dumping the GAL and the big shots made an emotional decision.
The problem is lying about why a company is taking an action. A lie by omission is still a lie. How do you "Earn Trust" with your employees by taking this action and meeting their concerns with silence? If you think unions are going to be the death of your company then make your case and state when a change is intended to inhibit union organizing. Thats not whats happening according to the article. Is lying standard in all big organizations, and more importantly should it be?
It reminds me of the last Star Trek Voyager when the Borg Queen had to cut off the Borg network to slow down / prevent the spread of the virus from Captain Janeway.
Doesn't apply, not the same conversation. Discussions about limits on spoilers isn't the same as teasing someone for lacking knowledge on the same topic.
It's a spoiler if the enjoyment depends on surprise. It's not a spoiler if the item can be enjoyed for its own sake. Anything you can re-watch/read/see/listen to/etc and still fully enjoy isn't spoilable. Some genres (like mysteries) depend on spoilers. For other genres the unspoilability of a work is often correlated with quality.
It's a spoiler if surprise enhances the enjoyment. If there are works for which that is not the case at all, they cannot be spoiled. I'm not aware of any, are you?
It's factual news and some editorialization. Amazon confirmed they cut off access to some employees. Obviously they'd never state outright that it was done to hinder unionization, but the fact that union formation is incipient is still relevant.
>On the company's internal message boards, employees claimed that Amazon cut off Phonetool access to all L1-L3 workers, which impacted "500,000+" people. But Parmley said the company only pulled the plug on L1 and L99 workers.
This can't go on! Phone Tool awards for all workers!
Now they can't send all 6 of Andy Jassy's assistants important emails surrounding on-going unionization efforts in the retail org. Andy's in the dark, he needs our one-pagers!
it's pretty clear what's going on when HR is involved with a technical issue. We should drop AWS and move to another provider. Hit them where it really hurts.
Seems like a shitty move, but I don't think there is some right employees have to things like this. In fact I would encourage union organizers to avoid communicating on company owned hardware and/or software. Chances are they know or can know what you're saying and to whom.
I am personally not worried. I know that Amazon is a big supporter of diversity, inclusion and progressive values. I think it's probably an innocent misunderstanding.
What's also modern and super interesting is that Amazon (and gang) employs people to surf these very internet forums just to keep their brand clean. They will argue us into circles. Now these are bright people, I'm guessing some of them even have English degrees(or they copy from the ones that do), they probably organize in a slack channel and attack these very threads with misleading info and denial.
It would be great if these sub-humans can actually mention when they are writing for their employer. I'd love it if we can send these info combatants on the next ship to Mars, as test-dummies. Most backwards pieces of humans to exist.
As a minority female who has unpleasant interactions with people sometimes forced upon me, this "PhoneTool" gives me the willies. I cannot imagine being a part of a large company with 1M+ employees and having no control whatsoever over whether or not another employee can "reach out" or not. It is awful and I'm surprised Amazon's legal team hasn't shut it down or at least found ways to limit its reach before now. Many things can be the trigger: differing politics, racial views, etc. Would I want someone who holds views which are damaging to my well-being to have the ability to reach out to me directly? Heck no...and yes I realize the timing is terrible, but from the outside looking in we have no idea why this was done. Something else may have happened that we (the reading, judging public) has no idea of...for all kind of reasons.
I think the fact that it is happening during a stressful time for Amazon could be clouding more important issues. EEs at Google used their company access to spy on co-workers calendars, another ex-Googler was using his access to harass customers of Google products. At 1M EEs, there is bound to be a bad/crazy apple in the bunch and it only takes one incident for this whole thing to become a very bad conversation.
Reddit recently added a glowing dot on profile pictures to alert people when you are online, but reddit has awful moderation and women are constantly getting attacked. I shut that light off as soon as I heard about it. This seems so much worse because there is no escaping work place harassers without quitting.
Attacks against individuals of various racial groups have been in the news alot recently and I could easily see a bad actor using this tool to make real trouble for an unsuspecting person. Hopefully, Amazon keeps it shut down and devises a new way for its EEs to communicate.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] threadThis cannot POSSIBLY go wrong in any way, can it? I'm struggling to understand how that could ever have been approved.
By almost any account Amazon pays well and has good benefits.
Amazon would absolutely burn their entire infrastructure to the ground, salt the earth and piss on the ashes before giving an inch of power to their employees that they couldn't take a mile of back at their leisure, a power dynamic which unions would deny them. That's just who they are.
But yes, the benefits are nice.
No, I'm arguing that corporations aren't moralistic entities, but legalistic entities, and will make decisions based on profit risk versus legal risk instead of morality versus immorality. I never said I thought it was ok.
Amazon pays better than many jobs in their market, and they have a generous health and insurance package. They constantly give training and tutorials about wellness and safety, and they're fastidious about following regulations, sometimes to a Kafkaesque degree. And when no one is looking they'll push you in front of a bus to get to a dime on the sidewalk.
>It’s easy to talk about statistics when you’re not the one at the bottom of this thing you’re so eloquently dismissing
I'm closer to the bottom than you might think. Not everyone here is a SV bubble baby making six figures.
But they are, aren't they?
Don't you understand that corporations are a bunch of person organized into a hierarchy?
Why would anyone claim that people working within a hierarchy are free to make any immoral decision because they manage some people but answer to other?
At most, you're only arguing that some hierarchies refuse to respect morals or legalities because no one is held accountable and were found to have zero consequences.
Companies like Amazon and Facebook re-write the norms of individual consumer and worker dignities in their favor, and then push to make them global. Because people will dismiss objections to these changes as contrivances.
Isn't the propensity to violate basic human rights in such a casual and nonchalant way albeit not systematic... Extremely damning and concerning?
I mean, what is there to say about the sentence "I know they commit crimes that hurt people and society, but not on a regular basis"
Absolutely, and Amazon has some blood on their hands in that regard. But let's not forget that in a capitalist society, incentives start with the consumer. The market doesn't fit for employee quality of life, but consumer quality of life. If people cared as much about labor rights in the US as they do getting their stuff a day earlier and a dollar cheaper, their wallets and their votes would speak for themselves.
>I mean, what is there to say about the sentence "I know they commit crimes that hurt people and society, but not on a regular basis"
You want to know what I really think?
Agriculture and service industries depend on the maintenance of a permanent illegal labor underclass, militias wielding machetes and AK-47s conscript slaves for the mines that supply the world with gemstones and components for the electronics, and those electronics are assembled by children in factories that have no labor laws, but plenty of nets to catch suicides. Every branch of the entertainment industry is lubricated by prostitution and pedophilia. The tech industry exploits neurodivergent people and grinds temp workers and foreign labor into dust to make billionaires out of whatever sociopath can best figure out how to consume the minds, lives and freedoms of the public this week, and it will fight to the death to preserve the ego of a single pedophile apologist and serial harasser rather than be corrupted by the influence of women, people of color and any other marginalized group that would dare take offense, because its puerile morals were founded on and have never matured beyond 4chan.
And then there's the stuff governments get into, legally and with public consent. And then there's the illegal stuff they get away with. And then there's Maude.
What is there to say? For the most part, we're ok with all of it, because we have to be. We wanted these evils, we created them, nurtured them and praised the brutal elegance with which they rent the flesh, and now we're all caught inside the belly of Moloch and there's nothing to do in here but complain about the weather. Hot today, isn't it?
This comment will probably be flagged, and I'm OK with that. I understand.
Have you considered that it might be propaganda? Correct me if I'm wrong, but all the employees choose to work at Amazon, right? What are the other jobs like, if people still choose Amazon over the alternatives?
This comment you’ve made is propaganda at best and an intentional lie at worst.
>That Amazon pays so little in tax only shows, to me, that the company Amazon's only concern is to get money and that they don't care about society or humans.
Businesses are always going to spend maximum effort to reduce their tax bills. Perhaps instead of an infinite game of cat and mouse we should consider revamping the tax code to eliminate business taxes. We're not getting the money, we likely never will, and because of the corporate taxes we have special capital gains tax rates. Trying to get Amazon to "pay their fair share" is equivalent to pissing into the wind.
How do you square this with the huge proportion of their employees who rely on food stamps? [1]
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-on-food-sta...
1) Obama (in the ACA) expands food stamp access by making it available to households with an income of <=133% of the poverty line.
2) food stamp enrollment rises significantly.
3) Progressives, clutching their pearls, cite "high" food stamp enrollment as an indication of the need for more Progressive policies!
That is more than double the US Federal minimum wage.
~$31K per year.
Amazon can't alter their wage scale based on your family situation. They aren't even allowed to ask about your family situation, it's a protected class.
[0]: https://livingwage.mit.edu
1. https://gizmodo.com/inspired-by-alabama-coworkers-amazon-wor...
If this will prevent Amazon from becoming overly-political like Google, I am not going to feel too bad about it. They can still chat using Chime/Slack, just don't have full access to emails/phones of everyone in the company. And it doesn't look like it will impact the unionization efforts either, as employees within the same facility can still chat and communicate normally within themselves.
As for companies becoming "overly political", mega corporations will ALWAYS get involved in politics. The question is whether it's public or in the shadows. The other side is corporations trying to PR their way out of abuses so they can keep a good image and lessen progressive opposition.
(I am not anti-union per-se at all, you can silence me by downvoting but you'll also be creating your own echo chamber in the process)
Nobody's forcing Amazon to not be siloed, but now they are losing a competitive advantage, because this disrupts communication within the company. There's a reason for why its leadership made a conscious choice to not be a siloed firm - and its because silos are less efficient.
It's much like a repressive society that shuts down the internet, because people are using it to organize against the regime. Sure, it's free to do so, but this has negative consequences for its ability to conduct bureaucratic and economic activity.
The difference between a government and Amazon is that Amazon does not have any control over non-work communication channels their employees use - so this move isn't even going to help much.
I don't think they're doing anything out of ideological reasons. Their bonuses and compensation is always tied to their competitive performance. I am sure the higher-ups weighed the potential loss of competitive advantage when making the decision, and given their successful track record, I am inclined to believe it's not going to be as bad as the article is portraying it.
I'm sure they haven't - and are just reacting in the way that any C-suite American executive reacts to a union forming in their company - by making every attempt, sensible or senseless, to suppress it.
This is the first time I am seeing that many people claiming they're upset because Amazon made a decision they think is bad for its own business.
>On the company's internal message boards, employees claimed that Amazon cut off Phonetool access to all L1-L3 workers, which impacted "500,000+" people. But Parmley said the company only pulled the plug on L1 and L99 workers.
Now they can't send all 6 of Andy Jassy's assistants important emails surrounding on-going unionization efforts in the retail org. Andy's in the dark, he needs our one-pagers!
It would be great if these sub-humans can actually mention when they are writing for their employer. I'd love it if we can send these info combatants on the next ship to Mars, as test-dummies. Most backwards pieces of humans to exist.
I think the fact that it is happening during a stressful time for Amazon could be clouding more important issues. EEs at Google used their company access to spy on co-workers calendars, another ex-Googler was using his access to harass customers of Google products. At 1M EEs, there is bound to be a bad/crazy apple in the bunch and it only takes one incident for this whole thing to become a very bad conversation.
Reddit recently added a glowing dot on profile pictures to alert people when you are online, but reddit has awful moderation and women are constantly getting attacked. I shut that light off as soon as I heard about it. This seems so much worse because there is no escaping work place harassers without quitting.
Attacks against individuals of various racial groups have been in the news alot recently and I could easily see a bad actor using this tool to make real trouble for an unsuspecting person. Hopefully, Amazon keeps it shut down and devises a new way for its EEs to communicate.