Amazon drivers “work illegal hours”
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Drivers for agencies contracted by the internet giant told an
undercover reporter they were expected to deliver up to 200
parcels a day.
Amazon Logistics requires agency drivers to be self-employed,
and therefore not entitled to the minimum wage or employment
rights like sick pay or holiday pay.
Tonia Novitz, professor of labour law at Bristol University,
said in her opinion drivers contracted by AHC should not be
classed as self-employed, because they do not determine their
own routes, days of work or rest periods.
In a statement Amazon said: "As independent contractors of our
delivery providers, drivers deliver at their own pace, take
breaks at their discretion, and are able to choose the
suggestion route or develop their own."
Furthermore, you're severely overestimating the mobility of this particular class of workers. For a lot of people, finding another job (or heck, just a job) is not easy.
In many areas, there aren't a plethora of jobs, and changing jobs when living paycheck to paycheck is a massive risk, you could easily lose the roof over your head.
In reference to "coders", yes, a lot of skilled & talented developers give away their time to the companies they are employed by, and derive no significant benefit from it. Employers are in a position of power in many of those relationships, just as you get a job offer is the time at which the playing field is the closest to being level in that industry.
And yes, coders could stand to unionize.
Knowing labor laws in the state you work in is very important. I would recommend that everyone understand what makes an employee exempt and if they qualify.
On the contrary strong labour Laws and high productivity rate in quite a few European countries is a fact ignored conveniently by power greedy moguls. If left unchecked, they will happily move us back gloomy dawn of Industrial Age when it was ok to force workers to toil to death.
Adam smith didn't dream of monopolistic and unregulated market but only one part of his capitalism theory is cherry picked. Unregulated capitalism is a recipe for disaster.
Edit: fixed typos.
In theory that shouldn't get you a downvote but it does, much like reddit where you aren't supposed to get downvoted for an on topic post but you do if people disagree with you.
There has been a lot of talk recently of self re-enforcing echo chambers, ironically enough on here which is one of them.
Bias exists in all communities with no exceptions as far as I can tell.
For what it's worth I was arguing that programmers need to either unionise or have a professional chartered body (like Accountants, Lawyers and Engineers) decades ago, the writing has been on the wall for quite a while.
Getting programmers to agree what that would look like though would be a massive exercise in "cat hearding".
Unions aren't perfect but the abscence of Unions isn't perfect either, few things are and the question has to be "broadly, what is better for most people" and I think that is either really strong labour laws or unionisation.
Historically unionisation has occurred most when there is an abscence of strong labour laws (in the US and the UK this was certainly true, the reason a 40 hour work week is considered "standard" is because of unions (and Henry T Ford arguably)).
In regards to a union, perhaps that or a guild would be ideal, similar to the other major unions in the US. Strong labor laws generally do not get passed in a vacuum, often its at the behest of the union that good labor laws get passed to protect workers.
I'm a very pro-Union person myself, I've seen & experienced what an employer with total power and a divided workforce can do, and you are essentially powerless. The true power of a union is the ability to organize with your coworkers to walk out and picket your employer to fight for better working conditions & proper pay, which is a powerful tool to level the playing field.
Otherwise, you are a replaceable cog in the machine to your employer, since they can generally handle a fair amount of churn, just not a work stoppage.
> Historically unionisation has occurred most when there is an abscence of strong labour laws
Unions generally become power centers in themselves so only strong labour law is the solution in my opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
> Although Standard had 90 percent of American refining capacity in 1880, by 1911 that had shrunk to between 60 and 65 percent, due to the expansion in capacity by competitors [1]
Standard Oil did become hugely rich and powerful. It did reach massive marketshare as a result of cutting prices, but I wouldn't call it a natural monopoly. I see a monopoly as having no competitors.
[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#cite_note-47)
We should be enforcing our laws that make wage theft a felony, but at least in the US there is minimal funding for enforcement, so only small businesses are policed. Jeff Bezos can keep committing felonies and forcing those below him to do the same due to the lack of enforcement.
They won't move fast, but triple damages and a nice fine for your employer can be a sweet reward for their fraud against you.
On a sidenote, the H1B strategy is very common in the Engineering field, most consultancies figure they can get a decade of work at below American wages out of the average H1B visa holder, saving them a few hundred thousand.
This article was about a lawsuit about chicken waste in 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03...
The relevant quote from the article is a statement from Perdue Chicken "Perdue owns no factory farms," the company said. "Families that raise poultry for Perdue are independent farmers."
John Oliver had a segment about this last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9wHzt6gBgI
> A BBC reporter got a job with AHC services
I think the real issue at play here is the use of contract workers to skirt labour laws. Perhaps governments need to stop differentiating between part time and full time workers given the assumption everyone needs to make a living wage some how, even if it is through multiple "part time" jobs.
Just throwing out thoughts.
The tax loss is significant, so I don't expect the situation to last very long.
The older companies at least pay minimum wage + overtime when needed.
Now I am not saying that Amazon is not doing that, I am just saying that no evidence is presented on the fact that Amazon is aware of what is happening with the drivers.
In my opinion Amazon is at fault. A company has to know the contractors it works with. It's a similar argument as with child labor. Just because a subcontractor that produces for you exploits children doesn't mean that it's not your fault. Companies, especially at that size, have a duty to closely monitor their whole supply chain for violations of laws and ethics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
even family-oriented companies like Pixar worked against their employees
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/animation-wage-fixi...
The BBC actually has some bogus self-employment issues of it's own but since this is just 'talent' using clever tax avoidance methods it's not a story.
I actually know someone who I think is an Amazon driver. I'll ask him about it. He's hesitant to talk about whoever he contracts for, though, since they'll fire him if they find out he was source of negative information. There's some kind of NDA or similar policy involved.
In the end, all those examples (except forkable?) are just glorified directories. They also do payment, which makes them so attractive for investors (finger in the real money stream, not just hoping for crumbs tossed to yet another ads service), but also comes with the responsibility to think about non-fixed cost, something that much of the startup bubble seems to have forgotten that it even exits. I hope that I'm the end, lean directory specialists, payment specialists and so on will keep the upper hand. Food delivery is not Amazon, where even if I order from marketplace I would love to forget that I'm not really dealing with Amazon. In food delivery, even if I do the transaction through an aggregator service, I'm all interested in the individual kitchen and would ideally about the aggregator service. Buying on Amazon marketplace I would prefer to get the goods from Amazon directly instead of some nameless seller, buying from a food aggregator I would prefer it if the transaction convenience would be available directly from the individual kitchen.
Well, there's a startup for everything I suppose.
Involved parties like the person who gets hit by a van driven by someone who hasn't had a break in the last 14 hours, and is paying more attention to the device telling him where the next delivery is than the road.
/s
Unless the BBC is trying to organize Amazon workers to hit the streets and fight for better working conditions and/or a union, this isn't newsworthy or noteworthy.
I'd rather work for Microsoft or big blue than Amazon any day.
But yes. Amazon is a terrible place to work and we are all just too dumb to quit. Oh, and we all hate homeless people, I guess.
From what I've heard from Amazon workers, from drinking with them on Cap Hill, or from my own neighbors who work there, or my Cousin who was a higher up there & left, or from my friends, on average its not a great place to work. There are good teams, but compared to what I've heard from IBM or Microsoft employees it sounds worse than working at either of them, and on par with working at Adobe Seattle over in Fremont.
http://kuow.org/post/amazon-hires-homeless-workers-and-every...
There's a lot of interesting work, though, and a lot of people happy working on it. I wouldn't tell anyone it's the best place to work or that it's "better" to work than another place, but I love what I do and work with hundreds of people who (more or less) feel the same. I also know people who don't feel this way and I encourage them to move on or move out because nobody should be in a job they really dislike (and I'm aware of the incredible privilege that's reflected by my ability to say that).
Tech is different.
There were a number of similar reports about Uber before a court recently ruled that Uber drivers are legally employees, not self-employed contractors.