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Comment by hourislate | Hacker News Reader

Completely anecdotal.

It's possible some Amazon Warehouses are run better than others. A friend who recently got a job (5 weeks ago) at one of Amazons warehouses (NJ/NYC area) has only praise for the way things are run. They take his temperature 3 times a day, provide a mask, constantly monitor social distancing, clean washrooms every hour, enforce social distancing in any break rooms, work areas, etc. He says it's never an issue with breaks, lunch, etc. He has mentioned that they encourage him to keep an eye out for other positions he might have an interest in since he is eligible (after 30 days)to apply (he has some skills that can be more useful to Amazon).

I was always under the assumption from what I have read that Amazon was a sweat shop. It seems that at least his facility is run very well.

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Bray didn't quit over the conditions in the warehouses, he quit over Amazon's brazen and dishonest firings of organizers.

It's possible that if every Amazon warehouse were run as well, those organizers would not have arisen, but it's Amazon nastiness toward them that's most alarming.

Even the best run un-unionized factories have unions trying to get workers to organize.

To pretend that unions (leadership) haven't become just as obsessed with growth and power as corporations are, misses a huge part of the various incentives at play here.

> a huge part of the various incentives at play here

Do you have any evidence to support this? Anecdotal evidence will not suffice here. Calling this a 'huge' factor demands empirical evidence.

So what justifies this assertion?

Have you considered the possibility that Amazon actually treats their workers okay and that it's the organizers are dishonest? Why does the presumption of evil only go in one direction?

Well Amazon has a history of mistreating workers. So, why do we think they are likely mistreating workers? It's because they have a long & well-document track record of doing so.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse...

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/amazo...

https://time.com/5629233/amazon-warehouse-employee-treatment...

And the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon

* cough *

It goes on to give tips to managers for spotting union activity. “Make it a point to regularly talk to associates in the break room. This will help protect you from accusations that you were only in the break room to spy on pro union associates,” the video says.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/22/how-amazon-is-fighting-back-...

On internal company email lists and chat groups on Thursday and Friday that Recode viewed, Amazon white-collar workers expressed dismay over a report from Vice News that the company’s top lawyer had referred to a recently fired warehouse worker as “not smart, or articulate” and implied that executives should use that to help squelch worker unionization efforts.

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/5/21206385/amazon-fired-wa...

Stop quoting Vox as if they are a reliable news source. They are the ones who mocked tech workers initially for taking COVID seriously: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/13/21128209/coronavirus-fe...

At risk at piling on to something that's already being downvoted, this is an extremely facile take. Nothing in the article you linked was "mocking" tech workers for being worried in mid-February. The word you are looking for is "reporting" on that situation, and also including in that report that officials at that time, in mid-February, said that while there was "always a risk" that these fears were likely overblown. Dragging Vox for accurately reporting what many experts said at the time is dragging them for not being prescient enough to know that the experts were wrong. And to top it all off, that's something that Vox is actively concerned about, given that the last episode of the Ezra Klein Show was a conversation with NYT writer Charlie Warzel about the media's response to the pandemic and how difficult it is to handle this sort of situation.

Yeah - keep on reading Vox and feel enlightened.

You literally are the reason why poor publications like Vox get a free pass. Here, if you don't believe me, read this thread and check yourself (https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1228447944287932416?s=20). And don't tell me now that Balaji is not trustworthy. He is 100x more trustworthy than a random HN user like you.

Well, it's sure great that a random HN user like you vouches for him.

Why would the workers organize and risk their careers without just cause?

He mentions petitions with thousands of signatures. Are all of those people just…I mean, what?

If they were lying, then Amazon could easily come out and say, "They're asking for regular breaks every four hours and we literally give them that. They ask for PPE and every employee is given X, Y, Z. They want us to reduce our carbon footprint by 10%, here is an independent audit showing 12% reduction." (etc.)

In situations of extreme power imbalance, it's not unreasonable to default trust the person not in power who is taking far greater risk.

Sometimes you'll be wrong! But the burden of proof is on people in power.

>why would the workers organize and risk their careers without just cause

Warehouse stocking is not a career. Most of these people are hourly workers with little to lose. You can't apply the same standards to white, blue, and no collar workers because the nature of both the work, the people, and the culture are totally different.

If that statement shocks or offends you, I encourage you to take a temporary job at a place like Walmart or visit an oil rig and experience the differences yourself.

How on Earth can you think that low-skill hourly workers in America have "little to lose" by jeopardizing their livelihoods? That's precisely what ensures that they have so much to lose. Maybe you or I can lose our jobs, survive on savings for a good while, and easily find another role; they can't.

? Under the CARES act, low-wage workers "earn" more on unemployment than from working.

That depends on whether or not their individual state is effectively processing both regular unemployment and the federal side effectively and whether or not the state side is being contested. Also, that ends in July currently whereas there have been complaints about Amazon warehouses (and other jobs) well before the pandemic.

As I understand it, the 8000 people that signed the petition of support to organize were not hourly workers but corporate white collar workers with high pay that have issues with climate response and worker protections for blue collar workers. Like Tim, the guy who wrote this essay.

Very interesting. Hard data on all this would be much more valuable than anecdotes and presumption that those with power are always the evil ones.

Corporations are at least some kind of good. Otherwise, we would need to all form our own little businesses, and have everyone redo a whole lot of common tasks. Corporations are the economy's approach to DRY.

> Very interesting. Hard data on all this would be much more valuable than anecdotes and presumption that those with power are always the evil ones.

The signatory names and titles are available publicly: https://medium.com/@amazonemployeesclimatejustice/public-let...

Thanks! It does substantiate the point these are mostly white collar workers complaining about their environment agenda. I saw a single bullet about work conditions, and this was couched in a context about not docking pay if there are big storms that wipe out operations.

Definitely not a corporation mistreating its employees. I don't know why this is portrayed as such. If employees want to force their employer to follow some agenda the employer does not agree with, I don't see a problem with the corporation firing the employees.

What hard data do you need? The petition is public, and the number of people who signed it is as hard as you're going to get!

Hard data on all the evil that Amazon is presumably doing. What are all these evil things that makes Amazon so horrible?

Everyone deserves a safe (as possible) job with a living wage, that is not something only white collar workers who went to university are entitled to.

Meat packing and agriculture jobs in the US are presently incredibly dangerous, under-regulated (wink-wink regulated large corporations who have immense political power through lobbyists and trade PACs), and often done by undocumented persons who cannot get compensation if they are maimed or killed. Interestingly, these industries often advertise wages in Central and South American countries' newspaper to encourage migration, legal and otherwise.

Nobody just deserve it, everyone has to find one and keep it. You never get anything in life because "you deserve it and the Universe has to give it to you", not in this Universe.

It's true that nobody gets something from the universe just because they deserve it. Which is why for several thousand years humans have grouped up into civilized societies where we can construct environments that better match how we think things should work. So that people can get what they deserve.

Since we're not talking about somebody adrift in interstellar space, your argument makes less sense. Instead you have to argue some variant on a) not everybody deserves a reasonably safe job, or b) people do deserve that but we as a society can't afford it.

(I don't think either of those is true, but at least they'd make sense.)

You just served a false dilemma. There are also options c and d and more.

Even having a society does not make wonders: we don't have a cure for cancer, we don't have a vaccine for Covid, having a functional society does not mean you can obtain everything, including safe jobs and decent lives, especially when the definitions of safe and decent are moving targets: versus 200 years ago we are living an utopia of safe jobs and decent lives. Just think logical, not only emotional.

If there are options c, d, and following, I'd like to hear them. But your second paragraph is pure option b, the notion that we can't afford it.

I think that's wrong. We of course can't afford everything, and I never said otherwise. But what we're talking about is "a safe (as possible) job". There's no particular reason to think that if Amazon takes proper worker safety precautions, suddenly they'll be out of business. Might Bezos be marginally less rich? Sure. Might Amazon customers pay a smidgen more? Sure. Will society collapse? No. Will some other workers suddenly not have a safe workplace? Also no.

We can afford it.

If "we can afford it" then please explain why 90% of the manufactured goods purchased in USA are made in China; is it because competition and lower wages in China? We can afford to pay more the USA workers to produce it locally, but we don't. Why?

I don't care about how rich is Bezos, it is not my problem (or, more exactly, not a problem for me), but the blanket statements like "everyone deserves X" and "we can afford Y" are a problem: we don't simply deserve and we cannot afford most things.

We're not talking about "most things". We're talking about safe working conditions. We can afford them. And people deserve them.

The universe no. The universe is a cold, hard mf.

But would it not be nice if it were society, us humans, who would provide the right to a safe job and dignified life?

"The society" is a generic term to hide behind; the society does not provide jobs, businesses do (or self-employment). Nobody provides a "dignified life", that is another vague and non-measurable term to hide behind.

problem with your utopia is that in order to provide the vagaries of a "dignified life" you are compelling people to labor for others. We have not yet achieved post scarcity and there is never a guarantee that enough people in your society will participate in good faith to sustain those who are, for whatever reason, less productive.

That's not an argument against a safety net, just the opposing force that makes the correct (and possible) solution somewhere in between [UBI, euthanization), and different for each grouping of people.

we seem to have enough people participating to sustain large scale warfare operations around the globe, bail out entire industries, and pay politicians above average salaries. imagine what we could do for society if not for spending so much money on these pursuits which large swaths of our population find immoral.

Seems to work alright here in Europe tho, even with scarcity.

By the way, I find the notion comical that in a capitalist system, you are not compelled to labor for others. In practice, that is.

Just compare the incentives for both parts to be dishonest and you have your answer. What would workers gain from being dishonest except the risk of being fired or retaliated upon?

And why, if organizers are lying, can't Amazon just disprove them by showing to the public their perfect working conditions?

Finally, isn't it a natural instinct to side with the weaker element in a fight?

Does Amazon really need your support, or are the workers one paycheck away from homelessness in need of it?

> What would workers gain from being dishonest

Union representation and improved compensation and employment benefits.

Not to say either party is being honest or being dishonest. But it's clear there's plenty to gain on both sides by, on the one hand, painting organizers ad bad employees, and on the other hand, painting working conditions as worse than they are.

Peeing in Coke bottles because of a lack of bathrooms and allowances for biological needs might be a sign.

What?!? Now I'm canceling that case of Coca Cola I just ordered on Amazon Prime.

And why would they do it then, had they already good working conditions?

Because 'good' is relative and conditions can always be better.

Software engineers at Google were fired (allegedly) for attempting to unionize (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/06/ex-goog...). Google jobs are some of the best jobs in the industry, in terms of benefits, base salary, and stock compensation.

Unionization isn't always about jobs being good enough. It's also about being able to set up a collective front for the workers to negotiate their arrangement with company owners. That's something every employee can want and can benefit from.

> > What would workers gain from being dishonest

> Union representation and improved compensation and employment benefits.

Getting union representation requires, in jurisdictions I'm familiar with, at least a 50% buy-in from other employees. You're not going to get that by lying to them about their own working conditions. This kind of dishonesty can attract some fist-shakers on the internet, but they don't get a vote.

> Just compare the incentives for both parts to be dishonest and you have your answer. What would workers gain from being dishonest except the risk of being fired or retaliated upon?

Pay raises, more time off, better benefits. A newly hired employee has very little to lose by supporting unionization.

>And why, if organizers are lying, can't Amazon just disprove them by showing to the public their perfect working conditions?

Because when Amazon shows good conditions, everyone says that it's a manufactured scenario or just an anecdote.

>Finally, isn't it a natural instinct to side with the weaker element in a fight?

Which is precisely what organizers want to exploit with publicity that could very easily be taking things out of context. A union organizer has almost nothing to lose by massively exaggerating.

>Does Amazon really need your support, or are the workers one paycheck away from homelessness in need of it?

Depends on whether or not you care about being manipulated into supporting something that could be a lie. It's not even "support" of Amazon, it's just questioning of the accounting of one side of a debate.

> Pay raises, more time off, better benefits.

And those are bad because?

> A newly hired employee has very little to lose by supporting unionization.

And yet, most don't. The mind boggles.

> And those are bad because?

I'm not against these things for warehouse workers at all, but just to answer your question, potential downsides include:

1. The money has to come from somewhere. Since Amazon keeps fairly small profit, this would likely come from passing costs on to consumers, and reducing Amazon's investment in future growth, which ultimately costs their future consumers. This increases cost of living for non-Amazon workers, and since Amazon is a good source of cheap items, it may disproportionately burden poorer people.

2. Where I am, Indeed.com says Amazon warehouse workers are paid slightly above average ($16/hour). If they were paid significantly above average, it can make it hard for small businesses to keep their workers.

> > Pay raises, more time off, better benefits.

> And those are bad because?

They're not bad. But them being good for workers is not an argument for why workers should receive them.

Only bad for the party they are being extorted from. Which is essentially what happens when a monopoly over your labor supply is in place.

Many workers experience monopsony for their labor for reasons that might not make sense to you (switching costs, rational risk aversion, fallible human psychology). A union on their side just levels the playing field. Empirically, societies that support monopoly bargaining by unions (and structurally encourage creative thinking and incentive alignment between unions and employers) have become much better places for their worst-off cohorts. Possibly not better if you're a smart and talented entrepreneur or highly skilled technologist; parts of the US are clearly great for that. But you may have to step over homeless people to get to work.

> Many workers experience monopsony for their labor for reasons that might not make sense to you (switching costs, rational risk aversion, fallible human psychology)

Both sides face similar issues related to terminating their mutually agreed to relationship.

Stop ordering from Amazon if you really feel so strongly about this. No point making all this grand-stands while on the other hand, you will just goto Amazon for your needs. That is the real way to hurt them.

I did that, literally decades ago. That was still at the time when Amazon was selling books only.

They promised the earth on privacy and after a few month suddenly pulled a bait and switch on that.

For me that was such dishonest behavior that I pulled my business from them and never, ever ordered anything else.

A fulfilled, satisfying life is not dependent on being an Amazon customer.

True, but alone I can't make a difference. We must unite, in the workplace and as consumers. That's why it's as important to be vocal about it and convince other people to stop ordering from Amazon.

You can stop doing it and still be vocal about it.

That's what I just said. You on the other hand, assumed that I buy from Amazon with no reason to do so.

Many people do this, especially since ordering anything remotely non-trash on Amazon is a lottery nowadays.

It's also possible that bezos likes to snuggle and is amazing at it. But I have yet to read a story telling me that

> Have you considered the possibility that Amazon actually treats their workers okay and that it's the organizers are dishonest? Why does the presumption of evil only go in one direction?

Yes.

As an example:

> We’re already seeing devastating climate impacts: unprecedented flooding in India and Mozambique, dry water wells in Africa, coastal displacement in Asia, wildfires and floods in North America, and crop failure in Latin America

That is so far removed from a company that provides web hosting and handles shipping logistics.

What does transporting a cardboard box have anything to do with flooding in Mozambique?

While it's unfortunate catastrophes happen. Let's be generous and assume those events are due to lax environmental regulations (0.001% to 90%).

Amazon is just 1% of whatever that is. So, if these activists wish came true - and ultimately a drop in the bucket.

A competitor without the hindrance could likely make up for any pollution they don't create.

If you want to shape ecology, you do it through regulations (statutes). And all countries need to be on board with it.

I'm going to have to go with management on this one - the exaggeration of Amazon's impact on the issue really hurts their credibility. Nothing wrong with climate change - but really against disrupting organizations needlessly.

> What does transporting a cardboard box have anything to do with flooding in Mozambique?

25% of the US's carbon emissions are from transportation.

> Amazon is just 1% of whatever that is.

Everybody works somewhere. Workers have more power over their own companies than they do over others. It's great that Amazon workers are trying to use that power for good.

> If you want to shape ecology, you do it through regulations (statutes).

That's one place to push. And you know who'd be good at pushing for regulatory change? Organized workers. Large companies that have decided to minimize ecological impact. Industry organizations made up of those companies.

But that's not the only way change happens. It's a big problem with many fronts. If you think you can best use your time and money by calling up your reps, go to it. However, these people have decided differently. I'm willing to trust that they know best how to achieve their goals.

1% is huge. You do the world a disservice by ignoring incremental change. If I tasked you wish improving the speed of a processor and you came back with "This 1% improvement is a drop in the bucket so i deleted it" you would not last long. It can start with Amazon and end with more.

Nothing wrong with incremental change. But there's no justification it'd work in this context, and be worth the disruption.

And the burden of proof rests on the organizers to prove why this is worthy of prioritization above other problems.

While I like the sentiment and aesthetic of being courteous, I don't see anything demonstrating a binding rule or contract could come out of it. And what's the benefit again? If Amazon followed through, would the flooding and droughts cited in the original post stop?

The problem is - it just seems contradictory to me. I can't put my finger on why. I think supporter's heart is in the right place. But people are struggling a lot in life and this world in various ways, is this really the most optimal way to alleviate suffering?

Why not save the pay check and put it into lobbying, or NGO type stuff to advocate the cause? Or maybe even into studies or stuff more urgent that climate. For climate stuff to work, people in society have to have more harmony / generosity / collectivism universally.

Until people start getting along and addressing universal human needs and fixing those, it's really hard to do cooperative endeavors like this at scale. Just my opinion! :)

Read the article, please. Author said nice things about his workplace & its leadership (AWS). But he could not bear to see unfair treatment and so he quit.

What would the organisers have to gain from lying about bad conditions in their warehouses? It’s very obvious what Amazon gains in the reverse. The organisers are putting their livelihoods on the line, you’d have to imagine they have a good reason for doing so.

But as a corporation, every poorly run warehouse reflects on Amazon. It doesn't matter if some of them are good, Amazon is allowing the sweat shop level ones to exist and continue to be run that way. This implies they're ok with this or at the very least don't give a shit about how their warehouses are run or whether their employees are treated properly.

Which warehouses are "sweat shop" level?

https://nypost.com/2019/11/30/amazon-warehouses-are-cult-lik...

>I soon learned that only difference between an Amazon warehouse and a third-world sweatshop were the robots. At Amazon, you were surrounded by bots, and they were treated better than the humans.

Are there 3rd world sweatshops that pay $16 USD/hour and provide benefits? I'd wager there are a few more differences than just the robots.

This is a No-True Scotsman. You asked for examples of Amazon sweatshop conditions, and once given, you're now redefining the semantics of 'true' sweatshops to being both in the third world and making less than $16/hour.

No it's not. The very definition of sweatshop implies very low wages and long hours.

According to Wikipedia, a sweatshop is semantically a workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions. The work may be difficult, dangerous, climatically challenging or underpaid. It's true that workers in sweatshops may work long hours with low pay, but it's not limited to that.

If you read the article with the example that was asked for, you'd see the examples of how it's sweatshop conditions.

I read through the article, I don't really see how it fits that definition.

Long shifts on your feet, physical labor, short breaks and no cell phones. Precise tracking of performance. Does it sound like fun? Hell no. But it seems like decent pay for unskilled physical labor, and I haven't read anything that sounds like sweatshop conditions.

The idea that physical labor being unskilled work has been perpetuated for thousands of years in class based systems despite the fact that any kind of work can involve both physical and intellectual skill. If you've ever worked in a warehouse, you would know that there are plenty of skills to learn and refine.

12 hour shifts on your feet with no access to chairs, consistent 150 F work conditions, 30 minute lunch breaks that take 30 minutes to get to, no paid bathroom breaks, etc. are a few of the examples from this one article alone that are in line with the semantics of sweatshop conditions.

consistent 150 F work conditions

If she told you there were sharks with lasers on their heads would you have believed that too? The article is literally unbelievable.

No, but if multiple workers at multiple locations said the same thing, then it is more believable:

>"I was really upset and I said, 'All you people care about is the rates, not the well-being of the people,' " she said. "I've never worked for an employer that had paramedics waiting outside for people to drop because of the extreme heat."

There were so many reports of workers overheating that OSHA had to get involved: https://www.mcall.com/news/watchdog/mc-allentown-amazon-comp...

That, along with other conditions reported, make it a literal sweatshop.

$16/hr is decent pay in those conditions?

They risk bringing the coronavirus home every day to their families. Their bodies are chewed up over the course of months until they start falling apart from the stress and wear. "short breaks" usually means something like "you're only allowed to go to the bathroom twice" which is technically illegal but Amazon spent a lot of money asking consultants and lawyers how to circumvent that.

Not to mention they don't get paid while they're standing in line for 20+ minutes to get frisked before they leave.

Here are a few examples of "sweatshop" conditions in the Amazon factory from the article:

- No chairs for a 12-hour shift

- Time spent going to the bathroom gets removed from your break time

- 30-minute lunch includes a 30-minute round trip to get to the lunch room

Everyone looks at it through their own lens. To an employee that goes to the bathroom twice per day at work, monitoring bathroom break time sounds ludicrous. But what should Amazon do with people who want to take 20 ten minute bathroom breaks per day? The answer is you set a policy that everyone is equal under and stock to it.

Other things seemed like unrealistic exaggerations. Like a 15 minute walk to the lunch room and barely having enough time to eat a sandwich, drink a soda and smoke a cigarette during the 30 minute break. Doesn’t add up.

And stating it felt like 150 degrees and no fans were allowed because “robots don’t like the cold”. What robot works better in 150 degrees than 70 degrees?

The stories don’t ring true to me and the pictures through the article from labor organizers tell me at least why the stories are being told.

I'm not sure about Amazon exactly but 30 minute lunches with barely enough time to eat is pretty realistic. There's many places where lunches are from buzzer to buzzer period, whether you've eaten or not. If these places are large enough, and it seems they're pretty large, then yeah, every minute you've got to walk to your food is a minute taken off your lunch break.

Rent is different in different countries. You cannot just quote $$

The ones that have been in the news for years for being sweat shop level. The ones that 60 Minutes did an exposition on, and that activists have been trying to draw attention to. I don't understand what you want by asking this question, an address?

I think all of them, given that workers are severely underpaid compared to the value they provide, and have no means to influence the future of the company, other than to speak up and be fired.

Though it's possible that the parent was referring to Amazon warehouses where workers had to pee in a bottle to keep their productivity points above the cutoff level.

They're paid at the level they will accept for the job they provide. Amazon couldn't hire 100,000 people in a month if they were underpaying anyone.

Also, why should they have means to influence the future of the company? They're hired voluntarily to do one job, not to lead the company.

Hiring 100k people a month is only half the picture. Their turnover rate is absurd, and folks wouldn't be quitting in droves if they were paying adequately to compensate for the working conditions.

Why should they have means to influence the future of the company? That's been repeatedly proven in court and enshrined in law.

They accept the job because they need it to survive, but that does not mean they are happy with what they're paid, see all the crushed unionization attempts. Nor does it mean that the company cannot afford to pay them more and still make a nice profit, just because they'd also work for less.

Yes, workers should be able to influence the future of a company they invest their lives in, the same way citizens can influence the future of their countries. The incentives of workers and shareholders can be aligned, when greed is kept in check.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/14/politics/bernie-sanders-w...

Why should a worker who voluntarily accepts a contract be allowed to renege on that contract and suddenly have control of other people's property?

Because contracts aren't the highest form of value, they are just a construct we agree to follow as a tool to help create a society that aligns to our values? If contracts are creating results that are not aligned with our values as a society, we should be willing to modify them or do away with the concept of a contract entirely if that allows us to get to a better outcome that we collectively agree upon.

Seems to me like this ideology was soundly rejected twice by an extremely large margin in Sanders' losses in 2016 and 2020. I don't think the country wants to eliminate the idea of a voluntary contract as you suggest.

It's not an ideology that I'm expressing, it's the opposite. We shouldn't be bound by ideology in trying to find solutions to social problems, but be willing propose major changes to fix badly broken systems. A big part of the problem the US has is that it's become a norm to view any proposal through the lens of ones own ideologies or the assumed ideologies of ones interlocutor and dismissing it on the basis of improper ideology rather than proposing an alternate solution.

It's a solution to a non-existent problem. Nobody in the country wants to end voluntary contracts as you suggest.

You want people to be able to renege on contracts they explicitly agreed to under no duress. This position is not supported by the country and has been rejected countless times. Even unionism as a whole has been rejected. I would not join a union even if it was free, absolutely never.

Why wouldn't you join an union? What's wrong with them?

maybe the conditions vary from one warehouse to another, but the fact remains that Amazon smeared and retaliated against whistleblowers at warehouses with terrible conditions

Same with the St. Louis facility, it is a marvel of working in the age of COVID. Trainees kept breaking the 6' mark so they installed physical barriers. Automated systems track social distancing and warn people. I have family at that facility and it sounds like an incredible place to work - especially in the age of COVID.

Bray acknowledged that much.

> On the other hand, Amazon’s messaging has been urgent that they are prioritizing this issue and putting massive efforts into warehouse safety. I actually believe this: I have heard detailed descriptions from people I trust of the intense work and huge investments. Good for them; and let’s grant that you don’t turn a supertanker on a dime.

> But I believe the worker testimony too. And at the end of the day, the big problem isn’t the specifics of Covid-19 response. It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential.

He concluded the piece with:

> ...it’s all about power balances. The warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker, what with mass unemployment and (in the US) job-linked health insurance. So they’re gonna get treated like crap, because capitalism. Any plausible solution has to start with increasing their collective strength.

Exactly. Too many people are refuting the protestors' claims about warehouse conditions, when that's not the point of his argument.

I view this as an "8 hour workday" deal.

It would be like it is now, if it hadn't been workers organizing and speaking out.

>> from what I have read that Amazon was a sweat shop.

It depends where you read. HN, and a lot of places that might be reporting/commenting on amazon normally comment on tech companies. Amazon runs warehouses alongside a tech shop. Comparatively, a warehouse is a tech shop. It's the clash of worlds driving the notoriety.

A company is not just one thing.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/response-tim-brays-departure-...

Completely anecdotal.

By definition, so are the incidents that are reported by NYTimes. Amazon has hundreds of fulfillment centers around the world, and it's possible that the sufferings of some workers are exceptions, not the norm.

If that were the case, you would think that Amazon would address the issues raised my employees instead of firing them.

By firing them, they discourage others from coming forward so it’s not really possible to get a good picture of the situation.

Perhaps there's more to the story and we on the outside are in a really poor position to actually know what's going on?

So we are supposed to sit here and act like Amazon doesn't have a notorious rep in the street for how it treats it's employees, even it's software devs? And we are supposed to act like the US in general doesn't have a strong anti-labor tilt since Reagan in the 80s?

You are begging the reader to throw out any knowledge of the company and the country it's in so that they can arrive to a conclusion of "We don't have all the facts!!!!". That's not going to be very effective.

A default position against Amazon ignores some important considerations, in my opinion:

1. News outlets have a huge incentive to report on anti-Amazon facts, but little to no incentive to report on pro-Amazon facts. "Megacorp is imperfect, but mostly okay" is not a headline that generates clicks.

2. Amazon has a huge incentive to ensure that they comply with the law. Every labor lawyer in the country wants to take them to court and extract a settlement. And there are plenty of politicians that would love to make their career by bringing Amazon to heel.

> News outlets have a huge incentive to report on anti-Amazon facts

You are aware that Bezos owns one of the world's most influential news organizations, right?

Also, no, they don't. There's more money in sponsored puff pieces about how Amazon is tackling this or that recent controversy.

I dunno about you but my "default position" on Amazon fled circa y2k. Since then I've met numerous amazon employees and heard their stories, I've observed amazon/bezos's behavior in the public sphere, etc. Now my opinion on amazon is not "default" but "informed."

Your implication that the media is an anti-amazon conspiracy is absurd. The truth about bad actors is not kind to them. That doesn't turn truthtelling into a conspiracy. I seem to remember some positive reporting on Amazon recently, when they promised higher wages and more PPE for warehouse employees -- how does that fit into a conspiracy?

By that logic, wouldn't Vice President Tim Bray then be positioned to know more of that hypothetically hidden story?

He worked at AWS, not retail

Seems like he is privy to more than just AWS as a vice president, no? FTA:

>At that point I snapped. VPs shouldn’t go publicly rogue, so I escalated through the proper channels and by the book. I’m not at liberty to disclose those discussions, but I made many of the arguments appearing in this essay. I think I made them to the appropriate people.

We don't have all the context but it's safe to say we have about 80% of it.

End this solipsistic tripe. Or else drive down to your nearest fulfillment center and start interviewing folks.

I have contact with the warehousing industry. Most workers are neither making $15/hr nor receiving any sort of benefits.

Yep, it's the Streisand effect that Tim Bray talks about in the article.

How many activists are really get fired? It sounds like there are hundreds of protestors, but only a few people got fired. Should protesting making you immune to being fired?

Whats completely anecdotal-- your counterargument here?

> 5 weeks ago

Still in the honeymoon period, give it time.

It speaks volumes that you think that actually deserves any sort of praise. Wow, they aren't running sweatshops in America? Hand them a fucking medal.

Tim Bray quit over the way Amazon treats labour organizers, not the fact that they protect the health of their workers during a pandemic.

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