"As Amazon became large, we decided to use our scale and scope to lead on important social issues".
A bold claim for a company widely known to exploit and underpay workers in distribution warehouses.
A bold claim for a company widely known to exploit and underpay workers in distribution warehouses.
There has to be some comparison here. You can't say "underpay" and leave it at that.
You might try and weasel and say "underpay compared to a decent living wage". Well, I have news for you - even that's relative.
A fair comparison would be "underpay compared to the rest of the warehouse industry". Which begs the question - why do people go work for Amazon, then? Are they trapped by not being able to leave the small towns where Amazon hires? Doesn't sound likely. Could it be that their overall conditions are more or less on par, or quite probably somewhat better than the rest of the industry?
I'm going to call your bullshit and say what I think directly: Amazon is a cheap target for young idealists simply because it's visible, it's fashionable to attack, makes a lot of money overall, and most people attacking it have no idea what's a good pay for that kind of work because they never did that kind of work.
Maybe its a target because is a behemoth of a target.
Amazon is so big US states were competing in a bezos d*k sucking competition to have their hq built in their state.
A company famous for paying zero taxes and its biggest slice of workforce are being optimised like a computer program to squeeze every last $ they can produce at the expense of the workforce.
So if amazon is a bad target what else should be then? Or maybe everything is fine and the invisible hand is going to fix all of the problems?
To note that this is the opposite of free market: the crux of the problem is allowing politicians to write checks/tax deductions to businesses for purely political purposes.
Amazon's choice to exploit workers might very well be an industry standard, but this doesn't make it a choice any less: Amazon boasts about leading on important social issues, but that's the real bullshit. They just do as the others, no virtue at all. Being in the strong position, they might have the opportunity to make the industry fairer, but they willingly decided not even to try.
I like how in your world megacorp automatically get the benefit of doubt, while people pissing in their pants because they cannot go to the bathroom are "relatively" fine.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/02/amazon-...
Easy targets are the best targers.
Amazon is the raise of centralized retail and computing.
Furthermore replacing store workers with fully appized gig delivery drivers is probably no net gain for small towns.
You don't have to be a "young idealist" to be worried about Amazon eating everyones lunch.
You paid $1000 for an iPhone because you thought the subjective value that it brings you is worth $1500. If Apple was asking you for $1501, you wouldn't make the purchase.
Google hired you as a dev for $300k because they think you bring more value to the table than $300k. If you were asking for more than what your value is to them, then they wouldn't hire you. Same for every other hiring arrangement including the ones Amazon makes and the ones you make in your personal life (such as if you hire a cleaner, book an uber, etc)
The reason that Amazon is successful, but Sears and Circuit City aren’t isn’t because of the warehouse workers.
Lowest workers for Jeff are just cogs in the machine.
I also wonder what's the overall CO2 footprint of Amazon and what's their record about recycling, repairing, etc. I know they propose some tools to help for that and they may even be more efficient than others, but as a company with "lead on social issues", it needs to have more than "a lead", it needs to question its very own existence. So the mail of Bezos, is, in my view, not ambitious at all.