Amazon started a Twitter war because Jeff Bezos was pissed
vox.com
vox.com
The article missed AOC's tweet where Amazon themselves noted that they found bags with feces and urine in delivery cars [1,2]
[1] https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1375502593863073792
[2] https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-bottl...
Given a choice between peeing in a bottle or driving 30 minutes round trip to the nearest public restroom, I'm not about to condemn anyone who picks the first one purely out of convenience.
I hope that union thing works out so there will be more checks and balances in place going forward. Those bottle peeing stories and all that surveillance is quite horrible...
I also heard lower levels don't have access to the company directory anymore. So they basically got cut off from career and socializing opportunities also inside the company.
Don't you think it makes Warren look childish? She said she wants to break up big tech companies so that they aren't able to challenge her. I think that's an absolutely appalling thing for a lawmaker to say. Warren should be defending their right to challenger her, not attacking it, and she should be empowering institutions to challenge her, not attacking those that are. I can't understand how anyone is defending this craziness. It's chilling.
She can't even get her "progressive" credentials consistent as she rarely misses an opportunity to be the hawk. She sure loves those foreign wars.
And if you think America isn't minting a lot of new conservatives, I think you've been sleeping the last 6 years. Conservatives just had the biggest voter turnout that they've had since Ronald Reagan.
And despite our Gen X/Millenial social circles which are heavily left, Zoomers are much more conservative than us.
The greater issue is what happens when speaking truth to power garners contempt and harm instead of cooperation and humility. Enter regulation, stage right.
That said, it's reasonable to fear corporations with so many resources they capture regulators and can bankroll astroturfed challengers. I'd like both a balanced, accountable government and healthy, competitive markets please.
Shouldn't political participation be primarily in the hands of people, not special interests?
I get that the question of whether corporations should have a role in politics is up for debate, but I think most of the people who elected Warren believe that there's no place for big money in politics.
Every person and every (legal) institution should be able to (verbally and in writing) challenge a democratically elected representative.
I can't understand why that even needs stating?
She's literally threatening legislative retribution for being "snotty" to her. That's appalling, surely?
Then you'll need to avoid jobs like long haul trucker, construction crane operator, Air Force flight crew, or astronaut :-/
Even before the industry was heavily regulated and hours limited, long-haul truckers chose to pee in bottles for efficiency. Faster, safer and made them more money.
Also do you have any idea how long it takes to get in and out of a construction crane? And how dangerous? It's absolutely a physical constraint. Operators have to climb and it's about 15 minutes each way. They have to take breaks so they don't get sweaty. You absolutely do NOT want to do that when you're holding in piss.
https://www.amazon.com/trucker-urinal/s?k=trucker+urinal
Also most roads are straight and modern trucks are incredibly stable. Plus cruise control exists. Peeing while driving is really easy, especially in an elevated chair seat like they use. I've done it a few times.
Ironic considering bothering to use a potty is a very, very modern sensibility.
By the way, I think you got downvoted because using a Marxist technical term such as "late capitalism" without proper elaboration only serves as flamebait. Those who are not already familiar with the theory have very likely only seen them in the context of Marxists airing their grievances on social media and/or aggressively engaging with Conservatives.
But when you see a job where the conditions are really horrible (for no reason, I might add - it's not like a warehouse worker taking a bathroom break puts an expensive piece of equipment on pause like a crane operator would) but the pay is incredibly low, that seems like a sign that the employer is using exploitative practices.
Also is there any evidence that conditions are “really horrible”? Lots of people love working at Amazon warehouses - it pays well for unskilled labor and includes benefits. How do you know the complaints aren’t just from a small number of workers who are bad at their job and feel the time crunch, while most might be getting along fine? I feel like there isn’t available data to say either way - all we have are anecdotes that are being amplified in social media.
Seriously, you don't pick a social media fight with Bernie Sanders or Warren they both have very strong social media teams, esp. when you're fighting against unionization....
Any former warehouse workers here want to comment? (I'm guessing this will be astroturfed but might as well give it a shot)
Having interviewed for dev jobs at Amazon I think the reality is in the middle. Is Amazon a fun place to work? NO. Does Amazon try to abuse its employees? NO.
I think people pissing in bottles probably does happen in Amazon's vast network, but as a very, very rare exception. It makes for good public propaganda, but it's not the issue most salient to warehouse workers.
There's a constant grind that Amazon puts on your body and brain. The work is monotonous. Your joints slowly break down from RSI. You get aches that you learn to compensate for or ignore. You learn to manage the pressure of the little screen at your work station that shows you the rate you've been packing at over the past ten minutes. You learn to manage the pressure of your co-workers at the next step in the process, who have their own little screens, and need you to work faster so they can work faster.
The pay is better than most shit jobs, the benefits are good, the work rules are clear and the managers largely aren't abusive. The trade-off you make is that the physical and psychological demand is intense. There's a reason that the average Amazon FC worker lasts six months—I reckon Amazon's done the math and decided that high turnover is worth the extra productivity they can squeeze out of workers while they're there.
In that sense, it's a bit of a shame that reporters and politicians focus so much on pee in bottles, because working at Amazon is still pretty ghoulish without it. I'm rooting for the workers at Bessemer. It will be very hard to build up the union density needed to really have negotiating leverage over Amazon, but you have to start somewhere!
These people all have agency. And if they work in an environment where they'd fear being fired for not posting snarky, aggressive tweets targeting one of the most powerful lawmakers in the country, then maybe they should find a new place to work.
If Amazon is your best option, then you should be grateful for it.
If I went to work everyday, complained loudly about how much the job sucks, I wouldn't have a job anymore and I'd understand. To think I'd be able to criticize my organization and still be entitled to a job is lunacy.
If you want to change the justice system, go ahead. But there's a difference between changing labour laws and going after one specific company.
For example the piss bottles. It is a thing for truckers and delivery workers to piss in bottles. UPS people, FedEx people, Truckers more than the others will talk about it anonymously. But everyone acts like Amazon isn't acting within the unspoken norms of society.
There's a massive power imbalance between individuals and corporations. In a way they are modern royalty, controlling a large amount of the world
Ha-Joon Chang's 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism should be mandatory reading for any person commenting online about the modern economic system.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_Things_They_Don%27t_Tell_...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8913542-23-things-they-d...
Well I would certainly never want to work for an organization that would fire someone, especially a good coworker, for this.
erode peoples' standard of living, erode the laws protecting them from abusive working environments, force them into a position where they only have the option of working for one company, and then blame them for trying to ask for better conditions.
If you went into your job every day and criticized the job with a coworker, you would in fact not lose your job (or have the option for a nice settlement), because American labor law specifically protects workers' rights to talk about their working conditions?
Why should these people get any other type of consideration.
We're asking them to treat people with the minimum of respect and dignity.
Do you understand that some people don't have that option? Or cannot move to a new location? Through no fault of their own?
Why can't people use the powers they have delegated to the government to put a stop to these practices, for the growing class of people who are trapped in jobs with conditions similar to this?
If I'm destitute and I'm at a soup kitchen; I wouldn't complain about the food even if it sucks, because the alternative is to starve.
It's the same thing here, beggars can't be choosers. If you want the government to change the rules, go ahead. But don't demonize the company that's literally putting food on your table because you don't like the only job you can find.
I'm conscious I'm starting to sound like a broken record, having posed this question several times in another recent thread, but where is the evidence that Amazon has access to an endless supply of workers who are at-once sufficiently able-bodied, able-minded and otherwise capable of doing the work Amazon needs done, and also so desperate for work that they will tolerate any level of mistreatment?
My claim is not that Amazon has no room to improve pay and conditions for its workers. I'm sure it does. I'm just questioning the assumption that Amazon is able to endlessly exploit and mistreat its workers without consequence.
It's a shame that any country allows conditions like this to exist, under the excuse of "the free market will solve this problem, just get a job elsewhere"
The balance of power between government, people + companies has made this extremely difficult, and the "free market" is just optimizing for this imbalance by allowing conditions to get this bad in the first place.
You have, by my count at this time, 14 posts in this thread.
What is it that you might have left to say that you were unable to put in to words in the first 13?
Where there's smoke there is fire is the saying, so maybe it is that bad but that's not what I understand it to be.
Edit: Also from all the documents we've seen it would appear Amazon leaks like a sieve so I would also expect way more damning evidence to have appeared by now.
This specific Amazon incident is just one of may incidents across many major employers where workers end up suffering. Regulations should exist that prevent this from even happening, but political will doesn't seem to exist, sadly.
Blowing up this incident helps refocus the attention on trying to fix this nationwide, rather than this specific incident at amazon.
Okay if the goal is bringing attention to general workplace issues across major companies, then why is it only ever Amazon taking flak? What is special about them that they're the whipping post? Walmart is egregious, systematically so, shown time and time again over decades, but Amazon is the beacon of workforce mal-treatment? Please.
This is some the most impressive circular logic I’ve seen in my day.
As we drift back into company towns here in the Midwest US I do hope change will come before company scrip.
Raise your hand if you believe Amazon execs felt 'terror' in this circumstance.
I also wonder how else would corporations respond to misleading populist narratives? Amazon provided a minimum wage of $15/hour with benefits without legislative pressure (although some like to claim their pressure caused it). They did so for completely unskilled labor that is not compensated this way by other companies that operate warehouses. Even so, they receive critique from these legislators that seemingly don’t understand how businesses work, how they create value, and how that adds up to a functional economy. That deserves a response - and I don’t think corporations should have to remain silent or speak with undue deference while these legislators whip up populist outrage. Their direct and firmly toned response wastes no words and serves to bring these legislators back to Earth.
They do publish opinionated articles, but the base facts are solid, and they often have conservative ideas and voices given equal consideration. They have also debunked liberal memes and talking points on many occasions, or at least said (truthfully) that a situation is more complicated than liberals would want people to think.
Also tied in with the fact that those tweets weren't by the regular social media team but through a webapp by unknown.
Doesn't add up.
Precedent (regardless of nation of origin) is probably the second most powerful source of laws, right after Natural Law.
Fast forward to Valentine v. Chrestensen (1942), the supreme court unanimously upholds the common law that the first amendment does not apply to corporations. The court suddenly reverses in 76' with Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc.
It was long held that corporations held some of the protections of the Constitution. Which ones was not so clearly defined. First amendment protection is now so defined, but that does not make it brand new legal doctrine. It's based on long standing legal precedent. It is a clarification of law.
You're making Valentine v. Chrestensen's decision much more broad than it actually is. Specifically, SCOTUS "ruled that commercial speech in public thoroughfares is not constitutionally protected" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine_v._Chrestensen). Commercial speech has a very specific definition in law. It's about advertising.
The decisions later about Hobby Lobby have very little to do with Valentine v Chrestensen nor Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, because Hobby Lobby's case was not about commercial speech.
Same with Buckley v. Valeo, and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission because they were about political speech.
I know there are lot of people here who identify with Warren's politics (myself included, to some degree), but petty personalities like hers aren't the ones we want in power. Thought there would be more awareness of that after the last presidential term.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/elizabeth-warren-amazon-twit...
I just wanted to say that I identify a lot with your comment. I think tribalism is a stronger factor than you realize though and there seems to be little-to-no "same-sides" criticism in public.
I've always been extremely critical of Warren, despite mostly being on the same side politically. I think she's among the worst that we have to offer...but tribalism is an extremely strong force in public discourse and politics, regretably.
More importantly, she says really bombastic things that no one else is saying and make a subset of progressives feel really good. It gets a strong following. In fact, I think we can probably say the same about Sanders, Beto, Yang and Buttigeg. Each one of them appeals to a specific extreme and pulls all of the disparate voices into a single voting block. I think we on the left rely on this and probably can't cast those people out, no matter how much we need to.