How do you know this though? Did you read a couple of articles about the poor working conditions and someone having to urinate in a bottle? Or have you actually gotten out and talked to some of the workers?
I've done the latter and my take (along with that of the workers I chatted with) has been that the media and press are doing what they do best, and exaggerating the issue or at the very least making rare circumstances appear to be the norm.
A friend of mine had to move to a new city on short notice when his wife got a new job. He applied at an Amazon warehouse while he applied to longer term jobs.
He expected the worse given all of the news stories, but then he started working there and it was fine. He said it was the most well-run warehouse job he’d had. Still a warehouse job, but nothing like the horror stories in the news.
Obviously only an n=1 anecdote and it’s entirely possible that other locations are worse, but it wasn’t the dystopian job that we’ve all read about in every news article about Amazon lately.
I'm not anti-union, but I'm amazed that so many people view them as 100% pure agents of good in all cases.
Current day unions are fee bonanzas for lawyers paid for by the workers, the corporation, and the shareholders. The New Deal is often misinterpreted by current day leftists who incorrectly conflate their own views with FDR-era progressivism and the legal reality that it created. They like the fantasy idea of unions in the same way that we can admire the elven kingdom of Lothlorien, and do a lot to avoid perceiving the bureaucratized reality of contemporary unions in favor of nostalgia LARPing.
I genuinely don't think there's a single person on the planet who believes this.
If the employers can unionize and the union works well, then good on them - they deserve to claw as much of the surplus value they produce back from their employer as they can negotiate.
In both cases former employees were more willing to discuss working conditions than current ones.
I've also spoken to Whole Foods employees. Those who were working at the time of the Amazon acquisition universally despise the new management, and those hired since the acquisition are indifferent. But everyone's afraid to actually discuss this inside the store -- they believe they're being closely monitored.
It would be interesting to see what difference retail employers are like, especially considering how fungible they are and how similar their profit margins are.
It all comes together to "yup, a union seems reasonable". Not a conviction that Amazon is the devil, nor do you need condemning evidence for collective bargaining to be a good idea.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/1/22463132/amazon-injury-rat...
Amazon delivery providers report injury rates even higher but don't get reported by amazon because they are technically hired by other companies.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/01/study-amazon-workers-injured...
> The SOC found that these DSPs reported injury rates of 14 and 13.3, respectively, per 100 workers. Additionally, the majority of injuries reported by DSPs in 2019 and 2020 were severe, requiring employees to take time off work to recover, the SOC said.
Comparing against the industry averages and against competitors is not the media exaggerating anything - its how you would understand what is normal or not.
edit: can't reply because hackernews is limiting my posting rate but for the poster below who asks maybe its because amazon is so good at reporting, the evidence suggests otherwise and there is no evidence to suggest they are reporting better.
It could be but the evidence suggests otherwise, so unless you have some evidence to the contrary all you're doing is conjecture. A higher injury rate is just be a higher injury rate unless there's evidence to suggest otherwise, which you don't seem to have.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/amazon-reportedly-downplayed...
>Amazon may also be underreporting warehouse worker injuries. A physician who inspected Amazon warehouses for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that workers at some Amazon facilities were being discouraged from reporting injuries and seeking outside medical care, according to Reveal.
>Another company initiative designed to curtail "lost-time injuries," or those requiring time off work, ended up preventing them from being counted as lost time, according to Reveal, directly contradicting Amazon executives' framing that such injuries were down due to enhanced safety measures.
Trying to minimize the severity of the injuries is very questionable. You can't force someone to walk 10-20 miles a day after they injure their ankle. Reporting accidents resulting in missed work or doctor visits is completely normal, saying that Amazon follows the law and nobody else does is a little rich for me.
Different structures like union protection or looser production requirements provide a lot of slack. Even averaging the same production over months/years, it allows for working slowly or more carefully in situations that demand in it. Going slower because your back is feeling off is an escape valve; a fistful of Ibuprofen and hitting your hourly quota might mean a recordable injury 2 days later.
With no evidence to support your claim, I don't see how to conclude anything other than a higher injury rate === more dangerous work conditions.
Barring better information, I can't really say one way or the other. Ot isn't a terribly unreasonable hypothesis- running warehouses is basically Amazon's core business model, paired with AWS.
Amazon will report a sprained ankle while small mom and pop warehouse operations won't report anything that didn't require an ambulance.
also see my edit to the post you replied to.
I would be curious to know how many workers you spoke with, relative to the number of employees in their warehouses. I would also be curious if the employees you spoke with all worked in the same facility/region, or if they were scattered throughout the country/world.
It's one thing to talk to a few people from the same spot, it's a completely different thing to speak to a good sampling of people that is more reflective of Amazon as a whole.
Actually, I don't wonder that, because I know what the answer is.
The media does this all the time depending on what kind of message/agenda they want to push. It's a form of deception. Reporting on a rare circumstance should require a disclaimer at the very top: "Note: This particular circumstance has only been recorded to happen 5 times nationwide" vs. falsely implying it happens all the time and falsely implying that the problem is endemic.
"Yet another lightning strike kills couple in Wyoming leaving behind 2 kids as politicians gridlocked on lightning policy."
"Yet another alcohol-related crash kills family of 5 as politicians gridlocked on alcohol policy."
"Yet another <tragic event> happens due to <guns/covid/abortion policy/drug war/etc.> as politicians gridlocked on <agenda> policy."