I totally agree with you about our society’s mistreatment of people who have paid their debts, but I’m not sure I like what Amazon is doing here. It smacks of using people: treating them like props in order to secure private gain.
Work is fundamentally transactional. Those for whom it is more than that are lucky.
> treating them like props in order to secure private gain
I worry about moralizing on behalf of the marginalized. They should be asked whether they'd prefer the option to have the work.
perfect quote! Nothing else really needs to be said.
People who oppose Amazon - I want to see you guys giving thousands jobs to convicts, before criticizing Amazon. Thank you. Talk is cheap
Meanwhile, the felon who gets a $15+/hour gig in an Amazon warehouse during the hardest time in their life, when no other employer in town will give them the time of day and the urges to fall back into those bad habits are creeping in, is probably not going to care much about being "used."
As a non-Teamster, I'm not really sure what good is done for me if a Teamster gets a job, or what harm is done to me if they don't.
Frankly, the more this idea is being discussed here, the more I'm hoping Amazon hires as many ex-cons as possible and if that means completely busting any union activity in their company in perpetuity, so be it.
As for whether Unions are good or not, my answer would be that they are good. They represent a tried, effectual response to the “social question” which emerged in the late 19th Century, avoiding the destructive poles of unconstrained capitalism and revolutionary socialism. It is also noteworthy that independent trade unions have historically acted as a bulwark against various totalitarianisms of both left and right. It is also true that some unions have been guilty of violence, corruption, ideological craziness, and narrow selfishness, but I would suggest that this is not a unique problem for unions.