How Amazon treats its workers

Eloethan I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I don't know what the answer is unless there are mass boycotts. I was thinking yesterday that Primark (and other similar shops) is as busy as ever despite the flurry of outrage at the time of the Bangladeshi building collapse.

It concerns me that these drivers are therefore being encouraged to drive too fast, which is bad news for them and for other road users.

Two wrongs never make a right, but shortly after hearing about Amazon's employment practices I had coffee with my next door neighbour whose DS and DIL are both paramedics. They have a little girl aged about 1 and DIL has recently gone back to work. She works 10 (I think even sometimes12) hour shifts doing the same times 3 days a week then a break then a different shift for another 3 days. Both parents somehow have coped up to now with covering for each other to get the little girl to nursery, but at the moment her DS is away starting a new job and the family will move after Christmas so my neighbour has helped by staying over because DIL often has to start work at I think 6,so grandma takes to nursery and collects in the afternoon. Recently the litttle girl has been teething and a disturbed night often precedes a long demanding shift. Lasty week it was a very disturbed night, little girl had them up from 2.30 onwards, Mum did a bit, Granny did a bit and then Mum who just stayed up and went to work where she was driving, involved in harrowing scenes of injury and death but ultimately saving lives.
I am not saying that Amazon workers do not have a hard time, but so do our paramedics and we count on them to show split second judgement, to get their ambulances through appalling trafficscafely and speedily and to save our lives on occasion. They too have targets to meet but more importantly they have desperate situations to deal with and grieving relatives to face if they fail in their efforts.

I totally agree that paramedics, like many other public service employees, do a very important and stressful job, for which they are under-appreciated and inadequately paid. I'm in no way detracting from the unfairness of their situation.

However, the workers that I was talking about still provide a service that people want and, in the particular case of Amazon, they are employed by an organisation that makes huge profits and pays little or no tax towards the infrastructure on which that organisation depends.

There are many employees whose jobs are not connected to "saving lives" and who may be only semi-skilled or unskilled. Does that mean that it is OK to treat them like cogs in a machine?

I don't think Amazon is the only one. I've been made aware of other companies who treat 'third party' staff ie delivery personnel very bady - and in my view dangerously in not allowing them access to a toilet or hand-washing facilities.

I don't think it's acceptable from any company, but Amazon is very high profile, very profitable and very unwilling to pay taxes. At least they could treat their staff decently.

Awful way to treat employees but because of the job situation - particularly in South Wales- people are more inclined to put up with these conditions than be on the dole. It is really a despicable way to treat people. I assume there are no unions to speak up for them.

From Wikepedia:

"Opposition to trade unions

Amazon has opposed efforts by trade unions to organize in both the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2001, 850 employees in Seattle were laid off by Amazon.com after a unionization drive. Also in 2001, Amazon.co.uk hired a US management consultancy organization, The Burke Group, to assist in defeating a campaign by the Graphical, Paper and Media Union (GPMU, now part of Unite the Union) to achieve recognition in the Milton Keynes distribution depot."

Apparently now Amazon is exploring the possibility of delivery by drones. No, I have no idea how that would work and they are taking a long-ish term view in their research. But it doesn't bode well for their staff.

Yes, I read that too absent. I don't get how it would work either. So much for technology making better lives for everybody.

It seems that we are sleepwalking into the sort of dystopian future that we see in sci fi films.

I stopped using Amazon after they were outed as tax avoiders. I have found it surprisingly easy not to use them. I use Waterstones for books, Presto Classics for CDs also Abe books for secondhand books. I still use Amazon for reference but then approach suppliers direct or google product.

I have no qualms about this, especially after recent revelations. If they exploit their workers and the consumer, I will return the compliment.

Good for you, Flickety. I wish we'd done the same when we heard about the tax issue, but we were hoping (naively) that after all the uproar something would be done about their conduct. It seems these big corporations are untouchable.