25 November 2021

Making Amazon pay

Tomorrow (on the so-called "Black Friday"), Amazon workers on every inhabited continent will be engaging in strikes and protests against the giant company's notorious abusive practices.  Their website has all the information, including a list of demands and supportive organizations.

8 Comments:

Blogger Mike said...

Let's hope they turn that multi-billionaire into a plain ol' billionaire.

25 November, 2021 19:17  
Blogger Bohemian said...

Why is it that the most profitable companies have the most human rights abuses towards those they employ? They have such wealth they could be the best employers and choose not to be, such greed and exploitation shouldn't be rewarded. I never buy from Amazon, yet, I'm sure Bezos doesn't miss me being a pawn in his Game, perhaps if enough boycott the company they might change how they do business and fully appreciate those that made them Trillionaires?

26 November, 2021 03:13  
Blogger Sixpence Notthewiser said...

Ugh.
Amazon makes me stabby. You have no idea how many ads they have on YouTube touting their 'generous' pay for their employees. Really. It's all about keeping the super-rich richer. If their employees need to work unholy hours to scrap by, they do not have a good business model.
Greed and capitalism. Ugh.

XOXO

26 November, 2021 04:26  
Blogger SickoRicko said...

I added my name to their list.

26 November, 2021 12:29  
Blogger NickM said...

Bohemian,
I disagree. A lot of really profitable outfits don't treat their employees badly. And it works. If you want folks to go the extra mile for you then give them more petrol. I don't just mean pay but generally treating employees as people rather than "resources".

I spent a lot of time as a temp and that means working all over the place - for organisations both public and private. I dunno to what extent the fish can rot from the head because from my temping experience the very best thing you can have is a line-manager who, to put it bluntly, isn't an arsehole. I have had a few who were great. Once I was doing two part-time temp jobs at once. In principle this was cool (they were both dull - but at least in different ways) but I had an extremely long "lunch-break" with basically nothing to do. One of my managers adjusted my hours (totally against company policy - she really went out on a limb for me and I was very grateful) so that I wasn't doing an effective 14 hour day. Others were total shits and some of those were verging on psychotic in the sense that they exalted in their tin-pot power. The very worst were the ones who hated students and similar because they deeply resented the fact that we were temps doing this over the summer to make ends meet and had plans but that they were stuck in crappy low-rent office jobs until the end of time. From my experience a certain type of middle-aged women are the worst. The externalised self-loathing they can spew forth would making a spitting cobra slink away in embarrassment. And a lot of those (in the UK, perhaps everywhere) work in the assorted pointless admin departments of the government.

26 November, 2021 16:36  
Blogger Kay said...

Oh my gosh! I had no idea.

26 November, 2021 22:45  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Mike: One can dream, but I doubt anyone will manage that.

Bohemian: The vampire that sucks the most blood from the victim is the one that grows the fattest. More ethical businesses do exist, willing to share more of the wealth with the workers who produce it, but I'm guessing most of them aren't among those that grow to such colossal size.

Sixpence: I've heard of those ads -- and of the gimmicks they use to avoid paying many workers as much as they say. And the issue with Amazon was always abusive working conditions, not pay. They don't brag about that issue.

Ricko: Good!

NickM: I know there are some ethical employers -- because I've always worked in offices and not warehouses or the like, I've generally been spared the worst (though not always). Companies tend to treat employees better when they are harder to replace if they quit. And I've been at a few places that went out of business due to bad management, too. Sometimes they just stink at what they do.

Kay: I do try to be informative.....

27 November, 2021 00:30  
Blogger NickM said...

I don't think it's the warehouses vs. offices thing. I have only ever worked three ways - office, retail and self-employed. Between the first two it is the corporate culture rather than the nature of the job that matters. It really depends on who your boss is. My first ever job was retail and toxic. But working for Next (a big clothes chain in the UK) was brilliant. Next are very successful.

27 November, 2021 07:20  

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