TWO TERRIBLE AMAZON LABOR PRACTICES: UNION BUSTING & HIGH INJURY RATES
Amazon does so many terrible things to its workers that limiting the discussion to just two doesn’t really do the company justice. But every post must have a space limit so we’ll start out with just covering union busting and the worker injury factories that are their warehouses.
We’ll start with union busting, which is both timely and widespread. In fact, this particular anti-worker stance is so common it hardly makes Amazon stand out. At first.
Union busting.
Everybody does it these days. Starbucks has made a fetish of it. Apple and Google are all in on union busting. Trader Joe’s don’t like no stinking unions. Etc., etc. So many do it.
Amazon hired the notorious Pinkerton Agency to help its union-busting efforts, which is old-timey if not cute.
But Amazon really makes a name for itself in the union-busting trade with its dystopian technological oppression. Per the American Prospect, in the interests of plausibly cosplaying as Big Brother, Amazon “ran a social media surveillance program [of employee activity] that monitored more than 43 Facebook groups, most of which were nominally private, as well as numerous Web sites [and] subreddits.”
“[T]he program’s described aim was to ‘capture’ and categorize posts of interest for potential investigation, including those mentioning complaints from warehouse workers and planned strikes or protests.” Targets of surveillance included: ‘Whole Foods Market Activism/Unionization Efforts,’ ‘union grant money flow patterns,’ and ‘Presence of Local Union Chapters and Alt Labor Groups.‘“
To make this even creepier, Amazon created an internal messaging app for employees that banned words like: “union”, “living wage“, “freedom”, “pay raise” or “restrooms.” Yeah restrooms. More on that later.
This dystopian business of spying on employees’ legally protected non-work activities might mean nothing to you. But it should. Because warehouse and Whole Foods workers are really just test subjects in the growing Big Tech enthusiasm for surveilling you into submission.
Amazon also embraced tech by employing Twitter bots to flood the internets with anti-union messages.
Including messages that were outright lies. Because are you even a legitimate bad actor if you don’t use Twitter bots or similar influencers? Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t think so – and he should know.
The most notorious case of Amazon union busting occurred in Bessemer, Alabama in 2021. In that case, the union went to the NLRB for a hearing on the subject of Amazon creating “an atmosphere of confusion, coercion and/or fear of reprisals” prior to the union vote. The problem with this allegation is that Amazon always creates an atmosphere of confusion, coercion and fear of reprisals in its warehouses, even if the weather is good and everyone is too surveilled to think about forming a union.
But here’s where Amazon really stands out. Amazon is so egregious in its union-busting activities that the Trump administration forced them to cut it out. The Trump administration. So outrageous the Trump administration couldn’t stomach it.
Truck drivers voted to unionize, and Amazon wouldn’t recognize them or bargain. And the Trump administration said ‘Oh for God’s sake, recognize the Teamsters already. Stop messing with the Teamsters.’
When you’re more anti-worker than the Trump administration, you know you’re just being reckless.
INJURY FACTORIES
Now, we’re getting into territory where’s Amazon willingness to sacrifice human lives for its goals really starts to shine. I mean, sure Amazon has done some bizarre things, like hire neo-Nazi security guards in Germany who would intimidate foreign and female Amazon workers.
But really, who hasn’t hired a Nazi or two? Especially in Germany. It could happen to any of us.
The injury rate at Amazon warehouses, however, could not happen to any of us. In fact, it doesn’t happen to anyone else, including Walmart.
The injury rate in Amazon’s warehouses has often been more than DOUBLE everyone else.
There’s a warehouse in Sacramento that has had more than QUADRUPLE the national industry rate of serious injuries. Serious injuries. Not stubbed toes.
SERIOUS INJURIES.
No joke. At one point, Amazon literally stationed ambulances outside a warehouse to transport to injured workers rather than improve conditions in the warehouse itself.
The ambulances were for heat injuries. But let’s look at some more of the bizarre ways Amazon has managed to injure workers:
Forcing people to work during a gas leak, so that they’re vomiting while working. Bathroom breaks being scrutinized with comical but infuriating attention. Workers expected to work in hot and physically demanding conditions (100 degrees F in at least one case), while not being able to afford to go the bathroom when they try to stay hydrated. Cuz they might get fired for being ‘off task’.
Some demon from hell (Bezos does look like a bald-headed demon, doesn’t he?) thought this no peeing system up. You’ve probably already heard about drivers having to carry pee jars in their trucks. It’s worse than that though. Amazon tried to deny drivers were doing that. Until they were caught documenting trucks being returned with poop in bags. Because a driver can’t make a stop when nature calls and still make quota.
Bottom line: workers literally get UTIs due to Amazon’s pre-medieval policies. How’s that for spicing up the injury report?
Only company in history with a history of no-peeing injuries.
To be fair, Amazon claims it has massively reduced its injury rate. Not down to levels that everyone else in the entire nation meets, but a massive reduction. Which is probably why, in 2023, Amazon was under investigation in New York for ‘misrepresenting’ injury rates in its warehouses. Because, you know, actually reducing the injury rate would probably require changes that Amazon wouldn’t like – whereas lying about reductions in injuries would probably be easy peasy!
Not just easy peasy but creative too. Amazon artificially ‘reduces’ its injury rates by having on-site ‘school nurse’ facilities. Without any nurses of course. The staff do have enough uh ‘training’ to be able to tell workers not to go to a real doctor. Why? Because the aim of the facilities is to push workers back onto the warehouse floor, bleeding or not. Why? Cuz if they can get a worker out there, it doesn’t ‘count’ as an injury. Stay tuned for ‘Weekend at Bernies – The One at the Amazon Warehouse.’ Sure to be a laugh-packed box office hit.
So what is it exactly that makes Amazon warehouses so rife with worker injuries? What made Senator Bernie Sanders start an investigation into the “dangerous and illegal conditions at Amazon’s warehouses?”
There are a few things. But one of the main things is that workers are supposed to work so fast to meet quotas that the human body literally can’t sustain it. And if they don’t meet the quotas, workers get written up. And then fired.
Amazon wants human beings to perform like robots. So, not surprisingly, it uses robots. Perhaps also not surprisingly, when you mix people and robots, it’s the people who get hurt. People who work at warehouses with robots can’t keep up with the robots. Because the robots are – robots. Workers are intimidated into trying to keep up with the impossible. And they lose their health – and their jobs – in the process.
And, in a Bezos-style Draconian twist, workers often were not told what the quota was! So they would be racing for their lives, like something out of a Stephen King novel ‘The Amazon Warehouse Running Man.’
That’s all dystopian enough. But where we get into the darkly absurd has to do with equipment.
AMAZON REFUSES TO STOCK ITS WAREHOUSES WITH THE STANDARD FUCKING SAFETY EQUIPMENT EVERYONE ELSE USES.
Like height-adjustable platforms and carts. Powered pallet jacks. This is not rocket science Jeff! You’ve got fucking robots in your warehouses and you can’t fucking put powered pallet jacks in like everyone else in the goddamn world?
The people who get injured at Amazon warehouses are often tossed aside like garbage once the injuries require accommodations. Because Amazon does NOT like making accommodations for anyone.
Bernie Sanders: “…the cost of just a few years at an Amazon warehouse is a lifetime of pain.”
People who die in Amazon warehouses get treated even worse. When workers keel over on the job, as they do from time to time, the company tells the survivors to ‘get back to work.’ Get back to work while someone is dying on the floor. Prohibited from performing CPR or assisting the fallen. ICE would be proud.
This is where Amazon’s culture of surveillance and intimidation pay off. When you can literally prevent bystanders from trying to save a fellow worker’s life – you know you’ve hit the big time. You deserve your own little plaque in the Triangle Shirtwaist hall of fame.
That’s not all. When a beloved Amazon warehouse worker in Indiana died on the job because Amazon didn’t follow basic safety precautions, guess what Amazon (and the Indiana government) did. They defamed the worker. They blamed their worker for dying.
And let’s not forget that time when there was a tornado in Illinois in 2021. Amazon wouldn’t let workers leave when it was time to leave. So what happened when Amazon said no, you can’t go?
SIX PEOPLE DIED.
They were trapped inside a warehouse during a severe tornado and THEY DIED.
All of the death and injury at Amazon is in service of things like free one-day delivery. Literally, all of this comically cruel carnage is in service of just one thing: fast shipping.
So I’m going to ask you. Is getting a package in a day worth killing someone?
Hyperbole? Maybe. But that’s what runs through one former Amazon safety manager’s mind if he orders through the company. Is ordering from the company he worked for worth someone’s life?
SUDDEN HUMOR BREAK
Amazon statement to shareholders: “We respect and support the Core Conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO), the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.“
Ha ha ha ha ha. LMFAO. Oh god, help me, I’m crying. That’s a knee-slapper. Let me catch my breath.
Hey Amazon, is all that respect and support why you refused to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety that sets out minimum standards to keep factories safe. Did the respect make your hands shake so hard you couldn’t lift pen to paper?
I hear there are electronic signing applications that can help with that.
Okay, so what Amazon actually meant by its statement was: “We do not respect or support anything really. We are not in the business of respect and support. Respect and support are for losers. We are in the business of disrespect and repression. Hope that helps!”
So I’m going to say it again. Getting fast shipping is not worth someone’s life.
You’re not a devil. Don’t act like one.
If you must order from Amazon, do not get the fast shipping. Don’t even use Amazon fulfillment if you can avoid it.
Even better, though, start badmouthing Amazon publicly everywhere you go.
Share this post far and wide. Or do your own shitposting.
Because Amazon has proven one thing throughout its storied history of corporate malfeasance – it responds to bad publicity.
So give it bad publicity.
The cool kids shop everywhere but Amazon. Be a cool kid.
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