Will This Change Your Mind about Amazon AU?

ABC online has done a fairly long article on what it is like to work at the Amazon "Fulfillment" warehouse in Dandenong.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-27/amazon-australia-ware…

The key points from the workers (sorry, "associates") seem to be:

  • the workplace is built around a culture of fear where their performance is timed to the second;

  • they are expected to constantly work at ‘Amazon pace’, described as somewhere between walking and jogging;

  • high-pressure targets make them feel like they can’t go to the toilet and sometimes push them to cut safety corners;

  • they can be sent home early without being paid for the rest of their shift when orders are completed; and

  • everyone is employed as a casual and constantly anxious about whether they’ll get another shift.

Amazon has responded with what to me seems to be a set of glib and reptitive boiler-plate answers to the issues raised by the ABC:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-27/amazon-australia-resp…

It has certainly given me food for thought over whether or not I would order again from Amazon.

How about you?

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Comments

  • I didn't expect they treat workers that way. It's actually quite bad if it's true. But then again noone forces you to work for them.

    The fact that they don't allow any recordings and no interviews with workers without managers or supervisor sounds very suss.

    They just don't want to generate bad publicity.

    In general their business model having this next day delivery thing and consumer priority… people do pay prime membership for and expect that service.

    However timing people and having safety risks, making people feel inhuman is not on. Whatever algorithm did not take account of items weigh or every person can vary moving goods.

    They might as well hire robots soon

    Jeff Bezos should be shameful to make big bucks this way.

    One day Alibaba will take over Amazon. Just watch. Then Jack Ma can tell him "all your base is belong to us"

    Alibaba cloud over AWS. Heh

    Amazon prices ain't even good enough for me to use them over eBay.

    Their Prime video is rubbish.

    Only saving grace is AWS. But Azure and Alibaba gaining momentum

  • The answer to the thread title lies in the video below.
    How most commenters here are now shopping at Amazon.
    https://mobile.twitter.com/amenbreakfast/status/998049864981…

  • Just from the highlights in this article, seems ripped from an article I read a year or two ago about working at Amazon in the states, or maybe when they first opened here?

  • +2

    the workplace is built around a culture of fear where their performance is timed to the second;

    "Culture of fear"… that's just bad journalism. An employer judging employee performance through objective metrics. Someone call the police!

    they are expected to constantly work at ‘Amazon pace’, described as somewhere between walking and jogging;

    :( Oh no. People have to fast walk!?

    high-pressure targets make them feel like they can’t go to the toilet and sometimes push them to cut safety corners;

    Oh no… I feel like this isn't right. I feel like people should have like toilet breaks and stuff, you know?

    they can be sent home early without being paid for the rest of their shift when orders are completed; and

    Oh no, they're casual?

    everyone is employed as a casual and constantly anxious about whether they’ll get another shift.

    Oh yeah, they're casual.

    If Amazon used robots, these people would be crying "they took our jerbs!".

  • IT IS ENTIRELY OPTIONAL TO WORK AT AMAZON.

    YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WORK THERE.

    CHOOSE SOMETHING ELSE.

  • +1

    2019: the year of trying to discredit all large corporations!

  • ABC creating our new snowflakes generation. Life is TOUGH MAN-UP. ive worked my ass off in my life.

  • when they pay tax i 'may' change my mind

    when workers pay more tax than the companies they work for, there's something wrong.

  • +1

    None of that should be surprising to anyone who knows the contempt and disdain Amazon's management have for employee rights and working conditions.

    A very illuminating article on the workplace culture of their West Coast-based technology/IT departments (and these conditions are supposedly 'better' than their warehouse sweat shops). Amazon management's view of workers' performance dictates that only death is a valid excuse for not meeting KPIs and targets; getting cancer and being on chemotherapy, the death of loved ones, suffering a miscarriage or being involved in a car crash are not an acceptable reasons. There is also the extremely unsettling group-think and collective hive mind mentality that Amazon policy specifically cultivates as a form of cognitive dissonance to detach employees from the out-and-out mental abuse going on right before their eyes; largely through their weekly "business review" sessions which take the form of Bolshevik-era show trials where employees rat each other out and are publicly named and shamed as well as their 'Amazon Commandments' that are placed all throughout their offices to remind employees of how little they're worth to the company and why sociopathy is an admirable trait.

    It's a long read but it's well worth it for those too naive to think the concepts of sweat shops, indentured servitude and early Soviet-era models of working conditions could never make it to the West.

    Other good reads on the conditions inside Amazon warehouses:
    Permanent stand-by paramedics kept outside un-airconditioned/fully closed-up Amazon warehouse during heatwave
    600 ambulance callouts for UK Amazon Warehouse over 3-year period for injured workers
    Amazon drivers admit to breaking speed limits/urinating & defecating in their vans to meet delivery schedules
    Timed toilet breaks force workers to urinate in bottles & trash cans/Airport-style security checks and omnipresent CCTV surveillance

    It's pretty clear this is all a test run to see how far the boundaries of working class disenfranchisement can pushed towards outright Orwellian levels of oppression, before there's a push back. Once this paradigm is cemented in place that blue collar workers essentially have no expectation to worker's rights or basic dignity, it'll be aggressively foisted upon middle-class office worker jobs (which it already is in some industries), in the incremental march towards barely-disguised, 21st Century, corporate slavery.

    Sadly, Australians being what they are: ignorant, money-obsessed and deriving most of their self-worth from their jobs predominantly, especially the middle-class, will likely embrace these "innovations" as necessities in the globalized economy and evidence of societal progress towards a singularly soul-crushing career experience for all workers, regardless of industry, age, qualification or job benefits. Another good read to that end.

    People will applaud and excuse these practices while they still can from the comfort and safety of their relatively sheltered positions in Western society, as long they can benefit from them without having to see the consequences first-hand. The monstrosity that is the chimera of hyper-Capitalism and hyper-Socialism will loom over our us all eventually, thanks in no small part to our continued support of all of these scummy, slavery conglomerates like Amazon, AliExpress and Kogan, until our lives degenerates into those of Chinese peasants. Only then will saving that 5-10% on each pointless purchase by buying from places like Amazon, seem not worth it.

  • I didn't like my old job, it was toxic. I started looking and found a new one, THEN I quit. I continued paying my bills. No one forcing me working at the old place so I left.

    Just saying - common sense.

    • Yes that’s good, we’re more concerned with the vulnerable people who may not be as good as you

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