Amazon Doubles down on Being Evil

A study from the Open Markets Institute has revealed a swathe of employee abuse carried out by one of the worlds largest, most profitablee business.

The abuses include:

*Informing workers that they are not meeting targets - without revealing the targets - and then firing them by SMS after they fail to meet the targets

*Insisting that delivery drivers deliver 999 out of 1000 packages on time which has led to road traffic accidents due to speeding

*Requiring workers to submit to checks for stolen property which take 25 minute to one hour - the employees are not paid for this work period

*Firing employees after workplace injuries occur leading to quota not being met

*Operating one of the most dangerous workplaces in the USA with rates of severe injury five times higher than the national average. The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health named Amazon as being one of the most dangerous workplaces in the country.

*Persistent workplace surveillance used to enforce quotas.

https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/01/amazon_staff_spying/


Seperately The Register reached out to Amazon workers and received reports such as:

*Palettes being stacked ten high when the previous safe level was five.

*Claiming to operate COVID19 mitigation policies while the reality is the policies are never followed - including waiting months to inform workers that they're colleagues have tested positive for the virus.

*Punishing work rates that are constantly changed.

*Responding to complaints of racism by issuing a workplace violation against the complainant leading to their sacking.

*Responding to serious workplace injuries with Tylenol and ice packs rather than medical assistance.

*Operating the workplace using secret, shifting quotas that are set to ensure the slowest five percent of the workforce are sacked.

*Ignoring internal safety policies such as requiring team members to aid single workers with heavy lifting such as six pallettes of stock.

*Operating a covert intelligence operations to remove any union activity (which it denied by saying jobs listing for just such a thing were created "by mistake").

https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/02/amazon_job_conditions…

Amazon is one of the wealthiest businesses in the world. It's boss, Dr. Evil, has been the wealthiest man in the world for some time. The COVID19 outbreak alone has led to 50 billion dollars going to Dr. Evil.

Amazon responded with the usual horseshit.

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Comments

  • I guess thats what it takes these days to be the successfull profitable company? How come they are not fined

  • +16

    When you have a government that kowtows to large corporations and does not protect their workers, that is what you get.

  • +12

    bet you'll still buy from Amazon regardless, OP
    moral chest beating with a healthy serve of hypocrisy, a leftist way of life!

    • +2

      Going by the Amazon deals he upvoted I'd say he does buy from Amazon.

      https://www.ozbargain.com.au/user/70591/voted

    • +3

      Attack the messenger, and ignore the message. Good one Mr Trump

      • The message is a buy signal.

    • +1

      As opposed to the virtue signalling by paying Sunday homage to sky fairies by the right winger
      Such simpletons

    • +2

      Hypocrisy exists across the political spectrum, try not to shove people into categories and then decide to ignore them. It won't help you in life.

    • +1

      Who said he’s moral chest beating? He’s just telling the truth. Whether he’s in a position to follow up on that now, or in the near future depends where he is psychologically or financially at. And Amazon is such a big market place, it’s like expecting someone not to buy from Woolies even though they beat their flower workers over the head (and probably many other bad things). I still shop there but I don’t buy their brand. The world’s not black and white you know.

      https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-11/supermarkets-investig…

  • Thanks for the research. This makes me want to invest more money in this profitable company.
    https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/NASDAQ-AMZN/

    • Absolutely. No one else is building a competing inventory and delivery network like Amazons. They just complain about how evil they are. Why not do something about it, build your own network of millions of drivers and warehouses and fleets of rented jets and whatever else.

  • -2

    This explains why the driver expects me to go to the post office to pick up a thing of toilet paper. Didn't want to risk actually looking for my front door. I think I will not line up at the post office for toilet paper and just let them send it back to Amazon in two weeks.

    • +2

      Amazon doesn’t have last-mile delivery in Australia.

    • -2

      OK Boomer

    • I do know in America the truck drivers are made to a very high delivery rate in a short amount of time. The speeding fines and accidents these people have are huge

  • Forwards from grandma.

  • +4

    Hurr durr, I'm going to apply for a position at this company that I know has a reputation for being an (profanity) to employees, it'll be fine.

    This is like people buying from Kogan, you know you've got a good chance of having a bad time, but they do it anyway, and the companies keep chugging along.

  • +1

    How else do you expect Jeff to become a trillionaire? He's got to crack the whip on the serfs.

  • +1

    This is all standard practice within the australian logistics industry for at least the last 15 years, but only Amazon makes the headlines 🤣🤣

  • -2

    Geez. It's too bad those employees aren't free people that can just quit and find gainful employment with their highly sought after skills they've attained from earlier investments.

    Has to be the fault of Dr Evil.

    In the mean time, how many pay winners do you have on your bread roll?

    • is the bread gluten free?

      • +2

        No, the bread gluten is $3.50 a linear metre.

  • I only made an account when this deal went up, and haven't really used my account since.

    It's not hard to not buy from Amazon, but be mindful that he owns a slew of other companies that operate across many industries.

    To each their own really… But there's no arguing that the Amazon distribution network is incredible.

    • Yeah I don’t buy from Amazon because of this reason. I probably would if I really needed something/desperate but generally no. I do look at the reviews though :/

  • I can't believe a company with 500,000 employees could have had some anecdotally poor experiences for its workers! Amazon cops a bad rap because it's the biggest and most well known.

    • +1

      Amazon cops it because they seem to have the most systematic method of exploiting their workforce, they are on a whole other level to other major retailers in that space. I still order from Amazon, the issue isn't that a company will go to every legal measure to screw over workers, the issue is that it's legal in the first place. And yet the Morrision government still feels they need to tweak the IR rules to favor business.

      • Nah. It’s still pretty gross of them.

  • now why is the 77th busy supporting amazon.au? sooo many seperatethreads

    answers on a postcard addressed to .gov.au.

    *Claiming to operate COVID19 mitigation policies while the reality is the policies are never followed - including waiting months to inform workers that they're colleagues have tested positive for the virus.

    just like all trumpettes

  • +1

    Regardless of the garbage written in the op posts, all of us will be buying off them as soon as we see a good deal 🤣🤣

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