Written by Steve Cannon for USSA News.
Does slave labor exist in America? You decide.
Lately, there has been a rash of stories from former Amazon employees detailing their horrendous experiences working in the enormous warehouses of Amazon. One woman complained that the warehouse was so big, that it took her 14 minutes to walk to and from the break room for her 15-minute break. Another complained that as a stocker, she had to stock one package every five seconds, and there were no chairs at her station to ease her back pain. Still another quit after one month because of the endless manual labor and drone like “water spiders” feeding her miles of packages that needed stowing.
Stories like this are becoming more and more common. Amazon warehouse employees are fed up with their slave-like treatment by their overlords and are trying to unionize. They are trying to break free. Granted, no one is forced to work at Amazon, but when your options are limited, be it your own doing or other circumstances, you should be able to have a “comfortable” job. Twelve-hour days humping countless packages with nary a break is hardly comfortable in my opinion.
So why is Amazon treating their unskilled workers so poorly? It’s not like they don’t have billions in cash and tax breaks. Is Jeff Bezos really that greedy? Is $120 billion not enough for him? Following are just a handful of the complaints and stories that Amazon workers detailed in the press:
- https://gawker.com/amazon-warehouse-workers-are-treated-like-a-child-a-d-1651376061
- http://talesfromtherampage.com/amazon/
- https://nypost.com/2019/11/30/amazon-warehouses-are-cult-like-sweatshops-run-by-robots-ex-employee/
- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/business/economy/amazon-warehouse-labor-robots.html
- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/01/03/amzn-j03.html
- https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/hr-has-too-much-power
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/7fvlr6/what_its_really_like_to_work_in_amazons_warehouse/
- https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Amazon.com/reviews?fcountry=US&floc=Ruskin%2C+FL&fjobtitle=Stower
