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The World Socialist Web Site reports
Injured Amazon worker Shannon Allen spoke to the International Amazon Workers Voice about the conditions at the DFW-7 fulfillment center in Haslet, Texas. Shannon described brutal working conditions, authoritarian-style surveillance of workers, and management demands to maintain frenetic rates of speed.
Shannon, 49, lives in Azle, Texas, a small town on the western outskirts of Fort Worth. She was injured while working at Amazon, returned to the job, and was injured again at the same workstation. Physically unable to continue work, Shannon now faces homelessness on top of her injuries, but she is determined to "fight or die".
[...] To maximize her income, Shannon volunteered for the overnight shift on Saturday through Thursday. The shift begins at 6:30 at night and ends at 5:00 in the morning. However, once Shannon received her first paycheck, she realized that her pay was $13 per hour for the weekend shifts, not the $13.50 that had been promised.
[...] Shannon worked as a "counter", whose job was to check the work of the pickers and stowers. Fail to catch a mistake, and become a target of a punitive system of "quality errors" and "write-ups".
Not long after starting to work at Amazon, Shannon began to recognize what she called the "dirty secrets". "These are the things they don't tell you about when you're hired."
Every time workers leave the facility, they are subjected to an invasive search. "You wait in line with a bucket like at the airport", she said. A worker is required to take off belt, shoes, and hat. Bags are sent through a conveyor belt and the worker goes through a full body scan. "If you set it off, you have to go through a second search, and they wand you front to back."
In a 10-hour shift, workers are permitted two 15-minute breaks and one 30-minute break for lunch. To go outside on a break, workers must submit to the search and go through the security line. "The lines to get outside on your 15-minute break are 20 to 30 deep on each line, and there are only two lines." Meanwhile, the breaks are timed from "scan to scan" at a worker's station, and workers are admonished, "Not one second more."
[...] "The heat is sweltering." Shannon described fans here and there, pointing down the aisles where workers walk to get to their stations, but not toward the workers to help them cool off. "Whoever thought of that design was a complete idiot", Shannon said. "Because we get no relief from the heat with them pointed down the aisle."
Temperatures reached 80, 85, and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. "In the summertime, it gets over 100 degrees in there", Shannon said. "Here is another genius idea. They have these signs hanging down that have our station numbers on them. These signs are probably as big as a 19-inch TV. They are in front of the fans and it blows the sign constantly. And we get no relief from the heat."
"July and August are the absolute worst", Shannon continued. "It was nothing to see an ambulance up at Amazon four to five times a night." Workers dropped at their stations, physically unable to continue working. "On my shift", Shannon said, "we were picking people up from heat exhaustion."
[...] In addition to having "expectations of the human body that are unrealistic", Shannon said the company expected workers to manage with faulty equipment and constant demands to meet strict time limits. Attempting to work at high speeds around faulty equipment was a common cause of injury.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday May 10 2018, @03:15PM
You seem to think this means
But the real reason for legacy media streaming constant journalist stories like this is because Sears is out of business and bye bye toys r us and soon no more jc pennys and no boston store soon enough and all those places heavily advertised on legacy media, and the purpose of legacy boomer journalism is to sell advertising, and Amazon isn't buying advertising, so the journalists are getting kicked in the pocketbook are a little butthurt about the whole situation, leading to infinity anti-amazon stories about working conditions sucking.
The fact of the matter is these are relatively poor working conditions for middle class boomer legacy media addicts who sit in cubes all day, but the pay and working conditions aren't half bad for an Army soldier or migrant farm worker or illegal alien factory worker. Yes, yes, compared to remote software developer contractor, its not that nice, but comparing apples to apples its a fairly typical warehouse environment, its a problem with warehouse environment employment not specifically a problem with Amazon.
A bad analogy (or maybe good) would be reading some propaganda like Uncle Tom's Cabin and missing the point by demanding based on that book that one or two plantation owners get punished; thats not really the intended point of that particular example of propaganda. There's nothing wrong or unusual about Amazon; what sucks is their whole industry.
Some of my bias is when I was young a coworker's girlfriend worked at a department store warehouse; the stories sound pretty much like a early 90s department store warehouse with a different name. I worked at a major printing facility (think, junkmail, not so much books or magazines) with multiple couple hundred foot long printing presses; this is normal working conditions. Its actually very unusual in the history of humanity to have HVAC or shade in one's workplace. 99% of most of the anti-amazon stories compress down to "its a warehouse job" leaving at most 1% amazon specific.
In some ways the worst possible outcome for the employees would be to run amazon out of a city. Look at the supply and demand situation for the remaining warehouse jobs; however shitty working at Amazon is today, it'll be 10x worse working at XYZ ABC Inc after amazon is run out of town.
They never really discuss how there's no dignity or respect. They sell an environment and imply that means there's no respect or dignity. Anyone who's ever worked a labor job or been in the military knows there is no strict connection between shitty working conditions and respectful relationships or enjoying the company of your coworkers, subordinates, and superiors. Their target market for this propaganda is imaginative people who's sole experience with manual labor or even skilled labor is reading "The Jungle" while attending a small liberal arts college. I'm willing to accept and agree with the endless repeated claims that warehouse work is a physically near intolerable environment, surely all large workplaces have a small number of agitators who are unhappy, but I don't accept that at least mentally or workplace culturally its necessarily a bad place to work. One loud person with a legacy media provided megaphone seems to think so; but for every one like her, there's many thousands who apparently disagree with her or don't agree in full.
Other than legacy media pouting that "Sears is bankrupt therefore not buying advertising so F Amazon", for an infinite number of substitutions to "Sears", I'm not sure there's really any story at all.