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Amazon locks down internal employee communications amid organizing efforts:
Amazon is reportedly (and suddenly) enforcing rules limiting employees' internal communication as workers, critical of the company's behavior, become increasingly outspoken and organized.
Internal listservs with more than 500 participants are now required to move to a moderated model where a manager must approve any content before its distribution, according to emails obtained by Recode.
Amazon had almost 800,000 total employees worldwide as of the end of 2019, a number that does not include the recent addition of another 175,000 temporary warehouse and delivery workers the company just hired to handle increased demand due to COVID-19. Of those 800,000, more than 500,000 are in the United States, and at least 275,000 of those are full-time employees.
Those hundreds of thousands of employees use thousands of internal listservs to talk among themselves about basically anything. That "anything," of late, includes many criticisms of Amazon. The company has faced both internal and external reproof[*] for its management of warehouses, where some employees have called for better cleaning, more protective equipment, and more paid time off as COVID-19 has spread through at least 50 US facilities.
[*] Malformed link in original; corrected here.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 02 2020, @02:16PM (5 children)
I've heard that warehouse employees got a $2/hr pay boost and double-time for all OT worked. Of course that was only after significant prodding and bad PR.
What we should have is a national law that doubles those employees' pay during designated times of need (like this pandemic) and provides free healthcare and childcare, at least during this designated time of need. Those eligible could be warehouse and grocery workers, first-responders, and certain medical staff (not those worthless administrators). Of course not everybody should be eligible, for example engineers in the military industrial complex who might technically be considered essential enough to stay working (I know people in the MIC who were ordered to stay working but are not happy about it, as some quit literally on the spot when told to keep working) but who have nothing to do with a pandemic-related time of need.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @03:38PM
> What we should have is a national law ...
Socialist spotted!! (grin)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday May 02 2020, @06:19PM (1 child)
some quit literally on the spot when told to keep working
Get 'em to quit so they don't get any severance or unemployment. What they should do is slow things down a bit. There's a million ways to do that with very low risk. And can they force you to work overtime?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 02 2020, @08:24PM
It's a grey area if one quit because of COVID and they had reason to believe that they were in danger. I'm not sure if there is a policy or if it depends on the unemployment person you talk to being a dick or not. I was lucky enough to get unemployment right before COVID so I'm already locked in until I get hired, which probably won't happen in the next few months -- I'm too overqualified for warehouse work and can't get a real job because Chinese and Indian H1-B's took them all.
The guys I was talking about who quit weren't forced to work overtime, they had families but were required to be in the building for work. One department was split into 2 shifts based on their physical work locations to maximize social distancing, but being forced into another shift is a pain in the ass in itself. Now I think the company won't lay them off but instead is forcing them to burn their sick and PTO time -- Probably a common situation in big corporate.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 02 2020, @09:48PM (1 child)
As long as you're paying. You're good for it, right?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 02 2020, @10:48PM
Bezos and Wal-Mart can pay. They've got the fucking money and the infrastructure to absorb new employees others can't afford during those times.
Or we can tap into all those captured funds we've been sitting on, such as El Chapo's riches or what was confiscated from the Clinton Foundation, or the CIA black slush funds.