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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: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @06:15PM (1 child)
To be fair, Cornell University installed those nets too.
Perhaps that's the reason universities are hemming and hawing about the fall semester, yet oddly silent when it comes to lobbying for a return to normalcy: They think that students will continue to pay them $70k for lessons on Zoom, not have to provide sports facilities, classrooms and libraries. And if a student wants to commit suicide, they'll do it far away from headquarters.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2020, @02:19AM
Actually, it isn't a fair comparison at all [wikipedia.org]. Compare that to this [wikipedia.org]. Cornell wasn't putting nets around their buildings, they have a bridge over a 125-ft gorge next to campus. It's like having a big tower [texasmonthly.com] or something which makes it a natural target for this kind of thing. Foxconn had them jumping out of regular buildings, and LOTS of them too. Cornell gets a bad rap because it has become an urban legend of sorts as to how often it happens, which is not often at all.