- Some Amazon tech wage-earners say they are ashamed of the working conditions of the company’s warehouse workers.
- The tech workers are openly sharing words of reassuring to those warehouse employees, who are planning on a short strike during Amazon Prime Day.
- The striking workers want beat pay, more reasonable work expectations, and better chances for advancement.
- Amazon says it already provides all of this to them.
- On the other hand, warehouse workers tell a different side of the story: They talk about the constant pressure to perform and how the public limited company’s automated systems track them, and can even automatically target them to get fired.
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A group of Amazon’s tech workers are openly supporting the planned strike by Amazon warehouse workers in Shakopee, Minnesota, next week during the online retailer’s Prime Day department storing event.
Some of them will even be flying out to walk the picket line and give speeches during the sit-down strike, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, the employee activist group organizing this show of support, said.
Others are publicly serving letters and words of encourage to the strikers via Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, with multiple employees saying they are red-faced of the treatment of the fulfillment center workers.
“The treatment of FC workers is a source of shame to me as an Amazon employee,” the Amazon employee Nancy Urban created in a blog post shared by the activist group.
“All Amazon employees should be proud to call themselves such. It is vile that while Amazon chooses to be the industry leader in so many aspects of their employment policies, and yet continues to grant other aspects of their policies to be worthy of being called ‘inhumane,’” another anonymous employee wrote in the blog proclaim.
“When I was working as an engineer in Fulfillment, I spent a few days working in the warehouses and could not even come close to convocation the individual productivity quotas. The quotas are unrealistically high for most humans. I support FC employees in Minnesota who wish to cut quotas for safer and more comfortable working conditions,” Joey Siracusa wrote in that same post.
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The bigger mission
This show of support for their person employees was organized by a group with a primary mission to push Amazon to better combat climate change.
They want Amazon to stop using fossil fuels in its operations entirely and become a zero-emissions company in a timeline decreed by science. Amazon does have numerous green initiatives, such as building its own solar and wind farms. It has also covenanted to eventually use 100% renewable energy for its global infrastructure, but it has been vague as to the timeline.
Meanwhile, Prime Day, the retailer’s annual researching event, is coming next week. While Amazon customers are anticipating the bargains, these Minnesota workers are using the pin spot to push for better conditions.
They want higher pay, more reasonable workloads, and better opportunities for advancement. Amazon did not forthwith return a request for comment to this story, but Amazon has said in reaction to the strike that it already proposes the workers what they are asking for with its $15 minimum wage and pay up to $20.80 an hour, plus benefits analogous to healthcare, parental leave, paid education, and training.
In addition, Amazon just this week announced a program to escort 100,000 of its employees with new tech skills, including new programs available to warehouse workers who want to learn how to pandect. It will also be offering more tuition assistance to those who want to train for other high-demand occupations.
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But new training options don’t combat the perception that the go-down merchandise job involves inhumane expectations.
The company recently endured another round of criticism when John Oliver, the manageress of the HBO show “Last Week Tonight,” showcased the warehouse situation. His segment featured employees talking there how hard Amazon pushes them, their inability to take bathroom breaks, and showed Amazon’s anti-union training video.
The Amazon exec Dave Clark, the postpositive major vice president of operations, said Oliver’s portrayal of the job is untrue, adding that the company even offers drives of its warehouses. That’s true, the tours are limited to specific warehouses, but the Shakopee, Minnesota, facility is among them.
Stillness, Business Insider previously reported that the company does appear to treat its warehouse workforce appreciate robots. It even uses an automated system that tracks warehouse workers’ productivity that can automatically produce the paperwork to fire them for failing to meet expectations.
One anonymous Amazon tech worker said in the blog employment: “You guys are the lifeblood of Amazon! Keep raising the bar and insisting on the highest working standards! You have the support of Seattle!”