My friend, we’ll call her Bonita, is a 55 year old hard-ass worker began working at an Amazon Warehouse about eight years ago, before it was cool. Literally, she was working there when they refused to run AC, fans, or open doors and their workers got sick:
“Amazon’s treatment of warehouse workers has been under scrutiny since 2011, when an investigation by the Allentown Morning Call newspaper revealed what were — quite literally — sweatshop conditions. When summer temperatures exceeded 100 degrees inside the company’s Breinigsville, Pennsylvania, warehouse, managers would not open the loading bay doors for fear of theft. Instead, they hired paramedics to wait outside in ambulances, ready to extract heat-stricken employees on stretchers and in wheelchairs, the investigation found. Workers also said they were pressured to meet ever-greater production targets, a strategy colloquially known as “management by stress.” Sources: Snopes.com and Huffington Post
But with limited options and bills out-the-wazoo, Bonita grinned and beared it as it is one of Lehigh Valley’s best paying jobs with benefits. These benefits will be erased to compensate for the new beginning pay rate of $16/hour. She loses her monthly bonuses, some of her stock options, and she gets to work with new employees making nearly the same with less experience. She is not alone in feeling pretty screwed:
“We’re tremendously pissed,” one worker said. “Sure, the people who just started last week at $13.25 are overjoyed. But nobody who’s been here for a while likes it. … A fifth-grader can figure out that you’re not better off.” Source: The Morning Call
Fortunately, Amazon is hearing the disgruntlement and says it will try to work something out for its most loyal workers. Also, they do still have the “Pay to Quit” policy that pays employees up to $5K to quit if they are not happy. Bonita could tell her boss to, “Take this job and shove it...and give me my damn check,” but where would that leave her after the money's gone in two months? She’ll be online looking at a bunch of ludicrous companies offering $8 to $10 to start and to boot, they will look at her birth year and simply swipe left.
I wonder what Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna would say with their Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act, or Stop BEZOS Act if only they knew the details?
To look at more crazy old robot propaganda as pictured above go to: Robot Hysteria in the 1930’s