Amazon Warehouse Envoys Rally To Tweet Upbeat Comments About Working Conditions (seattletimes.com) 115
Amazon has been criticized for years by activists and labor unions for working conditions in its warehouses. So it caught the eye of a Seattle Times journalist when he saw several people, all of which created account recently, tweet positive things about their work experience at Amazon's warehouse. The report says: A group of more than a dozen Amazon Twitter users in the last two weeks started responding to critics of the company on the social media site, sharing upbeat tales of their working conditions and pay at Amazon's distribution network. Identified by first names and "Amazon FC Ambassador," they each opened a Twitter account this month, are unfailingly polite, and pepper emojis into conversations about the generosity of their benefits packages and job satisfaction at Amazon's fulfillment centers, the company's term for its sprawling warehouses.
[...] Amazon's Twitter legion, though small, appears to represent a new front in the company's effort to portray itself as a generous employer. The company has been criticized for years by activists and labor unions for working conditions in its warehouses, with media reports finding the company failed to provide air conditioning at some facilities during the summer, and set work quotas that could exceed employees' ability to keep up.
[...] Amazon's Twitter legion, though small, appears to represent a new front in the company's effort to portray itself as a generous employer. The company has been criticized for years by activists and labor unions for working conditions in its warehouses, with media reports finding the company failed to provide air conditioning at some facilities during the summer, and set work quotas that could exceed employees' ability to keep up.
turing test (Score:1)
Shut down AWS to see if they're real people or not.
Twitter astroturfing (Score:4, Insightful)
A new low for Amazon.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't know why you're getting modded down, I was sure smelling that good old astroturf when reading the article.
Most folks will see right through this, hopefully.
My Bro used to get this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My Bro used to get this (Score:5, Funny)
Express order fullfillment.
Let me assure you that I feel no
Pressure at all to write this.
My time here has been full of happy
Experiences.
Re: (Score:1)
God forbid, would we
Ever want to interfere in our
Trusted employees personal
Business. We do
Acknowledge some trials in
Coming together to get to
Know our employees needs and
Troubles. But I assure you,
Our top priority is our employees
Well-being. We will
Only use the most thoughtful and
Respectful means to
Keep our employees from leaving.
Re: (Score:2)
I used to work for an outfit that did a version of this. Before the Internet, management would release their internal mission and vision statements to the workforce. A few weeks later, some people purportedly not associated with the company would write glowing editorials to the local paper. About what a great company we were. Using all the same buzzwords and phrases from management's internal memos.
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
They even wrote a song about it!
Re: (Score:2)
I have this urge to jump up and yell 'Bingo!'
I don't get it (Score:1)
Since when does paid comments enhance reputation?
Sounds like someone uploaded their stack to AWS (Score:2)
What if ... (Score:2)
What if the working conditions really are ok?
I know that's crazy talk, but ... could happen?
Re:What if ... (Score:4, Insightful)
If so, then rather than universally complaining about how demanding and shitty the jobs are, people who have worked there would probably just keep relatively quiet about their cushy jobs, like the workers at "defense" contractors.
Re: (Score:2)
If so, then rather than universally complaining about how demanding and shitty the jobs are, people who have worked there would probably just keep relatively quiet about their cushy jobs, like the workers at "defense" contractors.
They complain "universally"? Every man jack of them?
Or do we just hear the ones who complain?
Re: (Score:2)
Compare to the ratio of complaint to praise in other industries...usually when practically (if perhaps not literally?) everyone who has worked at a job says the job sucks, and undercover investigations by journalists confirm that the job sucks, [businessinsider.com] we believe them.
What is the big deal? (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Funny)
...Fulfillment Centers up beat *YOU* until you are fully filled up!
I know people who work in one... (Score:2, Insightful)
They don't care. It's a job that has few requirements. Pampered techbros are always so shocked to see how the other half lives. Conditions in Amazon "fulfillment centers" or whatever are pretty much the same as any other warehouse in the region, maybe a little better even since they use ton of robots to make the work easier. I don't know who these people that are constantly trying to smear Amazon are, but it could be Waltons, could be Oracle, or could be the NY Times. When you're that successful in that man
Happy Amazon Worker's Review (Score:5, Funny)
Happiness is the essence of working at an Amazon warehouse.
Everywhere I look, I see smiling faces and cheerful conversation.
Lovely work environment overall, great people all around.
Please consider an Amazon warehouse for your next job!
Re: (Score:2)
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
An Amazon haiku:
Hours and pay are great
Tell the world how great it is
Or you'll be replaced
I know a few people who work for Amazon (Score:4, Informative)
Astroturfing is the sureest sign something stinks. (Score:1)
Years ago I had a landlord that was just the pits. He screwed me out of a security deposit, and tried to rent my apartment 4 months before I left moved out.
So I put up several online reviews of him. There were several other bad reviews with very similar stories of this guy (Green Rock Apartments in Minneapolis if it matters). Shortly after this, I see a large number of positive reviews all appear within a couple week!
No doubt he paid off his tenants to put up positive reviews of him. It's gotten to the
Will Adam Schiff launch an investigation (Score:2)
Bezos = China? (Score:3)
Sounds like the kind of thing the Maoist Chinese or Stalinist USSR would do.
"No, comrade, there is much borscht and vodka, and all is good! Do not trouble yourself with lies of capitalist plutocrat pig-dog lackeys who claim Glorious People's Republic is somehow inferior."
Am I the only one... (Score:2)
Am I the only one who sees this going horribly, horribly wrong for Amazon?
Fake tweets along the lines of :
"Today my gruel had two raisins instead of none!"
"They've cut down the standard fifty lashes to only 40!".
"Now that we're using the Celsius temperature scale, I feel much more comfortable at 40 degrees!"
BBB (Score:2)
Bezos Buys Botfarm.
The rest is obvious, Circulate please, there's nothing to see here.
It's a lot cheaper (Score:1)
To hire a few flacks than to actually improve working conditions.
Re: (Score:3)
Whether those people are happy or unhappy working there, the only things that might legitimately concern those of us without AMZN-stock, is: "are they there voluntarily?"
The answer is "Sort of...they don't have any inherited or accumulated wealth, so they need jobs to survive. The closest thing to a legal alternative is to squat on land in the woods and hope they don't get caught, like the Unabomber."
None of this is any of our business.
Until you can no longer legally quit your job for some reason, your not leaving is proof, the job-conditions are Ok.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Sure thing.
JUST KIDDING! We have freedom of speech and association! BWAHAHAHA you can't stop us from helping our fellow humans! XD
Re: (Score:2)
More Marxist bullshit. No. The closest thing to a legal alternative is to find another employer — one who'd be happy to retain the services if the hard-working and dedicated employee, treated so unfairly and harshly by Amazon.
Why, they can pay you the same and win you over just by treating you better!
Re:Stop the collectivist bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
No. The closest thing to a legal alternative is to find another employer — one who'd be happy to retain the services if the hard-working and dedicated employee, treated so unfairly and harshly by Amazon.
Why, they can pay you the same and win you over just by treating you better!
Funny how that doesn't really happen though - new, better jobs don't magically spring into being to take in refugees from shitty jobs at the bottom of the employment pyramid. Instead all the employers settle on paying minimum wage or close to it, and treating workers about as awfully as they can legally get away with! Isn't that weird? So weird.
Amazon warehouses have been in operation for years now. Maybe you can help these workers by hanging out at one during lunch break and handing out printed contact info for these freely-available better jobs to the workers as they sprint past.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe, that's because work at Amazon is not actually bad, huh?
Yes, and for all those years your kind were spreading these accusations against Walmart. Not so much any more, for some reason — now Amazon is the main target. Speak of "funny"...
Re: (Score:2)
Are you part of the Amazon envoy designed to tell an upbeat narrative about working conditions?
Well played.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe, that's because work at Amazon is not actually bad, huh?
And yet there's an overwhelming torrent of complaints backed up by undercover investigations? Are they all fake? How deep does this rabbit hole go?
Yes, and for all those years your kind were spreading these accusations against Walmart. Not so much any more, for some reason — now Amazon is the main target. Speak of "funny"...
Nothing funny about it, it's because Amazon warehouses are even worse than working at Walmart. But it is another weird example of a worse job alternative arising rather than a better one...
Re: (Score:2)
You are citing remarkably few examples for something you claim to exist in "overwhelming" number. Are you so easily overwhelmed, the mere thought of such things indicates sniffing salts?
Oh, it is funny. Hysterically funny, how the same crowd, who claim poor Americans — with nothing to lose but their chains — forced to toi
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say it's an overwhelming number. The examples are not few. [google.com]
The jobs "Americans won't do" are illegal labor - they pay well below minimum wage and often have non-OSHA-compliant working conditions. The employers don't get reported because the employees don't have citizenship. If anyone rats, they all go down. Fix just one problem on the employers' side (make it illegal and very expensive to hire an undocumented immigrant) and you'll deincentivize illegal immigration and create more jobs that locals might s
Re: (Score:2)
Amazing how little people know about the economy.
The way out of poverty is to work your ass off, and beating up your kids for wasting their time in dubious entertainment for the lower classes (american football, rap, computer games) and study hard sciences hard struggling for acceptance in good computer science college.
Unions, living wage battles, basic income battles won't help you.
Chinese have been living in United States since forever, first working at low paying menial jobs, slowly growing generation af
Re: (Score:2)
In other words, playing a really good game of musical chairs for the ever-decreasing number of seats at the table in the laissez-faire economy...that's incredibly difficult, requires some luck to make that hard work pay off, and isn't sustainable. Not to mention that each generation will accrue more and more psychological damage from the beatings and crappy childhoods.
Re: (Score:2)
>Not to mention that each generation will accrue more and more psychological damage from the beatings and crappy childhoods.
You are talking out of your ass. There is no such problem. It is made up based on random anecdotal evidence.
There is no evidence that the children of "Asian dads" and "tiger moms" suffer mental problems
Stop bullshitting public.
Re: (Score:2)
No evidence? Then what do you call this?
http://news.berkeley.edu/2013/... [berkeley.edu]
Re: (Score:2)
The link does not even work.
Re: (Score:2)
Still works for me. Here's a Google cache link:
https://webcache.googleusercon... [googleusercontent.com]
Re: (Score:2)
The answer is "Sort of...they don't have any inherited or accumulated wealth, so they need jobs to survive.
But if Amazon under pays and treats their employees like crap, then it should be easy to find a better job for at least equal if not higher pay.
Re: (Score:1)
It's not all or nothing.
If you have to swallow poison with the food you need to live right now, but the poison will take years to kill you (and your soul), do you still swallow the poison with the sustenance?
Most people will.
Re: (Score:1)
Because there's no way a former employer could ruin your chances of re-employment by giving you a bad reference. Oh, wait...
Re: (Score:3)
None of this is any of our business. Whether those people are happy or unhappy working there, the only things that might legitimately concern those of us without AMZN-stock, is: "are they there voluntarily?"
Until you can no longer legally quit your job for some reason, your not leaving is proof, the job-conditions are Ok.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Yeah. Stop complaining about your missing fingers and limbs, you socialist bastards. If you don't like the fact that the machine in the factory has no safety features and regularly maims the workers you are free to work somewhere else.
That IS what you were trying to say, right?
what have the unions ever done for us?!! (Score:2)
Re:Stop the collectivist bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh bullshit. If there were better jobs available to these workers you think they'd be there? People who are scraping by don't have the luxury of easy job mobility, so stop with the "they like it if they work there" crap.
Companies are forcing shitty work conditions on people and paying the less and less. This is a problem that DOES affect all of society, ESPECIALLY when there are thousands of these Amazon workers who are being paid so shittily that they're on food stamps:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/thousands-of-amazon-workers-receive-food-stamps-and-bernie-sanders-wants-amazon-to-pay-up/ar-BBMnmJC
So you know what? That DOES make it everyone's business because public tax dollars are going to subsidize corporate profits. Or another way to state it: Corporate Welfare. For one of the richest companies on the face of the Earth.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No one would be, where they are, if a better alternative were available. No one.
The US is both a free and a fabulously rich country. The stuff of dreams of immigrants world-wide, who come here — legally and otherwise — and manage to not only earn a living, but to also support extended families back home [wikipedia.org]. Whoever is born and raised in the US — without the immigrants' handicaps — h
Re: (Score:2)
> If there were better jobs available to these workers you think they'd be there?
> No one would be, where they are, if a better alternative were available. No one.
It happens all the damn time. You need to pull your head out of your ass, but you won't so further discussion with you is pointless.
Re: (Score:2)
If this really were as wide-spread a phenomenon, you would've cited examples. You didn't. Ergo, you are wrong. And you knew — or should've known — you are wrong. Ergo, you lied. Remember to logout, liar.
I hope, for your sake, some day you'll learn to concede with more grace. But, graceful or not, I'll accept your surrender anyway. Run along...
Re: (Score:1)
> If this really were as wide-spread a phenomenon, you would've cited examples. You didn't. Ergo, you are wrong. And you knew — or should've known — you are wrong. Ergo, you lied. Remember to logout, liar.
Wow. I expected your /. account number to have an extra digit, as this behavior is what I'd expect from a just graduated Republican edgelord. Guess you're one of those old narrowminded MAGA hatters instead.
If I'm a liar, then you must be too. You haven't provided a single example to suppo
Re: (Score:2)
An astonishing percentage of people will work far harder to keep their life the same than they will to leave their comfort zone to make things better. It's irrational, but that's humans for you. Jobs especially are "sticky", and people stay with them for years even when there are better alternatives, because of fear of change. And of course employers exploit that. It's why you can usually get a raise when you change jobs.
Re: (Score:2)
Whether that's true or not — and you aren't citing any supporting evidence — it is not for dearth of jobs available.
My point stands: if conditions at Amazon really were as horrible as the haters contend, they'd be having a hard time finding and retaining employees.
Re: Stop the collectivist bullshit (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Think about the people at these sort of jobs - they have a mortgage they're barely payi
Re: (Score:2)
Shitty jobs are the easiest to find, and most people who need to actually live on the job work 2 of them. Been there, done that.
It's why Basic Income is widely hated - because it gives these people power to actually choose
Your insights into the psychology of strawmen is amazing.
Forget the food stamps (Score:2)
Now, it's all well and good to celebrate their bootstrappiness (again, lack of a better word) but remember now that folks who might have been perfectly happy working in a warehouse are now struggling to get out. The ones that do move up the ladder, but that means more people applying for non-warehouse jobs
Re:Stop the collectivist bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
None of this is any of our business. Whether those people are happy or unhappy working there, the only things that might legitimately concern those of us without AMZN-stock, is: "are they there voluntarily?"
Until you can no longer legally quit your job for some reason, your not leaving is proof, the job-conditions are Ok.
Nothing to see here, move along.
The private lives of the employees are their own personal lives. Amazon is a private company and can make its own decisions. However, how Amazon operates affects the lives of the people in the surrounding communities. If Amazon employees are underpaid, they place greater burdens on government programs, much as Walmart workers have, with resulting impacts on tax rates and societal impacts on communities, families, schools, etc. If Amazon employees are injured on the job without adequate health coverage, then the government-run health and workers compensation programs will be burdened, again with associated tax and societal impacts. If Amazon pays its employees less than they would have received from other jobs, then the local tax base decreases.
This is not to say that government should dictate to Amazon how to operate their business. However, because Amazon's way of doing business significantly impacts the community, the community should be able to voice their concerns.
Re: (Score:2)
If Amazon employees are underpaid, they place greater burdens on government programs...
Do you mean underpaid based on the work being performed, or underpaid based on how much money they need to live?
The latter. Underpaid to the extent that they need government subsidies.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, what I mean by Collectivist Bullshit.
Yes, a good argument against government-run health and workers compensation programs, thank you.
Everyone is entitled to voice concerns. But there are loud calls to force [theguardian.com] Amazon to change... From the same people, who've sung praises [theguardian.com] to dictato
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It's my business as a customer. You may be happy with however many degrees of separation it takes for you to sleep at night, but there are other choices out there. And if I can choose to buy from a more humane employer, that's my right as a consumer.
Re: (Score:3)
Just because someone chooses to work somewhere that has poor working conditions, doesn't mean it shouldn't concern "us". People shouldn't be peeing in water bottles because if they go to the bathroom, they'll lose 'productivity' hours and get fired. That shouldn't be a thing.
I think you're trolling though, for real.
Collectivism and unionization are good, actually. (Score:2)
Can we seriously start guillotining the shitty libertardian people here? Anyone still posting on this place should be well past their fedora libertarian athiest phase unless they have some sort of prion disease eating holes in their brain.
Fuck "Job Creators" and this pseudo-slavery shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Your answer to people expressing libertarian tendencies is to cut off their head?
Which is somehow not as bad as slavery?
I guess that makes sense: the people you dislike get killed. Except that nonsense has been going on for thousands of years and hasn't yielded much yet.
Re: (Score:2)
Libertarianism is the ultimate "fuck you, got mine" philosophy and needs to go away ASAP. If the original intent of the philosophy meant anything it has long since been lost to the kind of stupid people who adopt it as means of complaining about the government whenever it inconveniences them in any way shape or form by acting or NOT acting. It was never "get the government out of my life", it was "Get the government out of my life if it gets in my way at all, but also have it in my life if other people get
Re: (Score:2)
None of this is any of our business. Whether those people are happy or unhappy working there, the only things that might legitimately concern those of us without AMZN-stock, is: "are they there voluntarily?"
It's very legitimate to ensure there aren't physical dangers there, especially hidden ones. Any place there are conveyor belts, there need to be safety regulations (and an Amazon warehouse is like some intentional conveyor belt convention). And no saving money by insulating your building with asbestos and not telling your employees (of course, the idea that Amazon would insulate a warehouse is a joke, but you get my point I hope).
Beyond OSHA stuff, though, I tend to agree with you.
The problem Amazon is ha
wait, who am I talking about again? (Score:1)
And enough of you are.