Comments

1
Or sales taxes.

Can't forget the fact all other taxpayers subsidize them.
2
And with the ongoing DOWN ECONOMY DOWN ECONOMY UNEMPLOYMENT UNEMPLOYMENT narrative constantly echoing in the media (not without reason, of course), all the Jeff Bezoses of the world are probably thinking there's even more room to get away with mistreating their workers than there was before. Anybody with a job should be grateful they have even that, and buck up, and shut up. I mean, everybody needs to sacrifice to keep our highly profitable company afloat, right?
4
Jesus fuck. He could solarize the roof with a 5-10 year payback on initial investment and get his A/C for free; moreover, industrial installations are often not subject to the metering caps residential grid-tied solar is (depending on jurisdiction), so if it's favorable he could put in more than the required capacity and see additional revenue from his electrical utility for at least another 20-30 years. He could even dedicate the excess capacity to nearby schools (and/or underwrite the installation of panels on their roofs) to cut their power bills and leave more funds for programs and teachers, if he really wanted to be a good corporate citizen.
5
Goldy, you can barely feed yourself. What does that say about your boss?
6
I used to work with a company that handled transportation for Amazon......Man! the pay is low and they work the hell out of you. I agree with the other posts "they do it because they can"
7
I got the same email. Amazon will never get another nickel from me.

Powell's is unionized, and if you buy through powellsunion.com, a percentage goes the strike fund.
8
You Slog people need to keep a running list of all the shit everybody is supposed to boycott. It's too long for anyone to remember -- hey! Is there an app for that? Are you boycotting the app store?
9
The husband of a friend of mine works as a photographer, doing mostly corporate photo shoots. My friend says that Amazon habitually pays 1/10th of what real professional photographers charge. And Amazon's new thing is to stop contracting professionals to take care of photo shoots, hairstyling, and the like, and are instead trying to hire inexperienced people, training them, and then paying them barely more than minimum wage. When they tried to hire their own hairstylists, Amazon flew New York hairstylists out to train the new hires. The results were about as disastrous as you'd expect.
10
huh, maybe those people should get CS degrees and switch to six figure incomes in the Amazon offices.
11
@9

Giving novice workers training in a new job skill? Chilling. How do these monsters sleep at night?
12
@11,

The point is that they are trained only well enough to work for Amazon (i.e. not very well) and are paid shit. They're also given an implied promise that they'll be able to work as photographers or hairdressers once they're (rightly) fed up with Amazon, which isn't true. The cheap, poor quality work Amazon is willing to accept won't pass muster elsewhere.
13
@12

If only the high quality work Amazon's defunct competitors used to pay top dollar for was enough to have kept them in the black. Hey, wait, I just had an epiphany...
14
Speaking as someone who is very familiar with the disgusting humid summers in that part of the country, the lack of air conditioning was the least of their problems. Amazon REFUSED TO OPEN THE WAREHOUSE DOORS for cross-ventilation, which according to at least one local warehouse veteran is the standard practice during summer, for fear of theft. They not only weren't air-conditioning their workers, they had them shut up airtight, literally roasting like birds in an oven. Scumbuckets. I mean, really, that's not just harsh or uncaring, it's bordering on mass murder. I've long had my doubts about Amazon, but now I'm putting them in the never-shop-there-unless-it's-a-matter-of-life-or-death category along with Walmart.
15
Jeff Bezos runs a big company with a lot of moving parts, and delegates daily tactical management to a host of SVPs and VPs. It's unlikely that he has personal knowledge of the air quality in more than fifty buildings. It's also possible that the VP in charge of N.A. Fulfillment is from the South and underestimated PA summer heat/humidity. And it's a fact that the Delaware FC's have operated fine for more than a decade without A/C.

(But this is a blog post dedicated to vilifying the successful, stoking anxieties and resentments among the public, and delivering the insecure to advertisers. So I don't expect thoughtful analysis.)
16
@14 Sometimes opening dock doors can make a building hotter. Especially if the building is surrounded by blacktop. Sometimes it makes sense to ventilate late at night and then try to keep the cool air trapped in the building during the day.
17
@15 "The VP was from the South and underestimated the heat/humidity," really? That's hilarious. If you knew any Southerners you'd know they are the most spoiled/fanatical about AC, ice in drinks, etc. I knew one couple who refused to visit relatives in Canada because they only had window AC units and no icemaker in the fridge. But then, your explanation for the southern VP's behavior assumes, wrongly, that anyone has any regard for his fellow humans down in Dixie where life is cheap.
18
@17 What choo said. Everyone in the South knows that you don't go to a movie or a restaurant in the summer without bringing a sweater. Preferably two.

19
@4, You're too smart and sophisticated for these so called libertarian executive corporate assholes. I mean, you're thinking 5-10, and then 20-30 years down the road, when most of these jerks think about next quarter's bottom line. Yet the fittest (as in survival of the fittest, social Darwinism bullshit) companies and organizations look into the future, because 30 years has a way of sneaking up on people. I love the way you think.
20
Since OSHA isn't doing its job, maybe it's time for the AFL-CIO to step in, organize *all* of Amazon's warehouse workers, and demonstrate to Jeff Bezos and the rest of Amazon's management that foregoing air conditioning in Pennsylvania was a grievously false economy.
21
Oops. Make that "forgoing."
22
The warehouse workers do get benefits. They even get awarded stock in the company, albeit small amounts.
23
Someone at Amazon might actually read the books they sell. E.g. in A Town Like Alice (a constant entry in any worldwide list of favorite English language novels) Ms Paget installs air-conditioning in her out-back crocodile skin shoe and satchel factory because she realizes that in the long run it improves quality and gives her the ability to pick and choose her labor.
24
@15

"vilifying the successful"

Oh that charming little straw man. "You're just jeaaaaalous!"
25
Bezos was probably too busy doing that silly, maniacal clown laugh over something not remotely amusing to notice that underlings were perishing in the heat.
26
Someone will realize someday that running what is basically a fulfillment business with 1-2 percent profit margins in an economy that is going cloud based doesn't have much of a future.
27
But keep buying all your Apple products, Will and you other hypocrites. Because the only people they exploit are Asian children!
28
I work in distribution services (not for Amazon) and I've never been in an air conditioned warehouse, unless the goods required specific temperature controls (pharmaceutical, frozen food, etc.) Not in Miami, Sao Paolo, Seattle, El Paso or Dallas. It's standard practice to not have AC in these buildings- they're huge, dock doors are constantly open for in/out loads, and it'd be a huge waste of resources.

If you're going to boycott Amazon for not having A/C in their warehouse, you better be prepared to only buy things that you source yourself- anything that's gone through any sector of the supply chain has likely been handled in a non-AC warehouse at some point.
29
I have spent plenty of time working in warehouses (never worked for Amazon either) across the country and am in complete agreement with #28...there is only one location in the country that has a relevant amount of distribution centers (not including perishable item warehouses) in the US...Memphis, TN. Why? Because it is a distrubition hub for most of the country with FedEx's main sortation facility right next to the Memphis airport. There are a ton of warehouses in Memphis and companies put AC in there to attract better workers...not for the welfare of the worker. I understand it is not ideal to work in hot & humid conditions, but they are working in a warehouse..not an assembly line or a stamping/molding facility where the latent equipment temperature 100+ degrees on top of the facility temperature. Without even being in the amazon warehouses, I can make a more than safe assumption that there are plenty of fans (probably misting fans) and water available to the workforce and they are encouraged to hydrate constantly. Even the worst employers (see Automotive OEMs) make sure the employees arent going to die or have heat stroke on the floor.

If you already made up your mind to boycott Amazon (a local company), so be it. However, it may be reasonable to do a little research on the warehousing industry (it would be nice if the media would do so, as well) and get an idea on how uncommon the existence of air-conditioned warehouses across the country before stating the amazon fulfillment centers are sweatshops.
30
As someone who has worked many shitty warehouse jobs in the past, I have to agree with #28 & #29. I've NEVER worked in a warehouse (at least in the northwest) with AC. I doubt anyone reading this has either.

As much as I would love to pile on that piece of shit Bezos, this whole story smells of the typical hysterical, under-researched rants that too often take up space here. I'm sure there enough actual horror stories about Amazon out there without making shit up.
31
@27 jealous much?

the amount of resources used to create and operate an iPad are such a small fraction of those used to create and operate a laptop that it's a net win for the environment.

kind of like the major impact from a car is the physical creation of the car and the parts for it, especially for people who have short commutes or who use bus/bike/walk.
32
Amazon recently responded to some of the claims in the original article:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/d…
33
As someone who designs heating ventilation and air conditioning systems, what @28-30 said. It is ridiculously expensive and wasteful to air condition an entire warehouse. They are designed to easily move product in and out of the building, and therefore you're effectively trying to cool the outside. If there's a region that needs air conditioning in warehouses for human comfort, maybe there shouldn't be warhouses there.

Consider that the east coast is generally coal country. Electricity has a huge carbon impact there, and air conditioning all of those warehouses would probably have about the same affect on the planet as burning a forest or two a year.

Cool roofs, high volume low velocity fans, evaporative cooling, and lots of water. Maybe frequent work breaks in an air conditioned room. But please don't air condition the warehouse.
34
@27: What in hell does your response have to do with the fact that workers in Chinese factories that build your precious iGadgets are treated infinitely worse than Amazon workers in Pennsylvania?

Or do you not give a shit about those darn foreigners?
35
Here's your "net win for the environment," Will:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story…
37
@13,

Yes. There's nothing this country needs more than low quality, shit products.
38
@33: Just because you have air conditioning, doesn't mean you're running it all the time. If there are only several weeks a year when conditions are unbearable for workers without AC, that's enough reason to invest in AC. And there are certainly, cumulatively, several weeks during most East Coast summers when it would be unbearable without AC.
39
It's not about just the heat. It's the ever-increasing rate and mixed signals from supervisors that just isn't right. They basically treat bathroom breaks and laggy scanners the same as a normal company would treat a no call, no show, and other such nonsense. Read the interviews on the McCall article.
40
@38 Then shift hours to night time. Or move operations to more a more moderate climate. Or give people a vacation. Or, like I said, increase the frequency of breaks and let them hang out in a cool office. But installing what would be thousands of tons of air conditioning, along with insulating and vapor protecting millions of square feet of walls and roofs, along with air curtains and plastic curtains and everything else that goes along with air conditioning... just doesn't sound like a great idea. Especially since you know after they spend that much money they'll keep it on for more than a few weeks. Electricity from coal is cheap.
41
"It's too expensive to install AC. Easier and cheaper to let people overheat."

That really seems to be the thrust of the counter argument, no?
42
Goldy,

You may upset the powers to be, and not get invited to their PR events, but you are a great writer who doesn’t tolerate fools.
43
Actually, it seems Amazon is working to correct this .... so, um .... what more do you want them to do?
45
I will never again buy anything on Amazon.
46
Did anybody read the article, or the earlier comments? It's not necessarily about air-conditioning a warehouse. Amazon was KEEPING THE WAREHOUSE DOORS CLOSED, unlike every other warehouse in the area in one local warehouse worker's experience, so their disposable employees wouldn't steal things.

Are you sock puppets, or just willfully ignorant?

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