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May 10, 2012 at 3:51 pm
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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
I see your plight, but come on: no shit, warehouses get hot.
Dicks.
so we should just let people die because it's to expensive to provide adequate environmental controls, really?
Then what explains the static electric shocks the workers have to endure because Amazon (or, more often, Amazon's contractors) is too cheap to install rubber mats on the floors? What about the fact that people can be fired for calling in sick merely six times? What about the fact that virtually no one who works in those sweatshops ever gets the chance of becoming a full-time employee? That's pretty convenient for a company that doesn't want to reward hard-working employees, not unless they're white collar.
I don't necessarily have a problem with paying warehouse workers a relatively trivial wage; those are the breaks of a shitty economy, but all the various other ways that Amazon mistreats its warehouse workers are shameful.
The reason warehouse workers get frozen in the winter when the fire alarm gets pulled? That's entirely for loss prevention. Amazon would rather freeze its employees than risk losing a small amount of product to theft. That's the same reason why those workers are forced to work in sweatshops.
Then there's the breakneck speed at which those employees have to work, which conveniently gets ramped up as soon as Amazon wants to fire them after a few months.
There's the workers' having to sacrifice their break time to go through Amazon's metal detectors.
There's the lack of designing their work spaces to prevent repetitive stress injury.
All of this is technically legal because OSHA ain't worth shit, but it's yet another example of what a shit factory Amazon has become.
I'm glad these workers are taking this to Amazon HQ. I'd really like to see Jeff Bezos survive a night shift there. Just one, that cowardly, selfish, exploitative piece of shit.
@11 there are a lot of these people around here. When I sat on juries I was shocked how many of them there were.
And these particular low wage jobs cannot be outsourced, so lets make them spend the money to keep people safe.
Welcome to Microsoft, or Apple, or any other company that doesn't hire "from the mailroom".
Warehouse workers as temps and seasonal employees is not the domain of Amazon alone, for fuck's sake. It'd be nice if there was more ability to transition, but this is an issue with labor in the US. I'm fine with the criticisms, but Amazon isn't fucking special or especially horrible with these complaints.
The Warehouse that cannot afford the City.
You praise the city every day.
Mirror, mirror
On the wall.
Why the hell would we need jobs in this country?
@8: Yes, the problem is widespread... All the more reason to start fixing it! Amazon seems like a good place to begin..
I'm really glad to read that these workers are speaking up and organizing against these brutal conditions. I hope they do form a union.
In Reality, most Computer Rooms MUST be at 72 Deg F @ 50% RH or they start to overheat, slow down and eventually go OFFLINE.
So, IF the people were actually Robots (Computers), They would HAVE to keep the heat down to maintain productivity!
I feel bad when I hear some of these people putting down coworkers and managers talking down on people not good we hear alot of things you would be amazed. Everyone is there for the same reason its a job.
(Hostile work environment / workplace harassment)
If we so much as go to get a drink of water from a water station we are moaned at. They fire groups of people on a daily basis. One guy was fired last week just for taking two days off due to one of his family members dying.
Our targets are constantly raised each week the managers will not listen when we try and explain to them that the targets are too much.
The asiles are narrow and people constantly clash trying to pass each other.
We lose at least 10 minutes of our break trying to get through the metal detectors sometimes they flick a switch to set the detector off on random people. They are told to go into a room to be searched which takes more time of their break.