Black Friday is infamous. The day after Thanksgiving, people across America will get up at 5am and waiting in line to buy discounted TVs or game consoles. This year, Black Friday sales are expected to jump to 9.1 billion. One retailer is expected to dominate those sales: Amazon. In 2017, 60% of all online Black Friday sales came from Amazon. This year, that is expected to increase, with offers of free shipping to all customers.
However, all this online shopping has an actually affect on Amazons human workers. Many employees have said that working in an Amazon warehouse is grueling and awful. Even when its not the holiday season, Amazon worker often are on their feet for 12 hours a day, some with no breaks for food. On Black Friday and the rest of the year, all this just gets worse. The amount of orders triples, and employee are forced to work six days a week. The overtime is mandatory, and they're not allowed to use their paid time off during the holiday season.
Many workers are protesting this unfair treatment. In Madrid, 90% of worker walked out, and workers in Britain and Germany claimed they would follow. They argue that Amazon workers are paid less than other retail workers, and that the working conditions are inhumane. The walkouts were meant to hurt the company financially.
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, is the richest man in the world. He's worth 96 billion dollars, and claims he's "not addicted to work", while his workers are being paid almost nothing for grueling, backbreaking labor that has caused people to literally die of exhaustion. How can Amazon improve working condition and help soften the blow of increased holiday orders?
Work Citied: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/business/article222081825.html
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/20/18103516/black-friday-cyber-monday-amazon-fulfillment-center
https://www.fredericksburg.com/news/news-wire/amazon-staff-in-europe-protest-to-coincide-with-black-friday/article_84ace585-e15f-50c4-b948-773ad81b7fbd.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-daily-routine-2017-7
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Namibia's Economy
Namibia is a country that not many people think about. It is a small nation, right above South Africa, that bases most of its economy on to...
One of the biggest reasons that I've discovered in reasons for this blog is that the largest commuter zones - where employees have limited employer options for their given industry - can play a big role in their wage and negotiating power as a whole. The reason why Amazon can have bad working conditions is in part because workers have no choice and little power, even in unions, just because employment options in general are limited in their specific industries. And, as Amazon shifts more to using technology to manage their shipping, they will need people and the wages that come along with that even less.
ReplyDelete