They have to by law.
Someday people will stop buying from them. Until then, I just roll my eyes just like when I had customers who would whine at me about the prices at the store I worked at and then kept on buying from there.
Well politicians LOVE the devil's advocate, you-vote-with-your-wallet, shift-responsibility-solely-to-the-consumer argument. Because it relieves the corporations of any and all accountability. Boycott them? Where do you want to start? Where do you stop? It's a lesser-of-evils game at best. My hat off to anyone who has the time/patience to
minimize the amount of harm the do by where they take their business. But with all respect, I would have a row with anyone who doubts the sincerity of my complete and utter
disgust for our society, and I will have that row no matter how deep I wound up having to dig my heels in. We live in a dystopia. AND we're all slaves, and we're expendable. "There is no freedom; we are not free."
It is disgusting that Amazon drivers feel they have to piss into bottles to keep on schedule and not get fired. Degrading and dehumanizing. It's actually criminal.
It's criminal the degree to which Amazon manages the shield itself from driver accidents, sacrificing their subcontractors who in turn sacrifice the drivers. It's not unheard of for a driver to be fired immediately upon calling in an accident, and subsequently left to legally fend for himself while his employer (the Amazon subcontractor) testifies against him. Perhaps he can't even afford bail, let alone a lawyer. Meanwhile a party suing for grievances may not even know Amazon was ever part of the picture.
Amazon's firing practices are disgraceful, as are their appeals processes (pretty much designed to fail) for workers who feel they're being fired unjustly.
I don't seriously doubt that they have worker's comp. What I can tell you from my own experiences with them, is as an employee you know almost nothing about what services are available to you. If I even had to call in sick, I'm not sure how I would have done it. You're supposed to use the App. It barely worked on my home browser or my outdated iPhone 5. I assume there would've still been some back-and-fourth, because they're not the type to let you off the hook.
I didn't even know who my direct supervisors were. Some of my less competitive co-workers were kind enough to point them out. We didn't have numbers for anyone at work (you used the App), and talking to your supervisors in person usually meant abandoning your place on the floor. Far easier to skip your meal during mandatory lunch if you needed talk to somebody (that I was still straightening my teeth didn't help). Resolving timecard issues meant opening a ticket through the App, awaiting a reply and then following up with a supervisor in person.
Now our shift managers we interacted with regularly (they were like drill sergeants, whereas our supervisors would've been like officers). The one I found most "approachable" had another co-manager assigned to our shifts towards the end. This guy never missed an opportunity to step on the first guy's toes, right in front of all of us. I recognized this dynamic as the same one that
indirectly lead to my own layoff at my last TV job (the reason I wound up working at Amazon). Once Corporate America decides you're a "weak" (soft-spoken) manager, they make a point
doing your job for you, faster than you can possibly get to it yourself, making sure you cannot show the improvement that they demand.
Most companies don't believe in full-time anymore, and Amazon is no exception. To transfer to another warehouse that
may offer full time, you first had to get converted from seasonal to permanent. They laid us all off just short of our 90 days probation to make sure that wasn't a possibility. They said you could apply to any other position in the company, but the App locked you out. Once you logged in, you were on the wrong side of the "You already have a job with us" wall. And once they laid us off, I was simply
unplugged. My status as a former employee meant I now needed someone to
approve each request for a job opening, and I'd never receive approval within the vanishing window for applying and grabbing a shift.
The best thing they did was pay us for showing up on termination day because their HR person had failed to return some of our calls (ie, "Don't come into work tomorrow.") after leaving repeated messages on my weekend to get hold of them.
I don't mean to derail this thread, but how Amazon treats their employees is one of the reasons why I left Whole Foods. (I was with them 9 and a half years... I left at the end of last month.) Amazon has been doing similar things to WF team members, which is why it's no longer Whole Foods anymore... a more accurate name would be 'Amazon's Bitch'.
My mom got injured there, completely the store's fault. Her knees are never going to be the same again. She has had constant pain every day since it happened... 14 months ago! It's been a dogfight for her to get proper care, and this is the rare time that it isn't the doctor's fault. (This one, anyway... the first one she had was utter crap.) Anyway, I couldn't stay there anymore with a clear conscience. There were other reasons, but that was the straw.
My point is Amazon doesn't give a damn about people. And any company that has gotten in bed with them... becomes them.
Roger Farscape! I find all of that VERY easy to believe. (Oh and I too agree about not calling them astronauts)
You're not sorry or you wouldn't have pushed "post reply"
But... should he be sorry though?
