This is the easy way out of putting the blame where it actually should be.
It's not easy for a lot of people to find jobs. It's not easy to go weeks without pay while you apply, wait for drug tests to come back, go through initial onboarding, and then wait 2-3 weeks for your first paycheck.
The fault is not with the person being exploited, it's with the exploiters.
The meat packing industry has a rather interesting history around organized labor - and for a period of time - that organization improving pay and conditions. see: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/250/meat-packing.html
To state "It's off limits to ask the people involved why they continue to put themselves in such a horrible situation" is unscientific. Nobody is blaming anyone by asking a question.
That's not true. Many times people use the "asking questions" as a ruse to do just that, and erode support for these people by saying it's their own fault for being exploited.
And, quite frankly, I don't care one iota why they stay; there is exactly zero legitimate reason for them to be treated like that. Bezos should be so ashamed of himself that he would be unwilling to show his face in public.
Is it not reasonable to do both? Like, amazon is exploitative, sure, but if its so bad that the employee is gonna kill themselves... maybe take a step back and re-evaluate if the job is worth your life?
That’s a great question and I’m sure the answer would be interesting. Assuming most people working there to be unreasonable or illogical would be unfair to then.
> There are other jobs I’m sure
Or is there ? What’s the criteria for “other job” ?
How do they look for it, when, on what terms ?
If that many people are just stuck there, I think it’s just not a “I just quit and go work for some other 9 to 5 job tomorrow” situation.
There is always a cost associated with trying to change a job, one that may be difficult for a poor person to pay. You need to do research to find these other job choices (and you really may not have many choices depending on where you live), apply to multiple places, show up for interviews, etc. Doing all these activities takes time and energy, which a person, who is possibly already struggling to make ends meet, may not have. Imagine coming home from your grueling warehouse job where you had to pee in bottles, putting together a dinner for yourself and your kids, doing some basic chores around the house so that your place doesn't turn into a shithole, and then finding the energy to do all the things you need to do for finding a job.
It's easy to pontificate while sitting in our cushy tech job chairs, where if we don't like the current job, there'll be 10 recruiters blowing up your email with job opportunities, about what a person who may be less fortunate should do.
> I think it's just easier to blame Amazon than for people to make different choices.
It is possible that some blame lies with both parties, but Amazon definitely shares a clear (and rather heavier) burden of blame here, and there is nothing wrong in calling that out.
I can only speculate that the other choices probably pay less or involve other trade-offs that make them less appealing up-front. It's not as if anyone enters an Amazon warehouse job expecting to work long hours without bathroom breaks. Or at least, people enter while thinking "that won't be me." And when terrible working conditions do crop up, it's like boiling a frog- if you've already been at the job for a while, the effort it takes to switch is change is far more difficult.
This. America has a lot of humane integrity over time. We are no longer a nation for the people by the people.
Countries like Sweden, Norway, Switzerland get it. You don’t plow over your citizens in the name of capitalism.
But then, America has always been like that. A harsh truth of the human condition. A nation of people who have it because they were born to the right parents, and some who will toil their entire lives in questionable conditions because they got delt a bad card.
Certainly the lack of jobs is partially due to all the businesses that Amazon puts out of business by leveraging all of their AWS money to out compete companies in unrelated markets?
And quite frankly, I honestly do not care if there are other jobs or not. That kind of treatment is completely unacceptable, and there is zero legitimate reason for Amazon to treat them that way.
Because our country has a number of a systemic issues right now that are all contributing to this situation. Let's step back and take a broader view at some of them.
1. College is expensive. Outside of the trades and a few other exceptions, a college degree used to be the best way for young people or unskilled laborers to get into higher-paying, more stable jobs. That math doesn't work out so well anymore, and there are continuing efforts to further increase the individual cost of a college degree. The percentage of college graduates in the U.S. has risen only a few points since the late 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
2. Lack of affordable health care is preventing a lot of people from opting out of the job market. If you have any kind of illness that requires regular treatment, or even if you're worried about getting bankrupted by an injury, then you're forced to look for employers offering company health insurance, even if the pay is crap. Amazon offers health insurance for their full-time employees: http://www.amazondelivers.jobs/about/benefits/. As long as there isn't a sensible, publicly-supported health care system in the US, companies will be able to exploit this to get and retain workers at a net discount.
3. Rising housing costs in many urban areas are further squeezing a lot of people.
4. Upside-down tax structures and other financial incentives (like the ones described in this article) are further moving a lot of money from the poor to the rich. These factors together are creating a de facto peasant class, and massive companies like Amazon are doing their level best to ensure that it stays that way. It is a really good deal for Amazon when they can work this system well enough to get the public to subsidize their employees' food costs (https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/04/21/1634237/many-amazon-...). Remember when the Silicon Valley big-wigs colluded to create a non-competitive job market for tech employees (http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/)? And out of that lawsuit, the tech workers got just $5k on average. That was a fantastic deal for the companies.
So if you're a low-skilled worker, that doesn't leave you a lot of options on the table. You hear Amazon advertising (via some staffing firm) for warehouse positions in your area, it sounds like they'll hire anybody, you've heard the work conditions are bad but you figure it'll be temporary, and hey, health insurance, if you're lucky enough to be considered a full-time employee by the company.
Fix health insurance, and more people would get into the trades. Fix education, and more people would get a degree. Fix housing, and people would be less desperate for crappy work. Fix regulation, and communities would get a lot wealthier.
Unfortunately, none of that appears to be happening anytime soon, because there's a long line of people willing to argue against any of those things for one ideological reason or another, because the situation hasn't gotten quite bad enough, quite fast enough, for them to see anything wrong with it.
