BusinessInsider: Amazon Misses On Earnings

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

with all due respect, did they think warehouse work was supposed to be a cakewalk? just looks like unions using unsubstantiated claims to try to get a foothold in/inevitably destroy yet another successful business. here in america we see how awesomely our auto-manufacturers are doing thanks to unions. oh...wait...

A little fact for you: the last man to be hung, drawn and quartered in England was a man fighting for the right to union representation.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Rizla

A little fact for you: the last man to be hung, drawn and quartered in England was a man fighting for the right to union representation.

And what's that got to do with the price of eggs in china?

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Rizla

A little fact for you: the last man to be hung, drawn and quartered in England was a man fighting for the right to union representation.

Cite?

A quick search offers this repudiation:

In July 1781, the penultimate drawing and quartering was carried out against the French spy François Henri de la Motte, who was convicted of treason. The last time any man was drawn and quartered was in August 1782. The victim, Scottish spy David Tyrie, was executed in Portsmouth for carrying on a treasonable correspondence with the French. A contemporary account in the Hampshire Chronicle describes his being hanged for 22 minutes, following which he was beheaded and his heart cut out and burned. He was then emasculated, quartered, and his body parts put into a coffin and buried in the pebbles at the seaside. The same account claims that immediately after his burial, sailors dug the coffin up and cut the body into a thousand pieces, each taking a piece as a souvenir to their shipmates.
In 1803, British revolutionary Edward Marcus Despard and six accomplices were sentenced to be drawn, hanged, and quartered for conspiracy against King George III; however their sentences were reduced to simple hanging and beheading. The last to receive this sentence were two Irish Fenians, Burke and O’Brien, in 1867; however, the punishment was not carried out.

And:
http://www.executedtoday.com/2011/08...and-quartered/

On this date in 1782, a crowd contemporaries pegged at 100,000 mobbed the gruesome public execution of David Tyrie — the last man hanged, drawn, and quartered in British history.
Tyrie was a Scotsman clerking at a Portsmouth naval office, who was caught in a treacherous correspondence with the French. He lacked political pull of his own and either the means or inclination to shop confederates, and therefore faced the full weight of the treason statute.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Right and they were vague and 10 years old. What's your real issue with Amazon, this thread is supposed to be about their recent earnings report.

I did ask a couple of times why you are defending Amazon but you haven't answered.

The news reports were not vague. You dismissed them as such and another poster pulled you up on that as not being the case.

I originally 'attacked' Amazon because another poster lauded Amazon's work creation record. I pointed out some 'actual facts' that showed that record is not so laudable.

It was not my intention to derail this thread. I responded to another poster with pertinent information. This is, after all, a discussion forum. You yourself thanked me for the information I posted, before promptly and unfairly dismissing it.

My 'real issue' with Amazon is I don't like corporations mistreating workers. I don't particularly dislike Amazon. I don't particularly dislike Apple or Walmart or Chinese working conditions. I dislike injustice in general, and I dislike people defending injustice. I would hope that all reasoning creatures would share this sentiment.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Rizla

I dislike injustice in general, and I dislike people defending injustice. I would hope that all reasoning creatures would share this sentiment.

They would, but they may well not share your definition of injustice.

[kennyc]

I hate corporations and think they should be outlawed, but you have yet to provide any information that actually supports your claim of (exceptionally) mistreating workers. As I said above your references are out of date and vague and do not indicate any conditions I (and others who have responded to your accusations) feel are any different than working conditions for similar jobs/companies.

You are welcome to your opinion, but have yet to provide any support for it.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Cite?
A quick search offers this repudiation:

Thanks for that.

From Wiki:

the most recent occasion (and ultimately, the last) on which anyone had been sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered was in November 1839, following the Chartist Newport Rising

The last person to be sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered was a Chartist.

I don't find the history of this barbarism shocking, but I do find it shocking that a man fighting for worker's rights was sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. What short memories we have.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Rizla

The last person to be sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered was a Chartist.

I think that might not be true either though:

The last to receive this sentence were two Irish Fenians, Burke and O’Brien, in 1867; however, the punishment was not carried out.

I don't find the history of this barbarism shocking, but I do find it shocking that a man fighting for worker's rights was sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. What short memories we have.

Sentenced for leading an armed uprising, not for peacefully arguing their views.

And some countries still practice judicial killing, at least we have moved on a bit

[kennyc]

I say we draw and quarter Amazon...after they are a corporation, which is a person as far as the law is concerned.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Rizla

My 'real issue' with Amazon is I don't like corporations mistreating workers. I don't particularly dislike Amazon. I don't particularly dislike Apple or Walmart or Chinese working conditions. I dislike injustice in general, and I dislike people defending injustice. I would hope that all reasoning creatures would share this sentiment.

I don't like corporations mistreating workers either. But it is not at all clear from that 10 year old Guardian article you posted that Amazon's workers were actually being mistreated.

Do you believe that there is any company that does not mistreat workers?

[HappyMartin]

We might need to decide what constitutes mistreatment at this point. Not having a canteen seems like no big deal to me. Unpaid breaks also seem OK to me. Eleven hour working day not great but if I am being paid by the hour the more the better in my experience.

It is going to depend on your life experiences isn't it. A Chinese farm labourer will think Amazons employment conditions are heaven. Paris Hilton might find them a little onerous.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by HappyMartin

We might need to decide what constitutes mistreatment at this point. Not having a canteen seems like no big deal to me. Unpaid breaks also seem OK to me. Eleven hour working day not great but if I am being paid by the hour the more the better in my experience.

It is going to depend on your life experiences isn't it. A Chinese farm labourer will think Amazons employment conditions are heaven. Paris Hilton might find them a little onerous.

There are advantages and disadvantages to an 11 hour workday. The disadvantages are clear; the advantage is that you get three days off every week.

I don't think that we ought to compare jobs in the developed world with jobs in China - but there are a lot of jobs in the 1st world where people are injured or killed. Hundreds of people are killed on the job in the UK every year, for example, so it seems a little myopic to focus on the conditions of a safe indoor job involving packing small boxes or pushing a trolley and loading it with books.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by SensualPoet

An unsung story for Amazon is the amazing number of jobs they are creating and HAVE created in the past 18 months as they have expanded the number US-based distribution centres.

You know, I'm not sure how happy I am about that given that Amazon warehouses appear to be glorified sweat shops.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/1..._n_387847.html

http://techland.time.com/2011/09/21/...by-paramedics/

They basically hire hordes of temp workers in order to avoid giving them benefits, work them until they collapse, and fire them. You know it's bad when a single ER doctor is seeing your employees so frequently that they call the authorities.

I know we need jobs in this country. But I don't know if I can say in good conscience that we need them bad enough to allow employers to treat employees like this. This is America, supposedly a developed nation, and in developed nations we supposedly don't require people to kill themselves just to pay rent. I'm not going to celebrate people being worked until they stroke out.

[kennyc]

Here we go again....