Amazon UK Unpacked: Sad Conditions at the Rugeley Warehouse

[Rizla]

Here's another report of Amazon abusing their temporary staff. Apparently they've been laying them off before they finish their shift:
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/a...0118n.19674726

According to evidence to the Public Accounts Committee of the Westminster Parliament, Amazon's UK division paid just £2.3m corporation tax on £7.1bn sales over the last three years.

What percentage is 2.3m of 7.1bn? 0.05%? A nice tax-rate if you can get it. And they lay people off before the end of their shift. Sheesh...

Those Amazon employees (I mean the permanent staff laying off the temporary staff) are sure earning their money.

[ProfCrash]

Because I was never sent home early from work due to a lack of business.

Look, Amazon hires people to do a job. If there is no work, they will send people home. The temp employees are hired (through temporary companies) during peak times. If there is not enough work, even during a peak time, Amazon will send workers home. The first workers they are likely to send home are going to be the temp employees and not the full time employees.

Every business I know sends people home when there is limited work. Some business even lay people off when business drops long term. It is part of running a business.

The fact that people are surprised by this absolutly amazes me.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Here's another report of Amazon abusing their temporary staff. Apparently they've been laying them off before they finish their shift:
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/a...0118n.19674726

You don't seem to understand this agency staff idea. The whole point of it is that it gives you flexibility to rapidly "hire and fire" as your business requires.

[ProfCrash]

I think what people want is for comapnies in the US and Europe to act in the employees best interest and not worry about profit. I get that, I would love for everyone to be paid a living wage. I would love for everyone to get a years maternity/paternity leave. I would love for everyone to have amazing health care coverage.

The reality is, our idealism that everyone makes a living wage, has health care, reasonable vacation, and the like crashes head long with our desire to pay less for what we want. So we talk about it but buy the shirt that costs the least and don't worry about who made it and how they are treated.

Lets face it, everyone on this board has an e-reader of some type. How many of those devices are made in the US or Europe where there are some labor laws to protect workers? I won't say zero, becauses I don't know where the smaller devices are manufactured but we know that Kindles, Nooks, iPads are made in China. I am guessing that the Kobo is made in China.

I used to have students who participated in protests against globalization who would get annoyed with me when I commented on how nice their Nikes looked in the pictures.

Most of us talk the talk but we don't walk the walk.

If you are offended by Amazon (and every other company who has warehouses) behaves then don't buy from them. Send them an email and let the m know why you are not. If enough people are outraged, Amazon will change its policies.

And prices will go up because they will have to pay employees more, pay for benefits, and pay for vacation time.

And then people will complain that they raised prices.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You don't seem to understand this agency staff idea. The whole point of it is that it gives you flexibility to rapidly "hire and fire" as your business requires.

No, I understand how it works.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

Because I was never sent home early from work due to a lack of business.

Not only that, but oftentimes, the option to go home early is offered to those who have seniority. It's usually only when that fails to reduce the workforce sufficiently that those on the bottom rungs start getting kicked off. It's not the atrocious behavior that many might think it is. Some actually see getting sent home early as a reward. Regardless of the hit they take on that week's paycheck.

In the US, anyway, the same goes for layoffs. I've never worked in a production-type environment where "voluntary layoff" wasn't offered to seniority before they started mandatory layoffs from the bottom up. And some people always volunteer. Always. But those voluntary numbers never make it into any official reports.

Are people truly that out of touch with how manual labor/production-based industries operate? There's nothing particularly heinous OR exemplary about Amazon's warehouse conditions that I've read about. I'd say they were fairly average in fact.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

I think what people want is for comapnies in the US and Europe to act in the employees best interest and not worry about profit.

I think people expect their governments to regulate against the more extreme behavior of companies not in the interests of the society they depend on for their profits.

I suppose the problems with companies like Amazon is that their relationship to the markets they depend on has become almost entirely parasitic. In years gone by, companies employed people and paid them living-wages and pensions. Their relationship to society was more symbiotic.

Of course, many private companies will try to extract as much profit as they can, which starts a trend. It is up to governments to stop that kind of behavior. There is no reason that they cannot. Thee companies depend on the society. Take Amazon. If they are misbehaving (as they clearly are), then regulate them out of that country. They will no longer have access to the market and will lose that money. Other companies more willing to offer better terms to the society will emerge and take their place.

[ProfCrash]

You say they are misbehaving, I say they are acting like a normal business and there is nothing wrong with that. The government regulates the minimum wage, hours they can work, work conditions, safety and the like.

I am assuming by your posts that you do not buy products made from any company that has practices similar to Amazon. Where was that Sony 650 made? The Cybook? What were the practices used by those companies? What are their practices when it comes to shipping them to the store? What were their policies for shipping them to you? I would put good money on their policy is the same as Amazon.

If you are willing to pay a whole heck of a lot more for the goods that you buy then let government step in and regulate away. Its not like there are any historical examples of places with high costs of manufacturing leaving a country for some place that charges less....

You want to live in a utopia. Its ounds great but it is not going to happen.

[holymadness]

You dismiss his opinion as utopianism, but I find your opinions far more extremist.

You do not seem to recognize the distinction between legal and ethical practices. For centuries, corporations used child labour, mandated 16-hour work days, and liberally polluted the land with toxic waste. They, too, were "acting like a normal business." Do you condone that conduct because it was not proscribed by law at the time?

You seem unwilling to hold companies to account for their externalities.

[soulfuldog]

I think Amazon are wrong to send staff home early from a shift if there isn't enough work. Fair enough agency/temp staff are only going to be be employed as and when required, but if required to work on any given day, they should have the right to be able to complete a full shift.

The rest of the stuff in these articles is just bog standard fact of life in low paid, unskilled, menial jobs - particularly in factories.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by l_macd

I think Amazon are wrong to send staff home early from a shift if there isn't enough work. Fair enough agency/temp staff are only going to be be employed as and when required, but if required to work on any given day, they should have the right to be able to complete a full shift.

The rest of the stuff in these articles is just bog standard fact of life in low paid, unskilled, menial jobs - particularly in factories.

You must not have ever worked in the Food Services Industry. When a restaurant slows down they start cutting staff immediately. Every business I know sends employees home if business turns slow. The good ones will ask who wants to take off early and if not enough volunteer, they make an arbitrary decision.
Apache

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by Apache

Every business I know sends employees home if business turns slow.

The only jobs I never got sent home early from were salaried positions. I held many hourly positions over the years in various industries, and getting sent home early was a common occurrence.

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by holymadness

You dismiss his opinion as utopianism, but I find your opinions far more extremist.

You do not seem to recognize the distinction between legal and ethical practices. For centuries, corporations used child labour, mandated 16-hour work days, and liberally polluted the land with toxic waste. They, too, were "acting like a normal business." Do you condone that conduct because it was not proscribed by law at the time?

You seem unwilling to hold companies to account for their externalities.

If Amazon was not paying over time, violating labor laws, violating health and safety laws, doing a whole number of things I would be upset.

Amazon is hiring temporary workers to fill repetitive, crappy jobs during peak times. If there is not enough work they are sending people home.

Wow that is awful.

There is a time and place for government to step in, all of your examples are bad things that should be regulated. Hiring temps and when to send people home a shift are not.

I shop at Target because they treat their employees well, far better than Walmart. I shop at Amazon because I can get diapers at a great price.

I hope the US federal government raises the minimum wage, it needs to go up.

I hope that the US as a whole can find solutions to the high drop out rate from high school. If that number decreases, then the number of folks who are desperate for a job will decrease and companies like Amazon will have to hire more full time folks because there will be fewer people willing to work temp jobs.

But I am not going to blame Amazon for using the same business model every major, and most minor, companies use.

Companies should be held to a standard but individuals need to take responsibility for their own choices as well. There has to be a balance.

[holymadness]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

If Amazon was not paying over time, violating labor laws, violating health and safety laws, doing a whole number of things I would be upset.

Amazon is hiring temporary workers to fill repetitive, crappy jobs during peak times. If there is not enough work they are sending people home.

Wow that is awful.

There is a time and place for government to step in, all of your examples are bad things that should be regulated. Hiring temps and when to send people home a shift are not.

I shop at Target because they treat their employees well, far better than Walmart. I shop at Amazon because I can get diapers at a great price.

I hope the US federal government raises the minimum wage, it needs to go up.

I hope that the US as a whole can find solutions to the high drop out rate from high school. If that number decreases, then the number of folks who are desperate for a job will decrease and companies like Amazon will have to hire more full time folks because there will be fewer people willing to work temp jobs.

But I am not going to blame Amazon for using the same business model every major, and most minor, companies use.

Companies should be held to a standard but individuals need to take responsibility for their own choices as well. There has to be a balance.

Amazon is refraining from engaging in the acts that I mentioned above because they are illegal, not out of the kindness of its heart. Its business practices seem much more similar to Walmart's than to Target's or Costco's, which leads me to believe that it wouldn't hesitate to do less if it could get away with it. Paying minimum wage is just another way to say "I would pay you less if I could." The incidents mentioned in the article do not seem particularly abhorrent on their own but they, along with reports of similar or inferior conditions in the United States, as well as Amazon's ridiculously low effective tax rate, paint a rather negative picture of its corporate practices.

The problem with advocating an equal responsibility between workers and employers is that it assumes both groups have equal power, which is almost never the case.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Are people truly that out of touch with how manual labor/production-based industries operate?

Obviously.
They seem to expect companies to work for the employees instead of the employees working for the company.

The idea that the entry-level job pays as it does because the job doesn't *justify* higher pay doesn't seem to register. Or the idea that if the pay for manual labor were much higher it would only make alternative practices or locations (like robots or african labor + air shipment) more viable.

If you rely on state definition and enforcement of accepted labor practices, do *not* be surprised to see companies adhering to *exactly* what the state stipulates.

Anything else *is* utopianism.

"Come the revolution, we will have strawberry pie every day."