It is tales such as these that I both adore for their hilarity, and also keep as sober reminders that few of my work problems, if any, will ever get remotely this bad.
If I had a hat, I’d tip it to you and the rest of the mad bastards you work with.
Well, if you want sober, we can talk about Amazon's hiring and retention practices, and how they reflect the company's increasing applicant woes over time. Now, before I start, I want to make clear I'm all for not judging people for their history and
actually progressive practices, but what Amazon does is...not that. It's wage suppression and labor exploitation, full stop. That, I can't or won't abide.
I mentioned the convict labor and camperforce, but that's far from the end of the story. Our site for years targeted methadone clinics and shelters for hiring...as in hiring posters and signs would be up in them, and Amazon would send recruiters there.
At least for my site, in 2015 we started getting massive waves of visa workers. What's more, is one could track with shocking accuracy which countries and regions are facing the worst social and economic issues, by who's being brought in waves from where.
From 2015-2017 it was primarily Hispanic employees, mostly from Cuba, Honduras, Venezuela, Guatemala, Columbia, Peru, and Bolivia. Then, from 2017-2019 (when I quit the first time) it was MENA people: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. While I was gone, it transitioned to Africans and Afro-Caribbean folks: Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, DRC, Haiti, pretty much any country in western Africa.
During Covid, Amazon's scab pipeline was forcefully shut down on account of travel restrictions and visa program moratoriums. You'll note this is the one and only time in Amazon's history waged workers got large shift differentials, quarterly bonuses, annual wage increases, and of course, hazard pay while enjoying eased productivity quotas and benefits package increases. The differentials, bonuses, and hazard pay all ended simultaneously first quarter of 2021 -- the same time the Biden admin sunset the work visa ban, and when travel restrictions ended -- and labor importation started again in Q2.
Oh, and in the past year, Amazon's stopped importing African and Afro-Caribbean labor. Now it's eastern Europeans, primarily Ukrainians. Which brings me to what's going on:
Amazon recruits abroad in refugee camps. The recruit, assign the workers a location, pay for travel costs, and help with the documentation and get the EAD expedited. Then they're imported and, well, made to work for Amazon. But of course, should you quit or get terminated (which Amazon
loves to do) you're completely on your own which means, since you likely don't speak English at all or are barely conversant at best, in a foreign country with high living expenses, you're pretty well fucked assuming you aren't deported at first opportunity.
It's legal human trafficking at best, indentured servitude at worst. Made all the worse for the fact Amazon
does not adequately support these workers once they're here, and effectively blackballs them from development or advancement unless they have
some form of documented post-secondary education equivalent,
and are fluent in English. If you're a supervisor like I was, you'll be working with employees who speak a half-dozen different languages, none of which are English, and the best you get is Google translate on your work laptop (salaried managers, and
only salaried managers, get Pocketalk devices).
The closest thing we get to interpreters onsite are volunteers who do the job for no additional pay, not even a differential. Management won't even consider bringing in professional interpreters, or internally promote employees who take the courses and get the certifications to be interpreters.
The "funny" WTF part of this, opposed to "morally outrageous" WTF, is
Amazon can't even retain refugees. They get here, figure out they've been scammed into a dead-end job with no external prospects that doesn't even pay enough for them to live here, and save up enough to quit and
go back.
All of this is to keep from having to pay workers an additional $2 per hour, which is what would bring us up to competitive wages in retail. That in itself is another layer of scam: Amazon internally considers itself retail, even though it's an e-commerce business and what we do is actually logistics, which means it compares its wages to retail workers rather than
warehouse workers. It pays about $2
below average for most retail work in our area, because Amazon hasn't kept pace with wage growth since Covid and instead talks big game about its (bullshit) benefits package which brings "total compensation" up to "industry-leader".
Most warehouses around here are climate-controlled and offer good health, dental, and vision packages...without having to go through Amazon-owned and -contracted health clinics first, thanks. And they pay enough for workers to not have to go through Amazon-owned and -contracted finance advisors to "tighten the belt" through unlivable wages. And they have hours, work-life balance, and stress-free enough workplaces their workers don't need Amazon-owned and -contracted mental health crisis services, up to and including suicide-prevention hotlines.
Just about the only thing Amazon doesn't do, is outright pay workers in scrip...and they're dipping their toes in that, offloading compensation in the form of "vendor bucks", "e-swag" to buy Amazon-branded clothing and other oddities through an internal store, and with their ridiculous safety shoe scam.