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Oren Cass

12 Mar, 18 tweets, 6 min read

Amazon has repeatedly pushed the envelope on labor practices and then retreated or claimed to reform in the face of bad PR. Come with me on a brief tour of the past decade:

2011: "Instead, they said they were pushed harder and harder to work faster and faster until they were terminated, they quit or they got injured. Those interviewed say turnover at the warehouse is high and many hires don't last more than a few months."
mcall.com/news/watchdog/…

2011 contd: "During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. ... And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time."
mcall.com/news/watchdog/…

2013: "At the time of Jeff’s death, the Chester warehouse had been open for four months. The local fire and EMS department had dispatched personnel to its address at least 34 times during that period."
highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/li…

2015: "An employee brochure from a facility in Tennessee, obtained through a public records request, reads: ‘In the event of a medical emergency, contact Security. Do Not call 911!'"
highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/li…

2015: Amazon requires temps to sign broad non-competes and "the company has even required its permanent warehouse workers who get laid off to reaffirm their non-compete contracts as a condition of receiving severance pay."
theverge.com/2015/3/26/8280…

2016-19: "There have been over 100 federal investigations launched against Amazon since 2016. OSHA has also issued letters to Amazon advising the company to voluntarily change conditions that posed hazards to employees."
motherjones.com/politics/2019/…

2019: "Three medical providers who worked for Advanced told me that clinic directors instructed them to avoid giving any treatment to Amazon workers that would make their injuries recordable."
revealnews.org/article/how-am…

2019: "Amazon’s injury rates have gone up each of the past four years, the internal data shows. ... The overall rate of 7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees was 33% higher than in 2016 and nearly double the most recent industry standard."
revealnews.org/article/how-am…

2019: "Amazon ... automatically generates warnings or even terminations without any input from supervisors, the company said. Managers can override the process, but it didn’t say how regularly they do.” (Amazon later denies this.)
technologyreview.com/2019/04/26/102…

2020: "They also indicate, and an Amazon spokesperson confirmed, that Amazon has hired Pinkerton operatives—from the notorious spy agency known for its union-busting activities—to gather intelligence on warehouse workers."
vice.com/en/article/5dp…

2020: "May 1st was my last day as a VP [at Amazon], after five years and five months of rewarding fun. I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19."
tbray.org/ongoing/When/2…

@TheAtlantic

A good rundown of the Amazon culture on these issues from @TheAtlantic: "'It’s not a conversation that can be had,' the former [safety] manager said. 'We’re never going to fix safety at Amazon, because we’re never going to fix what the real issue is.'"
theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

Now, look, there are two sides to every story. These reports typically provide some sort of Amazon response (most of which are deeply unimpressive). Obviously, agendas are being pushed by those telling the stories. And any workforce of hundreds of thousands will have incidents.

Indeed, I have defended employers against overblown complaints -- work has risk, and productivity has value (for workers!). But the pattern here is pretty clear. And it points to the need for greater worker power.

Indeed, I think it's key that Amazon HAS made changes in response to pressure. That's nice. But it's also perhaps the strongest case for union representation. Turns out Amazon _can_ do better (and still perform, uh, rather well), but that workers had no power to effect change.

It's kind of like how the prevalence of GoFundMe campaigns for people who can't afford their healthcare costs is a sign of a broken healthcare system, not a point of pride that our system takes care of everyone just fine.

Our 1930s-style labor unions aren't the best way to address these kinds of challenges. But conservatives need to be more comfortable acknowledging the challenges exist and thinking about how public policy can empower workers to address them. That's all.
americancompass.org/essays/conserv…

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More from @oren_cass

Oren Cass

@oren_cass

2 Mar

@nytimes

Today @nytimes, I separate the debate over child allowance proposals into two separate questions:

(1) Should we send more financial help to working families? ✅

(2) Should the safety net deliver unconditional cash to the non-working poor? ❌

nytimes.com/2021/03/02/opi…

American families are struggling to make ends meet and an expansion of the social compact to better support them makes sense. But such a program should expect that families are doing their part to support themselves, and go to those with at least some earned income.

By contrast, trying to tackle poverty by just giving cash to households disconnected from the workforce is a bad idea. We should absolutely have a strong safety net, but just "Give People Money" isn't the right answer.

Read 5 tweets

Oren Cass

@oren_cass

18 Feb

@wellscking

1/ Diving into the family-benefit debate, @wellscking and I are out with a new paper and proposal @AmerCompass today: The Family Income Supplemental Credit. We believe this keeps the best of child allowance proposals while addressing their flaws. 🧵americancompass.org/essays/the-fam…

2/ We argue that an effective family benefit should be designed as an expansion of the social compact and a form of social insurance, helping working families face the costs of child-rearing at a time when they are ill-prepared for it financially.

3/ By contrast, we should not consider "just send everyone money" an effective anti-poverty policy for non-working families. It's not the right way to address poverty, and it erodes important economic and social linkages between income and work.

Read 11 tweets

Oren Cass

@oren_cass

20 Jan

@WSJ

With the post-Trump era underway, the debate about conservatism's future moves ahead.

My recent @WSJ @AmerCompass conversation with @GeraldFSeib @GeorgeWill helpfully distills some of the conflicts between the Legacy (Will) and Reform (Cass) sides. americancompass.org/the-commons/a-…

Conservative focus: (1/5)

Legacy: Rapid economic growth and a return to the debate about reforming entitlements.

Reform: New conservative solutions to new challenges like China, inequality, technology, financialization, which may mean a different role for government.

Policy agenda: (2/5)

Legacy: First, free trade. Second, geographic mobility. Americans have to be willing to get up and move.

Reform: Investment, labor, education. Policies should make the economy work for for people, not demand that people up and change for the economy.

Read 7 tweets

Oren Cass

@oren_cass

5 May 20

@AmerCompass

The inaugural @AmerCompass essay series, Rebooting the American System, makes the comprehensive, conservative case for a return to robust national economic policy. This was the American tradition from the Founding, and paid enormous dividends. (1/11) americancompass.org/rebooting-the-…

@marcorubio

The series opens with forewords from @marcorubio and @SenTomCotton, who situate the concept in our present context: a once-in-a-century pandemic and a generation-defining contest with China. Both highlight vital national priorities that the market will not address on its own.

Senator Rubio emphasizes the inevitable tradeoff between efficiency and resilience. A market economy geared only toward maximizing the former will inevitably erode the latter, but the nation needs both and public policy must help to strike a balance. americancompass.org/essays/marco-r…

Read 11 tweets

Oren Cass

@oren_cass

5 Mar 20

@wellscking

This @wellscking interview with @TenreiroDaniel @NRO crackles with the tensions in conservatism. Wells articulates the @AmerCompass focus brilliantly, but I'm actually most fascinated by the questions, which really bring the status quo to life:

nationalreview.com/2020/03/conser…

First, the idea that "economic" and "cultural" are two distinct categories and a given problem must be assigned primarily to one or the other.

Second, and relatedly, the idea that decades of economic stagnation and divergence in fortunes isn't a big deal and probably doesn't have a lot of explanatory power because it's not "economic devastation."

Read 8 tweets

Oren Cass

@oren_cass

20 Feb 20

Thread (1/16). How is that our economic statistics suggest workers have been making slow but steady progress in recent decades, while popular perception is that their family finances are coming under increasingly untenable pressure? I've been working on this, here's my answer:

2/ Punchline: Popular perception is correct. In 1985, the typical male worker could cover a family of four's major expenditures (housing, health care, transportation, education) on 30 weeks of salary. By 2018 it took 53 weeks. Which is a problem, there being 52 weeks in a year.

3/ Why do our inflation-adjusted data say otherwise? Because inflation does not assess affordability. You don't have to take my word for it. Here's a neat study by Nobel laureate Robert Shiller making the point, as cited by Fed economist Michael Bryan: econintersect.com/b2evolution/bl…

Read 17 tweets

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