Thread by @DanPriceSeattle

Thread on how Amazon treats its workers

Context:
Amazon full-time warehouse employees make $31,200 a year. Jeff Bezos makes that every 12 seconds.

Cost to give warehouse workers 2 weeks paid sick leave + pay bumps so they don't qualify for food stamps = 0.9% of Bezos' fortune

1. Last week Amazon denied its workers' quotas are so punishing that they have to pee in bottles.

The next day, documents showed that not only do workers regularly have to urinate in bottles, they also defecate in bags, and Amazon is well aware of this
theintercept.com/2021/03/25/ama…

2. Amazon is one of the top 3 companies whose employees rely on food stamps and Medicaid (along with Walmart and McDonald's).

This costs taxpayers billions of dollars, meaning you are subsidizing low pay to increase profits for a $1.6 trillion company
bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

3. Amazon has received $3.8 billion in public subsidies to open warehouses.

The typical transition: a factory that paid $35 an hour with good union benefits like pensions is replaced by Amazon, which pays $15 an hour and aggressively breaks unions
nytimes.com/2021/03/09/opi…

4. Amazon tracks workers' every moment to make sure they aren't slacking for even seconds at a time.

But they also hire Pinkerton spies to monitor workers to make sure they aren't talking about unionizing or griping about their working conditions
vice.com/en/article/5dp…

5. Amazon is offering pro-union workers $2,000 to quit, so they can be replaced with workers who would vote agaisnt a union.

During the pandemic, Jeff Bezos has made $9.4 million per hour, every hour, for a year.
paydayreport.com/amazon-offers-…

6. Amazon noticed pro-union workers were passing out information to employees stopped at red lights outside a warehouse.

So Amazon literally got the traffic light changed to make sure workers wouldn't be stopped long enough to talk with organizers.
theverge.com/2021/2/17/2228…

7. Amazon warehouse workers in Chicago have been moving to unionize & staged a walkout over working conditions.

Amazon closed the warehouse and offered displaced workers one shift at a nearby facility: from 1 am to lunch, called a "megacycle," or be fired
vice.com/en/article/y3g…

8. If you assume all 1 million Amazon workers are full-time (they're not), they'd make $31 billion a year.

In the pandemic, Bezos has added $31B to his fortune every 4 months.

"but Amazon is a job creator"
During its rise, millions of retail jobs disappeared. It's a job shifter

9. Amazon flat-out stole $62 million in tips from its Flex drivers.

Its punishment for looting? Just pay the money back.

Amazon makes $62 million every 81 minutes. But for its drivers, tips are a life-line.
chicagotribune.com/business/ct-bi…

10. Life in an Amazon warehouse voting on a union. Management:
*Sends 5 texts/day warning them not to unionize
*Put anti-union flyers in bathrooms
*Takes photos of employee IDs when they make pro-union comments in meetings
*Fired outspoken pro-union worker
washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

11. Amazon has workers spend up to 25 minutes a day - unpaid - going through security to make sure they don't steal anything. Collectively, this has cost workers hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid time at work.
nytimes.com/2014/12/10/bus…

12. Amazon's actions also hurt workers at other small businesses, like this one.

https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1341489830379831300

Then there's the millions of retail jobs lost because of Amazon's dominance.

13. After Amazon opens a warehouse, local industry wages drop 6% as it becomes an employer monopoly.

At Amazon, only 3% of workers get promotions, one-third the industry average.
bloomberg.com/news/features/…

14. Amazon tripled profits last year. Instead of giving workers hero pay or increasing wages, it gave holiday bonuses of $150 for part-time workers and $300 for full-time. The cost equaled 2.9% of its profit.

My small business gave more than that.
cnbc.com/2020/11/26/ama…

15. At the holidays, Jeff Bezos could have given $148,000 to every one of his warehouse workers and still been richer than he was before the pandemic began. The bonus he gave was 0.2% of that.

16. Amazon could have quadrupled worker pay and still grown its profits in 2020. Instead, it kept its minimum wage at $15 an hour, which is below the median wage for a U.S. warehouse employee.

17. Amazon increased prices for essential items like hand sanitizer and cleaners by up to 1,000% in the pandemic - including items sold directly by Amazon.

At the same time it canceled $2/hour hero pay for workers less than two months into the pandemic.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

18. Amazon (and other companies) banned employees from even talking about which coworkers have covid, making it harder to know the health risks of working.

Months into the pandemic, the company revealed 20,000 of its workers had tested positive for covid.
bloomberg.com/news/features/…

19. Amazon doesn't offer paid sick leave, even in a pandemic (it recently boasted that it pays workers with covid, which is required under federal law).

On one day last year Jeff Bezos added $12 billion to his net worth, or 10x the cost of 2 weeks companywide paid sick leave.

20. Amazon warehouse workers face covid infection rates that are 4x the risk for the local community.

But with strict productivity standards and no paid sick leave, workers are forced to choose between their job and their health
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

21. Amazon spends millions on ads promoting itself as a climate conscious corporation.

It fired two employees who publicly called for climate change reform
geekwire.com/2020/amazon-fi…

22. Amazon didn't give workers Juneteenth off. But in Chicago, it did offer them an "authentic meal" of chicken and waffles
cnbc.com/2020/06/19/chi…

23. Amazon let workers take unlimited *unpaid* time off in the early days of the pandemic, but canceled that "perk" after a month.

Federal FMLA law requires big employers to allow for unpaid sick time off.
businessinsider.com/amazon-set-to-…

24. In the early days of the pandemic, Amazon fired a worker who was outspoken about working conditions and led a walkout at a Staten Island warehouse.

Documents later showed Amazon execs discussed a PR campaign to smear the worker
vice.com/en/article/5dm…

25. Amazon received some fanfare in 2018 when it announced a $15 minimum wage, which is now standard at most big-box retailers.

Except as part of the move, Amazon also cut bonuses and stock awards for workers
cnbc.com/2018/10/03/ama…

26. Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos is worth $179 billion.

A worker making the company's $15 minimum wage would need to work full-time for 5.7 million years and never spend a dime to have that.

27. Amazon is spending big to open grocery stores and convenience stores with no cashiers.

Cashier is the No. 2 most common job in America, but at this rate would become extinct
vox.com/recode/2020/2/…

28. Amazon has arranged unusual tax deals as "incentives" to open warehouses in town.

A Kentucky county forced Amazon workers to pay 5% of their paychecks to Amazon (instead of taxes going to local public needs)
nytimes.com/2019/12/27/tec…

29. How Amazon commemorates workers who die on the job
nytimes.com/2019/11/30/bus…

30. Amazon warehouses have injury rates 2.5x the warehouse national average as they push workers for brutal quotas - one item every 11 seconds.

About 10% of people get seriously injured there
theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

31. In Baltimore, GM paid workers $100k a year with good union benefits. It was replaced by an Amazon warehouse where people make under $40k a year, 800 workers are fired by algorithm a year and 600 get food stamps
nytimes.com/2019/11/30/bus…

32. Amazon touts itself as a great job creator.

For every $1 in wages it pays, taxpayers dole out 24 cents in public assistance because so many workers are in poverty.

In Southern California, half of its warehouse workers live in substandard housing
nytimes.com/2019/11/30/bus…

33. Amazon has a gig economy website called Mechanical Turk that paid workers a median of $1.77 an hour.

Full-time, that's $3,681 a year. Bezos made more than that in the time in took to read this tweet.
nytimes.com/interactive/20…

34. In a 4-year span, reporters found accidents involving Amazon delivery drivers caused 60 serious injuries and 10 deaths, a fraction of the likely total. Many drivers said they were running late and cut corners to meet Amazon's 99.9% arrival time quota
nytimes.com/2019/09/05/us/…

35. Warehouse workers have reported exhaustion and dehydration at hot facilities without air conditioning, which is especially hard for workers fasting during Ramadan
“I got so thirsty, I couldn’t even swallow my saliva."
apnews.com/article/1d6229…

36. Amazon's anti-union stance is not new. It produced a 45-minute union-busting training video for Whole Foods, three years ago.
gizmodo.com/amazons-aggres…

37. There's been a lot of talk about politicians restricting voting rights lately.

Amazon tried (and failed) to block its workers from voting by mail on whether to unionize (in a pandemic, when 90% of U.S. union votes have been done by mail)
theguardian.com/technology/202…

38. Amazon tracks workers and logs a "time off task" whenever they take a break. Too many of these will lead to a warning, and eventually you could be fired
cnbc.com/2020/10/14/ama…

39. Amazon has AI-enabled cameras in delivery vans, which produces a score for every movement a driver makes. Drivers say things like unanswered incoming calls can ding their score for alleged distracted driving.
cnbc.com/2021/02/12/ama…

40. OK, there are more, but I'll stop there.

Every big company will have issues with how it treats workers. But I haven't seen any other company (with the possible exception of Walmart) have so many complaints agaisnt it. That's especially egregious considering Amazon's wealth.