Despite longstanding warnings about working conditions that have, if anything, only intensified in recent years,[1] Amazon still burns through each worker in its warehouses in an average of eight months,[2] and guess what? An internal memorandum warns that Amazon may run out of potential workers to hire:[3]
Raising wages and increasing warehouse automation are two of the six “levers” Amazon could pull to delay this labor crisis by a few years, but only a series of sweeping changes to how the company does business and manages its employees will significantly alter the timeline, Amazon staff predicted.
“If we continue business as usual, Amazon will deplete the available labor supply in the US network by 2024,” the research, which hasn’t previously been reported, says.[4]
In at least some respects, this problem reaches far beyond Amazon. Jeff Bezos didn’t like long-term employees; he felt they would become complacent and less productive. So he wanted to burn workers out,[5] as if they would burn out and resign instantaneously, as if Amazon wouldn’t suffer any diminished productivity in advance of their resignations. That’s a dubious, at best, assumption anyway, but it also requires that these expendable workers be infinitely replaceable. Which is an attitude towards workers I see in lots of places, notably in the gig economy, certainly not just Amazon.
Lost here, of course, is that these workers are human beings who matter for much more than the eight months average that Amazon manages to abuse them[6] and however long it is (longer than Amazon) that other similar employers manage to abuse their warehouse workers,[7] whether Amazon or anybody else chooses to acknowledge it or not. But instead, human beings are reduced to disposable means to capitalists’ profitable ends.
- [1]Brian Callaci, “Amazon Warehouses Are Relentless, Dangerous Workplaces—but It’s Hard to Punish Them for It, Thanks to Bill Clinton,” New Republic, March 25, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/165842/amazon-warehouse-washington-ergonomics-regulation-osha-clinton; Jessa Crispin, “Amazon is a disaster for workers. Nomadland glosses over that,” Guardian, March 23, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/23/amazon-nomadland-film-jeff-bezos-disaster-workers; Jessa Crispin, “Welcome to dystopia: getting fired from your job as an Amazon worker by an app,” Guardian, July 5, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/05/amazon-worker-fired-app-dystopia; Daniel D’Addario, “Amazon is worse than Walmart,” Salon, July 30, 2013, https://www.salon.com/control/2013/07/30/how_amazon_is_worse_than_wal_mart/; Jason Del Rey, “Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire,” Vox, June 17, 2022, https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-warehouses-hiring-shortage; Danny Fortson, “Is Jeff Bezos’s Amazon now the ‘evil face of capitalism’?” Times, December 8, 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/is-jeff-bezoss-amazon-now-the-evil-face-of-capitalism-3lxjs0k0n; Nichole Gracely, “‘Being homeless is better than working for Amazon,’” Guardian, November 28, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/nov/28/being-homeless-is-better-than-working-for-amazon; Simon Head, “Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon’s sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers,” Salon, February 23, 2014, https://www.salon.com/control/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_sick_brutality_and_secret_history_of_ruthlessly_intimidating_workers/; Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise, and Grace Ashford, “The Amazon That Customers Don’t See,” New York Times, June 15, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-workers.html; Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise and Grace Ashford, “Power and Peril: 5 Takeaways on Amazon’s Employment Machine,” New York Times, June 16, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/us/politics/amazon-warehouse-workers.html; Colin Lecher, “How Amazon automatically tracks and fires warehouse workers for ‘productivity,’” Verge, April 25, 2019, https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18516004/amazon-warehouse-fulfillment-centers-productivity-firing-terminations; Nathaniel Mott, “From Amazon warehouse workers to Google bus drivers, it’s tough working a non-tech job at a tech company,” Pando, October 9, 2014, https://pando.com/2014/10/09/from-amazon-warehouse-workers-to-google-bus-drivers-its-tough-working-a-non-tech-job-at-a-tech-company/; Michael Sainato, “‘I’m not a robot’: Amazon workers condemn unsafe, grueling conditions at warehouse,” Guardian, February 5, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-workers-protest-unsafe-grueling-conditions-warehouse; Alex Seitz-Wald, “Amazon is everything wrong with our new economy,” Salon, July 30, 2013, https://www.salon.com/test/2013/07/30/amazon_is_everything_wrong_with_our_new_economy/; Spencer Soper, “Inside Amazon’s Warehouse,” Lehigh Valley Morning Call, September 18, 2011, https://www.mcall.com/business/mc-xpm-2011-09-18-mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917-story.html↩
- [2]Steven Greenhouse, “Amazon chews through the average worker in eight months. They need a union,” Guardian, February 4, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/04/amazon-chews-through-the-average-worker-in-eight-months-they-need-a-union↩
- [3]Jason Del Rey, “Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire,” Vox, June 17, 2022, https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-warehouses-hiring-shortage↩
- [4]Jason Del Rey, “Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire,” Vox, June 17, 2022, https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-warehouses-hiring-shortage↩
- [5]Jason Del Rey, “Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire,” Vox, June 17, 2022, https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-warehouses-hiring-shortage; Steven Greenhouse, “Amazon chews through the average worker in eight months. They need a union,” Guardian, February 4, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/04/amazon-chews-through-the-average-worker-in-eight-months-they-need-a-union↩
- [6]Steven Greenhouse, “Amazon chews through the average worker in eight months. They need a union,” Guardian, February 4, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/04/amazon-chews-through-the-average-worker-in-eight-months-they-need-a-union↩
- [7]Jason Del Rey, “Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire,” Vox, June 17, 2022, https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-warehouses-hiring-shortage↩