With union votes looming, will Amazon’s safety record put them in trouble?
What happens when you take the workplace conditions of Willy Wonka’s factory and add a dash of COVID-19? Amazon, of course!
Jeff Bezos stepped down from his position at Amazon and left a parting letter reminiscing on the “good times” and mentioning that he still tap dances into work, which is the rich-guy way of relating to the common man. Instead of more money, Amazon employees are left with forced overtime, hard labor, and missed family holidays.
Much like Wonka’s factory, Amazon looks great from the outside with the candy and the potentially dangerous tours…while behind the scenes there are a lot Oompa Loompas being asked to work in unsafe conditions for inadequate pay. Amazon already had a pretty spotty record when it came to workplace conditions, so it’s not a big shocker to hear that the pandemic has only made it worse.
Since so many people find comfort in shopping, those forced to stay home this past year turned to e-commerce, driving a surge in Amazon’s sales. Instead of sharing the benefits of a massive profit increase with employees in a time when they deserved the pay bump the most, Amazon doubled down on making it an unsafe workplace. Many employees alleged a lack of Covid safety precautions, which checks out because you can’t make the same mistake twice if you never finished making the first one.
Amazon is now taking measures to incentivize their employees to get vaccinated, which is great news. What’s not great news is stuff like this still happens. And this. Aaaaand this.
So with all this bad workplace press and several other newsworthy fois pas, is Amazon in trouble? Not yet, but we will see what happens as events such as the forming of historic unions unfold.
For the sake of the workers, I hope they get all their demands and not just access to the chocolate river (talk about a Covid nightmare!).
