Buy from Amazon? Then you are supporting American slave labor.

[B. de Corbin]

They contract out their deliveries to services who pay far below minimum wage...

Ballard had to purchase the cargo van he drives for work. He doesn't get reimbursed for the wear and tear he puts on it; for the gasoline he pours into it on a near-daily basis; for the auto insurance he needs to carry; or for the parking tickets he inevitably racks up downtown. He doesn't even get reimbursed for the LaserShip uniform he's obliged to purchase and wear.

At the end of the day, much of that $225 has vanished.

"It's like they want us to be employees, but they don't want to pay for it," said Ballard, 45.

Meet The Real Amazon Drones

[Roknrol]

Re: Buy from Amazon? Then you are supporting American slave labor.

Well, I'm biased - stating that up front and for the record.

That being said: Nobody is forcing him to work at a shitty company for a shitty wage, and I'm not really sure how Amazon can be blamed for using the cheaper delivery services. Amazon doesn't hire delivery drivers themselves - they use other services...so not sure how they're responsible for his wages.

As I've said many many times: If you don't like where you're at, you're the one that needs to change it. If he's willing to work for that low of a wage, they will PAY him that low of a wage. Yes, I'm aware that not everyone has a lot of choices as far as places to work...but then, beggars can't be choosers. I've worked at plenty of places where the wage was crap and something that I noticed - the people that really hated the job inevitably bitched...but they also didn't stick around long. The people that *did* stick around were generally people that were unemployable elsewhere, be it due to their work ethic, their attitude, or a simple unwillingness to look for more work (like God told the blonde: Meet me halfway, buy a ticket! )

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: Buy from Amazon? Then you are supporting American slave labor.

Forcing, no. But the whole idea that one can simply choose a better job is very 1960's. Today, it's more like a lottery, considering the numbers of people applying for good jobs.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Buy from Amazon? Then you are supporting American slave labor.

People need the magic of a strong union as a counterbalance to exploitation.

I'm a pretty hardcore capitalist, but, without some kind of check - which I would prefer to see coming from unions, rather than from the gooberment (which has vested interest in keeping corporations happy at the expense of "We the people") capitalism - especially in hard times, which are created largely through exploitation - can be terribly exploitative.

Check the history of labor in the U.S. prior to unions, and look at whom the gooberment supported.

Then, look at post union U.S., and notice how much better things were.

It's all happening again.

[ThorsSon]

Re: Buy from Amazon? Then you are supporting American slave labor.

The dude in the article is a independent contractor... meaning... he is self employed.

He happens to contract to LaserShip, who happens to do some of Amazon's deliveries.

Amazon has nothing to do with his state of affairs.

I, too, am an independent contractor. I drill foundation piers, and my current project is for the University of Texas. I had to buy my own uniform. I had to buy my own safety gear (hardhat, safety glasses, etc.). Had to buy the drilling equipment. Buy the fuel, etc. I don't get reimbursed by the University of Texas for any of that... so as a result of that, when the job was being planned, and my company placed our bid for what we would charge to do the job, we took all of that into account. If I set the price too low, I am pretty damn sure to get the job, but not going to make any money. If I set the price too high, I can't compete with other drillers who will do it for cheaper, even though I have a reputation for better work. I turn in my bid, and the customer decides if they want to pay that much, and if so, they hire me for the job... if not, then they don't.

Mr Ballard probably has a dilemma, in that Amazon probably is only willing to pay a certain amount per package... but that is because they can find people to do it for that amount. If the rate is too low for him, he can take his delivery van, and deliver for someone else. People ALWAYS need delivery drivers.

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: Buy from Amazon? Then you are supporting American slave labor.

Until the drones take over the delivery jobs! (if that's really in the works - not sure if it's an urban legend.)

[HavaSpell]

Re: Buy from Amazon? Then you are supporting American slave labor.

I've worked at one of Amazon's warehouses before and they actually give people vehicles (depending on the job you're doing).
Also, they were paying me about $11 an hour, when the minimum wage here is only about $7 or $8 an hour.
However, they do work their employees to the bones, which is why I quit.
They are unconcerned about the lives of their workers, and tend to go back and forth.
For example:
Say you're X shift. That means you work from 6pm until 4am.
No matter which shift you're on, you will work at least 5 days a week.
Let's say Tuesday and Wednesday are your off days.
Now, say you're a mother (I'm not, but assume or the sake of this explanation),
and you've got 2 kids that will be out of school for their vacation on both of
your off days. Monday, the last day you were at work, Amazon told you multiple
times that you had to come in on Wednesday as mandatory overtime.
So, you hire a babysitter for Wednesday night, and expect to go in to work.
Wednesday gets there, and they have an automated computer call you to say,
" [blah, blah blah] mandatory overtime has been canceled." Great right?
Yeah, sure. Except for the fact that they just woke you up at 11am (keep in mind
that your on a 6pm to 4am schedule, so you wouldn't be waking up until 4pm or
5pm on any given day). Also, except for the fact that you've already booked a
babysitter, and she'll be expecting that money like you were expecting to make some.

But, I digress. That's just one small example of how careless they are regarding peoples
situations. I remember they didn't tell anyone whether or not we had Thanksgiving off.
So a ton of people showed up around 6pm to go to work. They sent us home.
Some of us had to drive over 30 minutes to get to work, and now, not only had we woken
up for work, and wasted a holiday sleeping for work, but we had wasted gas as well and
STILL had to come back to work the next day.
They pay well. But it wasn't enough for me to be blatantly disrespected and toyed with. :/

[DanieMarie]

Re: Buy from Amazon? Then you are supporting American slave labor.

I started cutting Amazon out of my life about a year ago for this very reason. Here in Germany, there is no universal minimum wage (at least, not until January next year). They do pay an industry minimum wage for their permanent staff (there are industrial minimum wages in place that get bargained by unions), but they hire a whole slew of temporary staff that works under that rate. They get around paying good portions of its staff their proper wages by classifying them as "temporary" and although they break the law by keeping "temporary" staff on over the long term, they seem to get away with it. A lot of the delivery services they hire also pay 4-5 Euros per hour (I don't care what that is in USD...you CANNOT live off of that in Germany and delivery jobs are rarely part-time).

To add to that, their business headquarters are in Luxembourg, which gets them out of paying all kinds of taxes that they should be paying in this country. Because they are a "Luxembourg" business and not a German business. They then have the audacity to argue that they "provide jobs" so they're doing us a favour. Yeah...you provide a slew of jobs at a non-living wage, and the state (ie taxpayer) then has to make up the difference. We basically subsidize your profits, Amazon. Thanks for those jobs, though.

In addition, on an international scale, they have a HUGE and very negative effect on the book publishing business and basically contribute to the overall downgrade of quality in published material.

I'd rather pay a couple of Euros more almost anywhere else and know that the money is supporting people and reflecting the real costs of goods.


EDIT: and yeah, no one is forcing those people to work at Amazon, but I don't think that's really a fair reflection of the situation. "Slave labour" is an extreme and untrue statement, but it IS exploitation. Amazon chooses its warehouse locations carefully. It usually places them in economically depressed areas with few employment opportunities. Here in Germany, where unemployment is very low, there is a big difference between former East and West Germany and the former East still has really high unemployment (compared to almost no unemployment in the former West). There is pretty much nowhere else to work. Your other alternatives are to leave your home and start off somewhere else (which, despite how this issue is viewed, I think is unfair and generally unhealthy...do we really want entire areas to empty out because we can't bother to work on economic development? That's bad policy, sorry) or to commute hours to bigger cities. So, a lot of people "choose" Amazon, because the other "choices" available flat-out suck or just aren't worth it (yeah, you can commute elsewhere, but it will cut out 4 hours of your day and cost you a ton in gas money, especially considering that gas costs at least 1.50 Euro per liter).

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Buy from Amazon? Then you are supporting American slave labor.

LOL - "Slave Labor" was my getting all hyperbolic.

[Doc_Holliday]

Re: Buy from Amazon? Then you are supporting American slave labor.

It's just so cheap.

[DanieMarie]

Re: Buy from Amazon? Then you are supporting American slave labor.

LOL - "Slave Labor" was my getting all hyperbolic.

Haha, I know. I just wanted to point at the "choice to work there" comment, not really at your original statement I meant that while it's not actually slave labour, it's still exploitation.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Buy from Amazon? Then you are supporting American slave labor.

Life's little ironies are always entertaining.

It seems that Amazon is cleaning up selling books about the growing gap between the rich and poor, while simultaneously increasing that gap:

If Amazon's top-sellers list is any indication, Americans are fed up with rising income inequality.

As of Thursday evening, Sen. Elizabeth Warren's new memoir, A Fighting Chance, is the number two best-selling book on Amazon, trailing only Thomas Piketty's Capital In The Twenty-First Century. Michael Lewis' Flash Boys, which exposes the world of high-frequency traders, is number five. Both Capital and A Fighting Chance are also among Barnes & Noble's top five sellers. Rounding out Amazon's top five are John Green's YA hit The Fault In Our Stars and an illustrated Little Golden Book adaptation of Disney's "Frozen." Both books are more representative of typical Amazon best-sellers, which tend to include popular fiction and self-help titles.

Occupy Amazon: Elizabeth Warren, Thomas Piketty, Michael Lewis Books Surging Online