Much of Microsoft's historical behaviour was objectionable. Amazon, however, has been troubling on a much deeper level from the beginning. Their attitude towar

Much of Microsoft's historical behaviour was objectionable. Amazon, however, has been troubling on a much deeper level from the beginning. Their attitude towards labour has been nothing short of Dickensian. I'm not speaking so much of their habit of writing dystopian employment contracts and turning to legal intimidation when employees leave, though that is also a problem, as I am of their treatment of lower paid staff. Refusing dock workers adequate rest, hydration or cooling is indefensible. However impressive the accomplishments and intellect of Mr. Bezos may be, we can no longer hold any faith he or Amazon will bow to even minimal concerns of human decency. The only levers are the threat of financial and regulatory consequences. The further Amazon's power places them beyond such levers the more dangerous they become. https://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_sick_brutality_and_secret_history_of_ruthlessly_intimidating_workers/ https://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons... > The series revealed the lengths Amazon was prepared to go to keep costs down and output high and yielded a singular image of Amazon’s ruthlessness—ambulances stationed on hot days at the Amazon center to take employees suffering from heat stroke to the hospital. Despite the summer weather, there was no air-conditioning in the depot, and Amazon refused to let fresh air circulate by opening loading doors at either end of the depot—for fear of theft. Inside the plant there was no slackening of the pace, even as temperatures rose to more than 100 degrees. > On June 2, 2011, a warehouse employee contacted the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration to report that the heat index had reached 102 degrees in the warehouse and that fifteen workers had collapsed. On June 10 OSHA received a message on its complaints hotline from an emergency room doctor at the Lehigh Valley Hospital: “I’d like to report an unsafe environment with an Amazon facility in Fogelsville. . . . Several patients have come in the last couple of days with heat related injuries.” It's also worth adding that Amazon eventually did retrofit their facilities with cooling devices but only after their practices drew international media coverage.