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Amazon has been incredibly hostile to labor rights for their employees, including worker safety, fair compensation, parental leave, provision of basic benefits,

Amazon has been incredibly hostile to labor rights for their employees, including worker safety, fair compensation, parental leave, provision of basic benefits, reasonable schedules, collective bargaining, etc. They've been cited by federal labor judges for systematic unlawful behavior, and are under congressional investigation. Hopefully there will be some real consequences sometime soon. I'm not holding my breath though. In the markets for package delivery and warehouse logistics, Amazon's uncompetitive and worker-abusive business practices and basic design have been putting systematic pressure on other firms to similarly mistreat their own workers to compete. In the more general retail market, Amazon's unlawful (but thus far substantially unpunished) anti-competitive business practices drive smaller competitors out of business and extract rents not just from Amazon's own workers/contractors and suppliers but from the economy broadly. > are free to choose to work for a different employer This is certainly more true than in a feudal economy where peasants are literally considered the personal property of the lord, but in many of the relevant local labor markets Amazon is a disproportionately large and influential employer without enough local employer competition that employees can easily switch jobs. The only real way for employees to get a fair bargain in such situations is collective bargaining via a union, but Amazon is notoriously opposed to union formation at its facilities, which it blocks unlawfully wherever it can. Amazon doesn't use systematic physical brutality or murder to maintain their power, as done by e.g. feudal lords or drug gangs, but they do routinely (unlawfully) threaten workers with loss of pay/benefits or termination when those workers exercise their legally protected rights, and unlawfully follow through on those threats when workers persist. Since most people need to collect a paycheck to survive, this kind of violence is not entirely dissimilar to more direct physical attack.

nomel 2y ago
> Amazon's uncompetitive Could you expand on this? If they were uncompetitive, from a worker perspective, they wouldn't have any workers. Having workers means they are the best choice out of all the other companies competing for those workers. It, quite literally, means all the other choices were even worse!
- jacobolus 2y ago
  Amazon's model for package delivery is to hire "contractor" companies who then hire workers to drive around Amazon-marked vehicles to deliver nothing but Amazon packages, working under a long list of rules imposed by Amazon. These workers are effectively Amazon employees, but don't get the ordinary protections that would be afforded to workers hired directly by Amazon. Compared to other delivery drivers they have less training, higher turnover (less experience), higher delivery quotas, harsher schedules, worse pay/benefits, less job security, and no collective bargaining. This puts downward pressure on every other package delivery company, but those companies (and national postal services) can't legally mistreat their employees in the same ways Amazon can. This gives Amazon an uncompetitive advantage by reducing their costs below their competitors' costs, in a way that is unlawful and would be impossible if existing labor laws were vigorously enforced. However, they have thus far managed to evade legal responsibility in many (but not all) jurisdictions.
  - gottorf 2y ago
    I get your point about misclassifying de facto employees as contractors, and also wanting as a society to avoid a race to the bottom in this type of stuff, but the fact remains that the delivery workers are voluntarily choosing to work with the compensation and under the conditions described. I presume that despite all the downsides you listed, it was the best possible option for them. > This puts downward pressure on every other package delivery company If in fact turnover is as high as you say, it would seem that it actually wouldn't be competitive over the long run; the overall customer experience would be worse and eventually Amazon would run out of people to work for them. I think you're saying that this is the labor equivalent of the anti-competitive practice of dumping, but I'm not sure if it translates exactly.

nomel 2y ago

> Amazon's uncompetitive Could you expand on this? If they were uncompetitive, from a worker perspective, they wouldn't have any workers. Having workers means they are the best choice out of all the other companies competing for those workers. It, quite literally, means all the other choices were even worse!

jacobolus 2y ago
Amazon's model for package delivery is to hire "contractor" companies who then hire workers to drive around Amazon-marked vehicles to deliver nothing but Amazon packages, working under a long list of rules imposed by Amazon. These workers are effectively Amazon employees, but don't get the ordinary protections that would be afforded to workers hired directly by Amazon. Compared to other delivery drivers they have less training, higher turnover (less experience), higher delivery quotas, harsher schedules, worse pay/benefits, less job security, and no collective bargaining. This puts downward pressure on every other package delivery company, but those companies (and national postal services) can't legally mistreat their employees in the same ways Amazon can. This gives Amazon an uncompetitive advantage by reducing their costs below their competitors' costs, in a way that is unlawful and would be impossible if existing labor laws were vigorously enforced. However, they have thus far managed to evade legal responsibility in many (but not all) jurisdictions.
- gottorf 2y ago
  I get your point about misclassifying de facto employees as contractors, and also wanting as a society to avoid a race to the bottom in this type of stuff, but the fact remains that the delivery workers are voluntarily choosing to work with the compensation and under the conditions described. I presume that despite all the downsides you listed, it was the best possible option for them. > This puts downward pressure on every other package delivery company If in fact turnover is as high as you say, it would seem that it actually wouldn't be competitive over the long run; the overall customer experience would be worse and eventually Amazon would run out of people to work for them. I think you're saying that this is the labor equivalent of the anti-competitive practice of dumping, but I'm not sure if it translates exactly.