This seems reasonable and beyond what other major employers are offering, but as is the fashion I'm sure Amazon will be convicted in the court of public interwebs shortly...
There is but one interweb.
Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave
41–50 of 239 posts
Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Context matters. We are now over a month into the crisis, if you count it from the moment of lockdown. The fact that this wasn't a day one policy is inexcusable. Stop playing PR hype-man for Amazon, they don't need your help.
Policies take time to develop as people develop understanding of the situation , then there’s availability and putting policy into practice.
Amazon has by now spent millions of man-hours on addressing COVID-19 -- meetings, designing splash banners, etc. They are a very big company who pays big money for top talent. Amazon is not the scrappy upstart it was 15 years ago. Let's hold them accountable according to what they are capable.
Edit: it would seem obvious in retrospect that if most major governments have action plans in case of global pandemic, a global logistics company should have done the same. I would be very surprised if they hadn't, frankly, and my view of Bezos would be lower than it already is if they hadn't because this is really something that should have mattered to him before it was a real situation.
Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Forcing people to show up to work under these conditions is murder. Nobody can be forced to show up, and no, that's not murder. > A starting point would be... Amazon has a page listing their pretty thorough adjustments for health & safety: https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/how-amazon-priorit...
Unpaid time off is forcing low-income workers to show up unless they want to starve.
By starve do you mean "go hungry", or "eat less", or "starve to death"?
Edit: I find "starve" to be a hyperbolic and emotionally manipulative choice of words, but I don't want to assume the worst. Maybe you have good reason to use this term?
Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's a few avoidable deaths between friends, after all? There are multiple active outbreaks in crowded factories and other facilities, just like an Amazon fulfillment warehouse. They do not have necessary safety equipment and procedures in place yet. Forcing people to show up to work under these conditions is murder. They could fix it, though. A starting point would be Amazon providing tests and ensuring that every…
>A starting point would be Amazon providing tests and ensuring that everyone has been tested before returning to work Amazon can't win. If they did that, the newspaper headlines would read "Bezos demands DNA samples of workers as a prerequisite to being paid."
COVID tests aren't DNA tests. It's a swab of the back of your throat (through the nose, oof) to test for a specific virus. It's not hard to find the specific stuff used to perform the tests, it's out there on the internet, the CDC published it. Are we really descending into paranoia about Amazon trying to genetically profile employees?
Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Forcing people to show up to work under these conditions is murder. Nobody can be forced to show up, and no, that's not murder. > A starting point would be... Amazon has a page listing their pretty thorough adjustments for health & safety: https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/how-amazon-priorit...
Ah yes because they're not being held at gunpoint it's not forced. Do you really have a very literal definition of forced? No nuance or anything?
The nuanced approach is to reject extremist characterizations, not embrace them.
Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Context matters. We are now over a month into the crisis, if you count it from the moment of lockdown. The fact that this wasn't a day one policy is inexcusable. Stop playing PR hype-man for Amazon, they don't need your help.
That person is not playing anything. They are noting what the facts are right now.
Those aren't facts, those are PR slogans from a blog post on Amazon's web site. I am not holding my breath to see whether these policies are enacted in good faith, given Amazon's business practices and labor relations of late.
Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's a few avoidable deaths between friends, after all? There are multiple active outbreaks in crowded factories and other facilities, just like an Amazon fulfillment warehouse. They do not have necessary safety equipment and procedures in place yet. Forcing people to show up to work under these conditions is murder. They could fix it, though. A starting point would be Amazon providing tests and ensuring that every…
Yeah, I don’t see how few extra bucks is worth literally risking life. Total numbers look big but really it’s $120 more per each shift where you can be exposed or expose others to a deadly virus.
Remember that you are risking your life every day getting out of your bed, even without this virus.
Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are not forcing them since they are allowed to take time off. You can't self quarantine forever anyways, standard procedure is 14 days of quarantine if you think you may have been exposed to the virus or if you have any symptoms.
Unpaid time off. How are people supposed to eat and pay rent if their only available leave is unpaid? How will they afford their hospital bills after being exposed?
Same as the 20+ million Americans who are laid off and seeking unemployment?
Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave
#49There’s no greater demonstration of their internal class divide than what would happen if they asked HQ employees to stop working from home and do the same.
You mean like the data center employees who all do have to continue to work from their offices? Those employees who I haven't seen a single complaint from, or any articles written about?
Some demonstration of class divide, that.
Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not talking about it in absolute terms. How about talking about it in terms of median wage per job title? Putting big numbers in glitzy blog posts only serves to dazzle and obfuscates how easy it would be for Amazon to double or triple that number with basically no dent in the wallet from doing so.
The median wage is an absolute term (in real units of currency), and so any multiple of that would also be an absolute term.
You know what I meant. Don't be a pedant to derail the conversation.