Amazon staff punished for being ill

sweetpotatoboy · Post by **sweetpotatoboy** » Mon December 15th, 2008, 11:29 am

The Sunday Times has written an article exposing working conditions at Amazon's UK warehouses:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/b ... 337770.ece

Vanessa · Post by **Vanessa** » Mon December 15th, 2008, 11:59 am

It does all sound quite appalling! Sounds like you have live, eat and drink Amazon to work there. I wonder if the staff get any additional perks?

Misfit · Post by **Misfit** » Mon December 15th, 2008, 2:26 pm

Holy crap, I can't even imagine that. In my state Labor and Industries would be all over them for that kind of nonsense.

Helen_Davis · Post by **Helen_Davis** » Mon December 15th, 2008, 3:09 pm

I won't be shopping there anymore then.

Ludmilla · Post by **Ludmilla** » Mon December 15th, 2008, 4:07 pm

Technology, and the gadgetry that supports it, have created some disturbing trends in recent years. I work in an office, so I can't complain that it is that bad, but I feel like the drive to constantly multitask, always to be connected 24/7, has reached insane and unrealistic proportions. I feel like in the last 10 years we've taken two steps forward only to take 10 steps back. It's starting to turn into corporate dystopia-land.

Tanzanite · Post by **Tanzanite** » Mon December 15th, 2008, 5:15 pm

That is appalling. And in these tough economic times, employers who want to use these tactics can get away with it - people need jobs and if they don't want to play by the company's rules, they (the employer) probably figure there are plenty of other people who will. Disgraceful.

LCW · Post by **LCW** » Mon December 15th, 2008, 5:27 pm

They seem similar to Walmart with their poor treatment of employees and low prices no matter what the cost. Interesting corolation! I wonder if the US amazon is the same. Couldn't they be reported to the Labor Dept. or some equivalent over there?

EC2 · Post by **EC2** » Mon December 15th, 2008, 5:32 pm

Amazon is renowned in the publishing industry for being a corporate bully. It's currently in dispute with publisher Hachette Livre (Little Brown, Piatkus, Hodder, Headline etc) over the demands for ridiculous discounts that the publisher cannot afford. There's a lawsuit ongoing over its efforts to make all self-published and small press who want to sell through Amazon, use Amazon's own self-publish company to produce the books. So this doesn't surprise me in the least. It's no different to a lot of other sweatshops, but that doesn't make it right. Amazon throws its weight around and is becoming one of the bad guys.
Bah, humbug!

Margaret · Post by **Margaret** » Mon December 15th, 2008, 7:29 pm

Amazon's prices are indeed lower than at other online booksellers, but frankly, they don't seem that much lower in most cases. They do have a bunch of paperbacks of lesser quality at a penny each, but their shipping and handling charges are rather high. I didn't know about the mistreatment of workers, but chose to link to Powell's Books for most of the books at HistoricalNovels.info. It's my hometown bookstore, and I know and respect the company and its policies. I only link to Amazon (U.S.) with books that aren't available through Powell's. So far, only a few people have bought books via my website, but the number of books purchased via Amazon is about double the number purchased via Powell's, despite the large disparity in the number of links. Seems people just gravitate to the familiar site with its rock-bottom prices.

LCW · Post by **LCW** » Mon December 15th, 2008, 7:49 pm

I've tried Powell's website but I found their search feature to be completely useless. There wasn't even a subject for "fiction" let alone historical fiction. And typing in "historical fiction" under search brings up all kinds of children's books, christian books, etc. It gets pretty annoying after a while. The ease of searching for exactly what you want on Amazon probably is a huge contributer to their success. Maybe if other websites could emulate that then they'd be able to compete better.