<Amazon Mailer:
Rear Photo: The Reckoner>
Rear Photo: The Reckoner>
<Suggested Soundtrack:
"Here We Go Again" (The Sex Pistols)>
<i.>
They're at it again, or so it seems. Imagine my surprise at getting this latest mailer from Amazon, though I shouldn't be: Christmas is coming, which means they need seasonal workers to handle this, that, and the other. What's interesting here is the wording, starting with the large print buzzwords on the front cover (see below): "Opportunity." "Stability." (Shades of those infamous "Opportunity Economy" adverts that characterized Kamala Harris's losing Presidential campaign.)
From there, it's off to the key planks of what I'd call Amazon's campaign platform, starting with its flagship promise ("health insurance on day one"), free skills training for higher pay, and an average wage of over $23 an hour. (You also get a helpful link to get the company's side of the story.) For extra emphasis, it's repeated on the rear, complete with suitably diverse images of Amazon's worker bees, happily toiling away -- three in all, of Black and brown folk, which seems slightly inconsistent with Amazon's resident Dr. Evil, Jeff Bezos, so happily bending his knee to one Donald Trump.
Which makes him do all sorts of uncool, like, y'know, firing Karen Attiah, the Washington Post's last remaining Black columnist (see below). Or, to put it even more succinctly, someone who enjoys such outsized power and wealth shouldn't be joining history's most lawless President in his current scorched earth war against DEI (or anything vaguely progressive, for that matter).
And that's, before we get into all of Amazon's other sins, from its hostility to unionism, its infamous warehouses and their Dickensian conditions, and their relentless squashing of anyone who tries to compete with them. None of which stops them from arguing, "But hey, man, we're just like you, right? Right?" Wrong.
From there, it's off to the key planks of what I'd call Amazon's campaign platform, starting with its flagship promise ("health insurance on day one"), free skills training for higher pay, and an average wage of over $23 an hour. (You also get a helpful link to get the company's side of the story.) For extra emphasis, it's repeated on the rear, complete with suitably diverse images of Amazon's worker bees, happily toiling away -- three in all, of Black and brown folk, which seems slightly inconsistent with Amazon's resident Dr. Evil, Jeff Bezos, so happily bending his knee to one Donald Trump.
Which makes him do all sorts of uncool, like, y'know, firing Karen Attiah, the Washington Post's last remaining Black columnist (see below). Or, to put it even more succinctly, someone who enjoys such outsized power and wealth shouldn't be joining history's most lawless President in his current scorched earth war against DEI (or anything vaguely progressive, for that matter).
And that's, before we get into all of Amazon's other sins, from its hostility to unionism, its infamous warehouses and their Dickensian conditions, and their relentless squashing of anyone who tries to compete with them. None of which stops them from arguing, "But hey, man, we're just like you, right? Right?" Wrong.
<Amazon Mailer:
Front Cover Photo: The Reckoner>
Front Cover Photo: The Reckoner>
<ii.>
But, again...let's take Amazon's pitch at face value, for the sake of argument. Who wouldn't enjoy making $23 an hour, or the notion of "health insurance on day one?" Sounds appealing on its face, doesn't it? Sure. That is, if you stay there enough to enjoy them. With epidemic levels of "churn" -- the blander way of saying, "never-ending employee turnover" -- approaching 150 percent, something clearly has to give.
Not every task lends itself to automation, and robots can only do so much, even as Amazon keeps looking for new ways of squeezing every last ounce of sweat from its beleaguered workforce (see link below). Judging by the nuggets I stumbled on from this Columbus, OH-based Reddit thread, I'm not only the one who wonders, "Why did I get this in the mail":
Not every task lends itself to automation, and robots can only do so much, even as Amazon keeps looking for new ways of squeezing every last ounce of sweat from its beleaguered workforce (see link below). Judging by the nuggets I stumbled on from this Columbus, OH-based Reddit thread, I'm not only the one who wonders, "Why did I get this in the mail":
#1) "My first thought was 'didn’t someone on Reddit observe that their churn rate was so high that eventually every unemployed person in Columbus would be a former employee?' Has it happened already?
Then I flipped it over, and it was addressed to me and my husband. What the hell? We are both employed at jobs we’ve had for decades."
#2) "They were even frugal enough to sort the list and put both our names on one postcard rather than sending us two."
#3) "This is the answer; seasonal hiring starts now. I was once a seasonal employee for them so yeah. Oddly, I haven't received this mailing, guess they're tired of me!"
#4) "We did! My son works there, but the postcard was addressed to me, my husband and my daughter who moved out of state 9 years ago - so weird!!"
<The only man to last the course: Unione Siciliana President Mike Merlo gets a magnificent wax and flower effigy for his funeral, held on November, 1923, in Chicago.
Pallbearers included Mayor William E Dever, Police Chief Morgan A. Collins, State's Attorney Robert E. Crowe, and future Mayor Anton Cermak. Says something about the culture of the time, doesn't it?>
https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/the_funeral_of_mike_merlo
The Unione began in 1895 as an Italian-American fraternal organization offering burial and health insurance benefits for members, as well as a Juvenile Department that organized baseball and football games for at-risk youth. The organization offered various related activities, including aid to children with disabilities, scholarships, and even an Italian Old People's Home. It also served as an unofficial liaison between the authorities and the community, and settling disputes among parties who didn't want official help -- such as extortion victims targeted by the notorious Black Hand Gang.
<iii.>
Of course, extreme situations -- by themselves -- don't always drive people away. One of my favorite examples comes from the 1920s -- another era of rampant inequality, bolstered by a corporate culture of fear and punishment -- in the Unione Siciliana (or Unione Siciliane, or Unione Sicilione, depending on the account you read). The Unione began in 1895 as an Italian-American fraternal organization offering burial and health insurance benefits for members, as well as a Juvenile Department that organized baseball and football games for at-risk youth. The organization offered various related activities, including aid to children with disabilities, scholarships, and even an Italian Old People's Home. It also served as an unofficial liaison between the authorities and the community, and settling disputes among parties who didn't want official help -- such as extortion victims targeted by the notorious Black Hand Gang.
The Unione also supported local political candidates and various causes, such as campaigns against the Black Hand. However, as the 1920s dawned, the Chicago chapter fell under a darker influence, once gangsters realized its importance to the Italian-American vote. The Unione's community origins also offered an ideal haven for criminal activity, once the relevant faction installed its puppet of choice as president.
This state of affairs naturally aroused fierce power struggles among the Windy City's dominant gangster, Al Capone, and his rivals. Between 1921 and 1930, six of the Chicago chapter's seven presidents were murdered The sole exception was Mike Merlo, due to his early death by cancer at 44, in 1924. Only Merlo and Pasqualino "Patsy" Lolordo survived any appreciable length of time, at three years apiece.
Five presidents held their titles for one or two years, while one (Samuzzo "Samoots" Ammatuna) lasted barely six months before his own murder on November 10, 1925. By then, the organization had renamed itself the Italian-American National Union, as a way to attract Italian-Americans from other regions of their homeland -- and to try and shed the stigma associated with its previous moniker, presumably, though I doubt the press complied.
Five presidents held their titles for one or two years, while one (Samuzzo "Samoots" Ammatuna) lasted barely six months before his own murder on November 10, 1925. By then, the organization had renamed itself the Italian-American National Union, as a way to attract Italian-Americans from other regions of their homeland -- and to try and shed the stigma associated with its previous moniker, presumably, though I doubt the press complied.
The Unione restructured as a fraternal life insurance organization in 1937. Over time, the organization that had once been a lazy headline writer's dream in the Roaring Twenties faded into irrelevance, as its membership and influence declined. Its story ended in 1991, after merging with the Italian Sons and Daughters of America Fraternal Association.
None of this is to suggest that Amazon, nor its founder, are involved in this kind of activity. The basic point is that some people always roll the dice, no matter the circumstances. As several Capone biographers have noted, for those willing to pursue them, the emoluments associated with the Unione presidency simply proved too tempting to pass up, even if it meant a one-way ticket to the morgue.
None of this is to suggest that Amazon, nor its founder, are involved in this kind of activity. The basic point is that some people always roll the dice, no matter the circumstances. As several Capone biographers have noted, for those willing to pursue them, the emoluments associated with the Unione presidency simply proved too tempting to pass up, even if it meant a one-way ticket to the morgue.
However, in Amazon's case, the 150% turnover suggests a fundamentally rotten corporate culture that goes beyond basic union busting, or the well-documented conditions at its warehouses. That figure indicates an unwillingness to view workers as anything but mere chess pieces, to push around at will, all in its relentless pursuit of profits.
Now that Amazon's burn-through approach seems to be catching up with them, it's not our responsibility to save them from themselves -- which taking any of their jobs would mean, especially with Bezos so busy turning off the lights at his flagship newspaper. the Washington Post. (Though I suspect that he'll regret the $40 million he's reportedly dumping into Amazon's Melania Trump documentary -- especially after the bloom starts peeling off her husband's political rose.)
Obviously, everyone has their own choices to make about what types of seek out, or take on. The same goes for Amazon's online ordering, which requires a rewrite of Hamlet's famous soliloquy: "To use or not to use -- that is the question." But we should always stay mindful of those issues in dealing with Amazon, or any of its "Frightful Five" brethren (Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft).
For all of these reasons, I'm giving the idea of working for Amazon a miss. And honestly, so should you. Which is also why -- now that it's served its purpose, as fodder for this post -- I'm chucking their latest propaganda straight into the bin. --The Reckoner
Links To Go (Democracy Dies In Bezos):
NPR: How Five Tech Giants
Have Become More Like Governments...:
https://www.npr.org/2017/10/26/560136311/how-5-tech-giants-have-become-more-like-governments-than-companies
https://www.npr.org/2017/10/26/560136311/how-5-tech-giants-have-become-more-like-governments-than-companies
Paul Krugman Substack (Karen Attiah Interview):
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/karen-attiah
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/karen-attiah
Reddit: Is Anyone Concerned About Amazon Employee Turnover Rate?:
https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/1aw20uf/is_anyone_concerned_about_amazon_employee/
Sex Pistols: Here We Go Again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETcXCgS788M
https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/1aw20uf/is_anyone_concerned_about_amazon_employee/
Sex Pistols: Here We Go Again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETcXCgS788M
World Socialist Worker: Amazon Response To Labor Shortage...:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/01/25/amzn-j25.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/01/25/amzn-j25.html
>"Duty Now (?) For The Future"/The Reckoner<
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