What a strange statement. "We support their right to criticize their working conditions, only actually we don't at all"
> You have the right to report if your workplace is unsafe during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Amazon has to create the appearance that they aren't violating federal law
Because that is if you don't agree with company policy or whatever company is doing, you should not work there. They should lose all employees and go bust.
In practice I understand one would like to disagree and things should change to better. But life is not that simple, so if you can afford quitting please do so (if you are wealthy enough even in their face saying what they should do better), if you somehow cannot afford that, for the sake of your close ones really put your head down and work your way through... there is nothing bad I could say about such person, those are just circumstances.
That said - for all those assholes that should say something because they have their comfortable position in a company ... fuck them really bad!
That is why I highly regard Snowden, he had comfortable position, yet he went against all of that. If he would be someone oppressed and making barely living wage that would be just a normal thing that someone would like to fight for a better life ....
Without seeing the actual policy, my guess is that "criticizing" is something employees can do internally within the company. However, you can't post public tweets about it.
In other words, "don't air dirty laundry".
This type of distinction is very common in typical employee policies. Likewise, it's common for a CEO for VP to say to the employees "I have an open door policy so if you see something wrong, tell me." -- but common sense should tell you that the CEO does not mean for the employee to post an "open letter to the CEO" on Twitter or NYTimes for the public read as well.
I know of no well-known company that encourages employees to publicly criticize their workplace.
If anyone is looking a corporate-speak translation here ya go. It's direct signaling to potential dissidents that their employment is not guaranteed if they decide to speak-up, no other way to read this.
Amazon has spent billions trying to replace the human component of its distribution. It would utterly fall apart if warehouse workers stop working. What's wrong with letting them share in the wealth, giving them masks and gloves, and reducing the throughput a little bit so that people don't have to work in close proximity to each other?
This doublespeak bullshit from Amazon is a pretty glaring symptom of a larger problem, perhaps (if I may editorialize) Bezos's resentment that he has to employ warehouse workers at all.
When all of this is said and done, I think Amazon is going to make ungodly sums of money and everyone will hate Jeff Bezos for how he treats the little guys.
Other major tech firms have done the exact same thing when employees have raised concerns.
They make it clear that they won't retaliate against you if you don't do the wrong things, but they won't actually enumerate what those wrong things are. It's like an extended round of the Chairman's Game. [1] [2]
[1] The game forbids its players from explaining the rules, and new players are often informed that "the only rule you may be told is this one". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game)
[2] The game is named in honor of a famous politician who was very well known for coming up with a lot of rules for his subjects to follow, without bothering to explain to them what the rules were.
The funny part is they already are, for non-essential items.
Either way, Im sorry to hear that things went south after complaining and it sounds like it just got bruised egos involved.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt#Political_Theolog...
But in reality they (bad guys) were using line workers who could not really make right or wrong because they were not educated on the front line doing atrocities. Fuck you is about people who are educated enough that they could spot slimy stuff (though they were enough removed from bad stuff to not "spot" the bad stuff) but still stick to their comfortable life.
And they will come down on those people HARD! "Why is your employee complaining to me? Why aren't you doing your job?"
And down the line it comes crashing down. And meteor lands on your face.
They're addressing all of your points, aren't they?
- $2 raise during this time
- masks and temp checking
- prioritizing essential items for fulfillment and delaying non-essential shipments
Reminds me of this news.yc thread, "We may get fired and I don't know what to do" [0], which had a follow-up from the OP with full backstory ~7 years later, "I stood up to my boss, then he got promoted" [1].
Four bad outcomes. All they do is "remove a troublemaker" from their standpoint. Why not just address the issues? They look like they want to bring back the days of company towns and central control. This doesn't make me want to work there, it's a strong dis-incentive for that.
Did the same a while ago, with my CEO. Instantly removed from overseeing the biggest project we have in the works. Also removed from all communications about the project and privileges to view project-related documents revoked.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20227175
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/02/2...
It doesn't really matter what Amazon does (see this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22871216), the woke crowd has already made up their mind about the company and will criticize them regardless. The only thing that is going to satisfy the woke crowd is Amazon's failure.
Their best strategy is to focus on being the most customer centric company so that people like myself and millions upon millions of others keep buying from them.
I worked at another company the woke crowd loved to hate on and no matter how much more actual woke stuff our company did, the woke crowd still promoted the less woke company with the more woke brand because we were Goliath and they were David. We should have stopped wasting our effort to appease the unappeasable and just focused on being customer-centric like Amazon does. The loudest critics aren't trying to build a better world. They are trying to signal to others about how woke they want others to think they are.
This doesn't mean that Amazon and my previous employer shouldn't do good things. They should and do. What it means is that they should do it because those things are the right thing and they should pay no mind to the haters because haters are gonna hate. You can't be Goliath and not get hated on.
Or worse, threatening to make his choices look incompetent.
Not sure treating employees badly makes for a better world. Perhaps more profit at the top makes for a better world for some.
This isn't even about people at the top. When everyone is on the same team and owns equity in that collective endeavor, someone that goes outside to publicly bad mouth the team is hurting everyone on their team. That's some Grade-A anti-social behavior. I'm an IC and far from the top, but I never want to work with such people who use righteous indignation to justify their anti-social actions.
These two people are two nobodies who took it upon themselves to be the arbiters of judgement and instead of checking with their colleagues to see if their views were collectively aligned with the consensus of their colleagues. They should be asking themselves "AITA?". If you are whipping up public outrage that hurts your colleagues without validating if there is consensus among your colleagues, the answer to that question is unequivocal "yes".
“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” ― Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow
You give one line. This draws you in.. 3 then 4 sentences which explains your point and I decide to stop reading. Your third paragraph was bigger than all of the others combined. Your fourth is small followed by a bigger last paragraph.
Beef up 2 that is where you make your key point.
Keep the last line short.
The idea that using logistics technology to enable fast and efficient delivery of household goods is a nice thing to have in our world?
> For those people they would support all policies for the greater company good.
That's just a narrative you are constructing. Obviously it doesn't apply to the whistleblowers in question here or they wouldn't have spoken out in the first place.
https://www.dol.gov/olms/regs/compliance/EO_Posters/Employee...
"These two people are two nobodies who took it upon themselves to be the arbiters of judgement and instead of checking with their colleagues to see if their views were collectively aligned with the consensus of their colleagues."
The article stated a thousand Amazon employees accepted the event invite before it was deleted by management, which goes without saying that they had enough group interest internally to warrant the event... which is within the purview of their already established employee interest group.
Source: Amazon Employees For Climate Justice @AMZNforClimate We're a group of Amazon employees who believe it’s our responsibility to ensure our business models don’t contribute to the climate crisis. Views ≠ Amazon.
https://twitter.com/AMZNforclimate
These employees are only guilty of voicing their dissent publicly and running afoul of corporate PR policy. We are all entitled to voicing our opinions and beliefs and rallying around a cause individuals are passionate about e.g. climate change impact, Google ending military/China contracts, etc. The unfortunate way I've seen this play out is that at-will employment means an employer is free to sever your relationship at any time with them and can do so under the cloak of bad performance, violating company policy, etc. and it will be an uphill battle to prove retaliation in court when they have the best legal team money can buy. Best to be prepared to look for employment elsewhere if you are organizing a group event to expose your employer to negative PR when on their payroll.
I'd love to be proven wrong though.
FWIW: my experience with Brazilian Google-employees is that their lives are shockingly insulated from the rest of the country. home -> car -> guarded parking -> <entertainment> -> home. we admittedly privileged expats got to experience more than them even, at times!
He said, while commenting down-thread with very rational-debate-provoking labels of "Trumpian America" and "Right-wing Brazilians who don't care about the society and the situation in their country".
If you criticize your employer by putting other sectors of the company in a fragile position and still think you should not face any consequence, you have no SITG.
Simply put: no symmetry in the risk you are taking => no weight to your words => I just don't care at what you say.
Likewise, if you just learn about a perceived misdeed from a company and all that you can say is "This does not make me want to work there" but it does not make you say "I will not allow myself the benefit of consume something that was achieved through bad working conditions", you have no SITG. You don't work there already, you are not losing anything -> no weight to your words => I don't care at what you say.
Lastly, the ad hominems have no place on HN.