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‘They Treat Us Worse Than Animals’: Working Without Water at Amazon
(tribunemag.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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This is normal in the United States and has been for a long time. When i was a homeless LGBT teenager trying to survive, i went to a temp agency trying to make a living some other way than SW. They sent me to this warehouse where a bunch of felons and ESL people were working in some of the most inhumane conditions i had ever seen before. 12 hour days in a 110 degree warehouse working with toxic industrial chemicals that we had no information on, with a bare minimum of PPE, intense physical labor moving large stacks of equipment, and one break at the 6 hour mark to drink water. Most of the people there had been there a while. They just had this quiet resignation and determination to survive.
I didn't even last a single day. I started to feel heat stroke coming on around the 8 hour mark. Shivering, no more sweat, everything started to feel distant and confusing. I tried to go get water and they wouldn't let me, so i threw all my equipment on the ground and stumbled outside to find water, and never went back. I'm white, trans, and feminine enough to survive other ways, but most of those people didn't have any other options.
Fuck this monstrous place. I've been radicalized ever since seeing things like that.
one of the most fucked things about america is that it seems like whenever you have a shitty work environment, it's actually fine because
a) it builds character. complaining is weakness.
b) the company has to make a profit
like zero cognizance of human rights or quality of life. just, it is what it is, deal with it or you're a sNoWFlAkE.
from grade school to now peers have looked at me weird for simply complaining when something is shitty, which i've never understood. like oh we can't use headphones while we work 8 hrs washing dishes? you just take that? ok i'm going to stare at a wall because a guy said so? wtf?
That's the thing that has always driven me crazy about our way of speaking about these things. Politicians say "we created x jobs" like it's something to optimize for. People fear automation because it takes away their livelihoods. But, automating work and eliminating jobs should make people's lives... better? Why doesn't it actually? Where did the wires get crossed?
Why did we incentivize making humans suffer, at a grand societal level? Are we insane?
Sure, but not yours or mine, it seems.
That's why I'm fully pro-automation. Automation makes everyone's lives easier, it removes the burdens from the backs of people. For every job that someone doesn't have to toil at we have the chance for them to find something they actually enjoy and excel at it, maybe even push the boundaries in some way.
People think they fear automation, but that's not the enemy. The enemy is the politicians who are so far behind the times, and in many cases corrupt to the point they're actively working against the people they were elected to serve, that our system simply will not adapt to these boons we've developed. There's just no reason we can't feed every mouth in America if the will was there in the people pulling the strings, but that doesn't line their pockets personally and the people in positions of power don't give a rat's ass about you or your family.
Honestly it feels like all the pieces are there to build something wonderful, but it wont happen unless we're willing to knock down the shitty "it's what we've got" house of cards narrative.
It might be somewhat normal in the US, but it's frightening to see in the UK, a country that supposedly actually has employee rights.
There are, but apparently Amazon chose to ignore them because they see their employees as subhuman.
Hopefully this particular warehouse gets its arse handed to it but I very much doubt it will unfortunately.
Is this supposed to imply prostitution?
Not implying, just saying it. What do you think SW means?
That makes sense. I didn't attempt to decipher what sw meant because it didn't seem relevant to the story.
I think it's supposed to imply none of your business...
Honestly I call bullshit that they would not let you drink water. Or maybe more correct, some individual for maybe unfair reasons, took a dislike to you and made your situation so unbearable you would quit.
You in 1911: "I call bullshit that a factory would lock it's fire exits, the workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory are to blame!"
You in 1919: "I call bullshit that a distillery would not employ engineers to maintain its molasses storage at a reasonable temperature, the Boston Purity Distilling Company did nothing wrong!"
You in 1936: "Theres no way the people who oversaw the building of the Hoover Dam would let their workers just suffocate to death underground due to lack of ventilation! They probably just forgot to breathe!"
You in 1991: "I call bullshit that a factory would lock it's fire exits, the workers at the Imperial Foods Chicken Factory workers are to blame!"
You in 2005: "It is impossible that BP would simply ignore safety procedures and not repair broken safety equipment at their gas plant in Texas, those people probably set themselves on fire!"
You in 2021: "There is no chance in hell that the Foundation Food Group of GA USA would not train employees, get permits, provide PPE, or install safety devices when working with liquid nitrogen, those workers probably were probably enjoying autoerotic asphyxiation on company time!"
You found 6 instances in the last 120 years and maybe 3 in your lifetime. While I would love there to be zero workplace fatalities, do you honestly think that will ever be possible? People will take shortcuts and sometimes they will simply make a mistake.
I actually just picked ones in America, post 1900, with more than 10 fatalities, that weren't mining disasters. There are over 5000 workplace Fatalities a year in the US alone - a rate of 14/day.
The point has not missed me. You implied it's unlikely that an employer would abuse their employees, I provided a host of counterexamples.
300 million people in the US and that few fatalities? 14 a day is high or unexpected? There are over 100 fatalities a day in vehicle accidents alone. That is not including accidents at home or from other misadventure. By your stat which is fairly correct, you are closer to ten times more likely to die outside of work then a work place accident.
People make mistakes. At home and at work. I can think of a handful of accidents in my area and everyone if then we're the result of an employee ignoring a safety rule. The majority of work place accidents I personal have knowledge of were the result of some employee ignoring a safety rule. The larger the company, the more safety was enforced.
you mis-understand. My point isn't that people don't die, it's that your point was that you don't believe employer negligence kills (or even, in your actual op, inconveniences) people.
No business that wants to stay in business won't let employees drink water for 6 hours while working them hard. And yes someone could carry out an illegal act and I am sure it has occurred but unless you had a gun to your head, who doesn't just get a drink of water.
"no business that wants to stay in business locks it's fire exits"
and yet...
I'm not saying every business does this, just I think it's short-sighted off you to say that not a single one would either.
I mean we all know our candy bars, and sneakers and engagement rings are made by tiny children at gunpoint for 25 cents a week, so it boggles the mind that you think the same companies that would commit corporate genocide would think twice about preventing domestic employees from being comfortable.
That is not people working in Western nations. This post was regarding a person working here making big claims this was a common thing. I can bs on that.
all my examples previously were USA.
Give me the source where a US company hired kids at 25c an hour and worked them under gunpoint.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print
Again you provided a source for countries that have employees child labor of which the US is not on there or no Western nations.
Is there a reason you would give sources that have nothing to do with what has been claimed here?
you're saying no American companies use cotton or lithium ion batteries?
A person said a place he worked at would not let them drink water for 6 hours and I called bullshit. Then you try and claim it must be true because shit happens in other countries. Tell me what American company is forcing kids or anyone to work at gunpoint so that you can't even get a glass of water?
you've conflated several of my points that were in reply to your specific questions. I think you should go back and read what you asked me for.
Because I shouldn't have to go back to the initial post and reiterate it in every responce because you go on a tangent and start posting unasked and unrelated information.
I only responded to what you asked. I was assuming you had a point at the end of it all.
I still maintain its not that silly that one person once worked in a place where they had draconian rules about what you could do while working.
Clearly you have never suffered real difficulty or studied any history in your life if you can't imagine workers being treated inhumanly. It is the norm without oversight, laws and reguations. You must live in a protected bubble.
Sure have. Worked some shit jobs. Moved on. What do you know of my life?
You have no idea what you're talking about. It's easy to say "things could never possibly be that bad" when you haven't experienced it. I hope you never do. I'm guessing you're a white man between 20-40, and while life hasn't always been easy, the social contract has mostly held for you.
I worked jobs from pounding in by hand railway secondary lines to installing solar panels. If I couldn't get along on the crew, I left. I seen many people get more or less ran off a crew but coworkers because they were being shits. That is the reality of working with people and getting along with those you work for.
This applies to Western countries. Three is definately a greater level of desperation in developing nations where there is far less functional businesses to create jobs. Then yes you can be treated pretty bad.