Damb it! I’m going blog about this! Even if its a year old. Amazon, one of the world’s most popular websites doesn’t treat its workers very well, In fact they treat them appallingly!

– Warned that the company refuses to allow sick leave, even if the worker has a legitimate doctor’s note. Taking a day off sick, even with a note, results in a penalty point. A worker with six points faces dismissal.

– Made to work a compulsory 10½hour overnight shift at the end of a five-day week. The overnight shift, which runs from Saturday evening to 5am on Sunday, means they have to work every day of the week.

The working conditions in the UK branches sounded like I had slipped back in time to Victorian England.

It makes me sad.

Here is an update about Amazon in America from November 2009 by the Huffington Post

More from December 2009:

“The Secret Lives of Amazon’s Elves”

It wasn’t exactly what Cherie had envisioned. “When we told people were going to do this, someone said ‘Whenever I click the order button on Amazon, I always imagine a chorus of happy, singing Oompa-Loompas riding around on Segways and shipping my stuff.’ Well…no. It’s not exactly like that.”

When we go shopping there seems to be this mental dissonance going on. No one thinks about the where, the what, or the how, of whatever they are buying, just consuming it.

I’ll leave you with this quote:

“Just getting to experience that type of work, to literally see consumer culture flow beneath your fingertips, was absolutely fascinating. You feel the pulse of the market.”

Tags: Amazon, Amazon workers, business, online retailing, online shopping, retailing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.