(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
On Prime Day, Groups Demand Federal Ban on Amazon's 'Punitive' Worker Surveillance [1]
['Jake Johnson', 'Jake Johnson Is A Senior Editor', 'Staff Writer For Common Dreams.']
Date: 2021-06-21
A coalition of worker advocacy and racial justice organizations marked the start of Prime Day on Monday with an open letter demanding that state and federal lawmakers take action to end Amazon's systems of employee surveillance, which critics say are at the heart of the company's devastating injury crisis.
"Amazon knows their system physically harms workers and ruins lives, but refuses to roll back the system that injures workers at such a despicable rate: workplace surveillance."
--Evan Greer, Fight for the Future
"Amazon's business model is a calculated exploitation of workers, the majority of whom are Black and brown," reads the letter, which was signed by the Athena Coalition, Fight for the Future, and 33 other groups.
"Amazon's punishing system monitors workers' speed or rate, tracks their movements each second with a metric called time off task, and imposes a constant threat of termination," the letter continues. "Amazon claims to simply monitor workflow--but in reality, rate and time off task is used to control physical movements and discipline workers, dictate when or if they can use the bathroom, and has been used to retaliate against worker organizing."
According to a report released earlier this month by the Strategic Organizing Center, Amazon workers sustained more than 24,000 serious injuries last year, an injury rate far higher than at Walmart and other major U.S. employers.
As the anti-surveillance coalition emphasized in its letter, Prime Day tends to heighten warehouse injury risks as workers face intense pressure to accommodate the influx of orders associated with Amazon's largest shopping event of the year. Internal Amazon data obtained by Reveal News last year showed that "injury rates have spiked during the weeks of Prime Day and Cyber Monday, contrary to Amazon's public claims."
"Those two weeks had the highest rate of serious injuries for all of 2019," Reveal reported.
As Fight for the Future director Evan Greer put it in a statement, "Amazon's workplace surveillance system is brutal every day, and even worse on Prime Day."
"Workers' bodies are being injured, in some cases permanently, just so boxes can be delivered the same day. It's absurd," Greer added. "Amazon knows their system physically harms workers and ruins lives, but refuses to roll back the system that injures workers at such a despicable rate: workplace surveillance... Congress needs to take immediate action to rein in one of our country's largest and most abusive employers by passing legislation to end workplace surveillance."
In their letter on Monday, the 35 groups called on lawmakers and regulators at the state and federal levels to take several specific steps, including:
End rate and time off task tracking: State and federal electeds should enact laws that ban surveillance-driven discipline and control to ensure that workers are protected from abusive conditions.
State and federal electeds should enact laws that ban surveillance-driven discipline and control to ensure that workers are protected from abusive conditions. Update OSHA standards and enforcement to end rate and time off task: As evidence mounts that Amazon's model creates an unsafe workplace, state and federal OSHA programs should enforce existing standards and create new rules that address practices like rate and time off task that monitor workers and increase the pace of work.
As evidence mounts that Amazon's model creates an unsafe workplace, state and federal OSHA programs should enforce existing standards and create new rules that address practices like rate and time off task that monitor workers and increase the pace of work. Investigate Amazon's abuses: Agencies tasked with safeguarding workers should investigate Amazon for these widespread and long-standing abuses, including: injuries, retaliation, and discrimination.
"Amazon will soon be the largest private employer in the United States, and if lawmakers and regulators fail to take action, its dangerous and extractive model will become the standard in warehousing, logistics, and retail," the letter warns. "As other retailers implement similarly exploitative strategies, this dangerous trend will further degrade working conditions for tens of millions of people across the country."
Read the full letter:
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/06/21/prime-day-groups-demand-federal-ban-amazons-punitive-worker-surveillance
Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/
