Why Amazon has no place being on the Forbes Best Employer 2020 list.
Forbes conducted a worldwide survey asking 160,000 employees in the operations departments of companies worldwide to anonymously rate their willingness to recommend their employer to family and friends. I was very surprised to find Amazon appeared in the number two spot on that list. That means that the 160,000 surveyed employees forgot how Amazon treats its fulfillment center employees and gig drivers who deliver their packages. How is it that employees in the offices often forget about the plight of the real working class? Let’s investigate.
The methodology of the questionnaire was based on the following:
Surveys were conducted on a rolling basis from June to July, and participants were asked to rate their willingness to recommend their own employers to friends and family. They were also asked to rate their satisfaction with their employers’ Covid-19 responses, and score their employers on its image, economic footprint, talent development, gender equality, and social responsibility. The final list is composed of 750 multinational and large corporations headquartered in 45 countries.
A few categories jump out at me, such as image and social responsibility. Googling Amazon’s working conditions gives you a clear track record of how employees are treated at the company. These conditions have been covered at great length by every credible news source. To sum up and remind the reader, these conditions range from:
- No time for bathroom breaks
- No time to eat due to the time limit and the facilities being too large
- Impossible order picking requirements
- Far higher accident rates than the industry average
- Placing fulfillment centers in states with a weak union and weak worker rights
- Replacing entire workforces when they protest against their awful working conditions
Please remember that organizations who look into employee working conditions have blacklisted Amazon as an employer, which is hard to achieve. People ought to spend more time reading some of the first-person accounts of ex-Amazon employees. The most memorable account is about a man who quit after just a few days, stating that he would rather go back to prison than work another day at the fulfillment center. These accounts remind me that the United States hasn’t come very far in terms of worker rights since the industrial revolution in the 1800s. It is just packaged in a more modern way. No person should prefer prison over their job. There is an incredible disconnect between these accounts and Amazon also ending up on the 2nd spot on this Forbes list.
The crux of the issue is a lack of compassion from the corporate employees that were surveyed. Something which I am seeing more and more is a lack of understanding for the employees who are actually on the ground doing production type work. These are still Amazon employees, but they are not being considered nor are they taken seriously. It is almost as if they fail to even be seen when an office employee thinks about Amazon’s image. The company treats its fulfillment center employees like pawns who need to meet unrealistic requirements driven solely by data.
This type of response is very individualistic, which isn’t surprising when you consider it is an American company. Often people don’t worry about those who are not similar to them. Looking at just education levels in the United States, just 48.02 percent of adults over the age of 25 attained either a Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree. I want to be clear here. I am talking about traditional educational degrees to make this point. There are many ways to become educated in 2020 but it is important to mention because it points to the problem of a growing divide within the middle class based on educational levels. The less educated are easily preyed upon by the lack of American labor laws, and therefore have fewer options regarding work and are far more vulnerable in an economic downturn or during a crisis.
If you think about the makeup of the company, the largest percentage of employees are the working class production employees doing production type work. This vast majority is being completely skipped over when office employees are asked to rate their employer. It is not just this specific Amazon issue that is showing that often more educated corporate employees are lacking compassion for the actual working class. Their field of vision, the people whom they worry about are strictly those who are similar. Those who went to a university and had a certain upbringing. In general, people have a harder time considering the greater good or the rest of a population, which is very apparent in this case. It is incorrect for people to consider their employer and not judge that employer based on how it treats employees at all levels of the organization. We are seeing this unfortunate result of late-stage capitalism that preys on the vulnerable without that group having any sort of protection. These protections are of course seen as too socialist, but are the norm in most European countries by now.
Social responsibility also means providing fair labor practices. Any organization that wants to truly be a good employer is good for all employees at every level of the organization. Everyone should be taken care of, regardless of where they sit in the hierarchy. Not being as educated or not being in the office corporate environment should not mean that you struggle to make ends meet, or don’t have health care benefits, or have to put up with grueling, unrealistic expectations to meet targets created by some data team who has not considered the human factor. This is a time where we are seeing the true colors of many organizations, especially now that they have been forced to take extra measures to combat COVID-19.
Looking at the response from Amazon since the virus broke out in March, we can see that Amazon did not do enough initially and only bolstered their efforts when it became apparent they needed to step up. In the early stages of the breakout in March, Amazon was slow to respond with important health and safety measures. These should of course be taken with a grain of salt as it’s likely most businesses had similar issues. However, how the company responded and how employees responded tells us a lot. In an interview with CNBC, a dozen employees reported being afraid to show up to work, citing health concerns due to overcrowding.
In September, NBC reported that there have been 10 deaths at Amazon due to COVID. For comparison, both JD.com and Alibaba reported zero deaths around that same time. In both Staten Island and Michigan, employees staged walkouts and protests over the lack of protection offered to them. They criticized the company for not closing down the site when employees began testing positive. Amazon responded in a very hard manner, firing the employees they believe led the protests. Again it seems that measures taken favored those working from the comforts of their own home before truly helping the workers on the front lines making sure packages get delivered in fulfillment centers.
Over the year, there are countless articles and of more of them more recently in response to COVID about the company and it does not paint them in a particularly positive light. Regardless of the fact that the company has received a lot of media coverage, it did nothing to sway the opinions of office employees. They seem to exist and operate in their own ecosystem and I can imagine life is pretty good within just that small ecosystem. There will be some people who will see the list and be surprised to find Amazon on the 2nd spot. Their immediate response could be something along the lines of, “Wow, Amazon really got their act together”. Both cases are a big problem because it means that most readers will just go on with their day and nothing will change. But more importantly, it will mean that Amazon’s leadership has no incentive to change the status quo. Jeff Bezos, the man who created a fundraiser for Amazon drivers while simultaneously earning billions of dollars from the pandemic. The people who really lose in this situation are the majority of employers who work in the fulfillment centers.
Change is powerful if it comes from within and the more educated and privileged office employees should take a moment to look beyond their acquaintance group in the office and consider that fulfillment center employees are still equal to them. In this case, I would urge these office employees to take a page out of the book of the Spotify employees when they protested internally about Joe Rogan and censorship at Spotify. Except of course this time it would actually be a cause worth fighting for. In addition, change also needs to come from policymakers. Corporations have been left unchallenged for far too long. Amazon is just one out of many exploiting labor laws to maximize profits. They certainly don’t deserve to be on any sort of list with a positive message.
I’d love to hear what others think about this. Leave a comment and don’t forget to clap if you liked the content.
Thanks,
Niels
