Ia Amazon the new scrooge? Am only asking after having read the shocking news this week that wage slaves at the mail order monopolist's distribution centre, workers in Fife, were seen camping in woods near to the gigantic warehouse who according to the Unite Trade Union were forced to camp there because of distances they had to travel to work and in order to save money on commuting.
Such a tragic image. After picking and packing useless consumer items, walking up and down the aisles ,slaving for hours at end of day have to face conditions like this." The safety and wellbeng of our permaneny and temporary associates is our number one prority," Amazon said,
The Fife warehouse workers allegedly have to pay £10 per day to take company-arranged buses to work, and receive hourly pay of £7.35 ($9.33), according to an Amazon spokesperson quoted by the Courier, with overtime of £11 ($13.95) an hour. In an eight-hour shift without overtime, that means 17% of their daily wages go to transportation.
Workers are also given only one break of 15 minutes and another of 20 minutes per eight-hour shift and told they had to notify staff when going to the toilet. Amazon said workers wanted the shorter breaks in exchange for shorter shift.Workers have two lunch options though: Bring your own, or buy a meal from one of dozens of vending machines stocked with mediocre microwavable meals like burgers and hot dogs. And good luck heating up the food. The warehouses are hot stuffy places,where it is also claimed that staff are made to wear digital terminals on their arms which track their movements and there are no regular breaks combined with the low wages. This follows previous warnings by the GMB Union that Staff at Amazon’s UK operation have developed physical and mental illnesses because of the “regimes” they work under, treating their employees like automatons in a pure thirst for profit driven basis.
Employees are braving sub-zero temperatures to save money on travel costs so they can continue working for the company, which does not pay staff a living wage.
Workers sleeping in woods near the warehouse
Have the lessons of a more Dickensian world not been learned. As amazon like to go on about its fairness, many of us increasingly recognise it as one of the biggest slave drivers of our time .
But in using their services, it makes us all complicit, and in the end only have ourselves to blame. We have helped it amass its enormous power, and havesimply sat by as it destroys bookshops, our language, in a morality-free zone.Because of the sake of so called convenience, all who use its services , support and help too with their continuing dubious moral practices.
The prices on Amazon’s website may seem amazingly cheap, but these savings come primarily from publishers, who are squeezed for every penny, as Amazon forces them to supply them at rates so low that it leaves authors and publishers out of pocket – particularly damaging smaller publishing houses. Amazon a long running tax avoider's dominance of the market means that publishers have little choice but to comply with their demands.
Amazon are a company on a mission: to completely dominate the online shopping marketplace. Not content with selling books, DVDs, music, DIY tools, electronic equipment and clothes, Amazon have also recently started selling groceries in bulk. But that’s not all - Amazon has also taken on online payment companies such as PayPal with its ‘Amazon Payments’ service, further extending its attempt to control all aspects of online retail. Monopolies are always a dangerous thing – the more power they have, the more they will use it get their own way at the expense of workers rights. To continue its ruthless intention to undercut as much as possible, in order to protect its monopoly, as best as possible..
Can this new scrooge, ever be stopped in its tracks?
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