Why Amazons can't unionize 🏹
#02
👷♀️ Taylorism 3.0
Amazon is big. So big that it accounts “for almost one out of every two dollars spent online” in the United States. But big doesn’t necessarily mean it is great for its employees.
Remember when Amazon fired employees who criticized warehouse conditions in April? Or that patent for a wristband that can track workers’ movements?
Well, despite the headlines, this didn’t mollify the retail giant’s efforts to increase its control over its workers’ behavior.
According to an Open Markets report, it “has adopted worker surveillance technologies in nearly every aspect of its operations, creating exceptionally oppressive conditions for its workers.” The report cites “an extensive network of security cameras that tracks and monitors a worker’s every move” allegedly to prevent theft and “item scanners [to] count the number of seconds between each task assigned to the worker.” The “software in the scanners reprimands the employees who spend too much ‘time off task’ (TOT)—including issuing warnings and even terminating the employee.”
A sign that this is more a feature than a bug? Vice recently spotted two Amazon job listings “for analysts that can keep an eye on sensitive and confidential topics ‘including labor organizing threats against the company.’”
Amazon isn’t the only employer keen on monitoring its employees, though. Indeed, “between 2015 and 2018, 50% of 239 companies surveyed used some form of employee surveillance, according to a 2019 survey by Gartner. This number was expected to increase to 80% in 2020. Corporate practices have gotten so invasive that one of America’s leading security experts, Bruce Schneier, stated that employers are ‘the most dangerous power that has us under surveillance.’”
🕵️♂️ Customer-y surveillance
Did all that talk about Amazon employees leave you “meh” and wondering as to how it might concern you? Worry not, we’ve got you covered.
Even though Amazon eventually flip-flopped from selling its facial-recognition technology for a year to law enforcement - as did Microsoft - amid worries of false positives and racial bias, its willingness to provide surveillance tools to the police remain strong. “Ring, the home security company Amazon bought in 2018, has been criticized by more than 30 civil rights organizations for arranging secretive deals with hundreds of police departments across the country.” While this is worrying for the privacy of everyday citizens, it can also backlash and help criminals escape law enforcement.
Alexa is a very good listener. Too good a listener if you value your privacy.
Still not convinced? Well, Amazon just launched Halo - an activity tracker coupled with a subscription service - if you want to give it a try.
Once again, while Amazon is one of the major actors of surveillance capitalism, it is not the only one. (Google being the pioneer according to Soshana Zuboff.)
🤓 No sh*t Sherlock
Surveillance Capitalism: According to Soshana Zuboff - author of the Age of Surveillance Capitalism - “surveillance capitalism unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data”. These data are then “fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon or later. Finally, these predictions products are traded in a new kind of marketplace […].” According to the Wikipedia - and somehow more concise - version it “refers to an economic system centered around the commodification of personal data with the core purpose of profit-making.” If you’ve already read the book, dive deeper, here.
Taylorism: “A factory management system developed in the late 19th century to increase efficiency by evaluating every step in a manufacturing process and breaking down production into specialized repetitive tasks.”
Hawthorne Effect: “The stimulation to output or accomplishment that results from the mere fact of being under observation.”
📢 The rest is familiar noise
From Russia with Love: “Facebook and Twitter said Tuesday that they had removed accounts linked to Russian state actors who tried to spread false stories about racial justice, the Democratic presidential campaign of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and President Trump's policies.”
Blurred lines: Biden campaign launches official yard signs available in Animal Crossings: New Horizons. And we thought people played Animal Crossings to relax…
