The eighty-hour workweek at Amazon

Every year corporations in the United States spend hundreds of billions of dollars on advertising.  Understanding this fact, we might also consider that one out of every six people in this country doesn’t have enough food to eat.  This atmosphere has intimidated the editors of the capitalist media from launching criticisms of large corporations.

This past Sunday (8-16-2015) the New York Times published an article that was an exception to this apparent rule.  In a front-page article titled, Amazon’s Bruising, Thrilling, Workplace by Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld, readers viewed some of the horror stories of what it means to work for Amazon.  We might keep in mind that Jeffrey Bezos, the C.E.O. of Amazon, also owns the Washington Post that is a competitor to the New York Times.

The facts of the article

·      Last month Amazon became the most valuable retailer in the country eclipsing Walmart with a market valuation of $250 billion.

·      The C.E.O. Jeffrey Bezos is the fifth most affluent person in the world.

·      The median employee tenure at Amazon is one year.

·      Amazon stated that only 15% of employees work at the company for more than five years. 

·      A woman who was an employee at Amazon suffered from breast cancer.  She was placed on a “performance improvement plan.”  These are code words for, “you’re in danger of being fired.”

·      Unlike other corporations Amazon currently has no women on its leadership team.

·      Molly Jay was a member of the Kindle team and needed to care for her father who suffered from cancer.  The company blocked her from transferring to a less pressure-filled job and a manager told her she was a problem.  She said that, “When you’re not able to give your absolute all, 80 hours a week, they see it as a major weakness.”

·      In an eastern Pennsylvania warehouse, workers toiled under 100-degree heat.  Electronic systems monitored the workers to ensure they were packing enough boxes every hour.  Ambulances waited outside to take workers away after they fell out.  Only after a local newspaper reported on this story did Amazon install air-conditioning at the warehouse.       

·      An Amazon worker thought that she was on vacation only to spend her days at Starbucks using the wireless connection to get work done.

·      Jason Merkoski, who was an Amazon engineer, had this to say about working at the company.  “It’s as if you’ve got the C.E.O. of the company in bed with you at 3 a.m. breathing down your neck.”

·      Bo Olson a former book marketer said that, “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”

The myth and reality of Amazon

Why is Amazon pushing workers to these inhuman levels of productivity?  They argue that their focus is on a relentless striving to please customers.  Their jargon for this is called “customer obsession.”

Personally, I have never known one of the wealthiest people in the world.  I have associated with people who work for a living during my entire life.  These are the same kinds of people Amazon views as customers.  My experience is that working people have completely different priorities from those of Jeffrey Bezos.

We would like to have a lifetime right to both healthcare and education.  We would like to have an adequate amount of time to enjoy our lives.  Because of the advances in technology, the actual production costs of commodities have gone down.  Therefore, it isn’t unreasonable to expect that prices should also go down.

As one of the most affluent people in the world, Jeffrey Bezos is completely indifferent to these facts.  He can buy whatever he wants whenever he wants.  His family can have the very best health care and education that money can buy. 

I used to enjoy spending time in area bookstores.  Electronic readers have made many of those bookstores unprofitable and many have closed.  Although E-readers allow customers to look at a wide variety of books, they aren’t a substitute for the bookstores that have closed.  This is another fact that Amazon is indifferent to.

Why is this happening?

Before and after the Second World War there were continuous strike waves in this country.  These strike waves were the reasons why the standard of living was vastly improved.

However, as we have seen with Amazon, corporations are not in business to improve the standard of living of working people.  In order to satisfy their obsession to cut costs, corporation after corporation moved their factories to nations where wages might be two dollars per day. 

The labor movement needed to counter this exodus by organizing a labor party.  This party could have worked to stop the manufacturing exodus from this country.  This kind of party would have supported both immigrant workers as well as the rights of workers all over the world.  Instead, the labor movement went on a self-destructive campaign to “Buy American.”

How would a workers government utilize advances in technology?

This story begs a basic question that the Amazon Corporation and the New York Times refuse to consider.  Can advances in technology be utilized differently if a workers government had political power?

We can see the possibilities of a workers government by how it might handle the invention of the E-reader.  Clearly everyone doesn’t like these mini-computers and would rather read books made of paper.  However, I’m not the only person who prefers reading with an E-reader.

The increased usage of E-readers means that there is less of a need for printers, transportation workers, or cashiers in bookstores.  Since the number of workers required to produce this commodity has been reduced, a worker’s government could reduce the number of hours of a workweek with no cut in pay.

Amazon has done the complete opposite.  They have responded to reduced production costs by increasing the workweek to eighty hours.  This is in a company where only 15% of the workers last for more than five years.

What are the lessons of this story?

Amazon is not the only company that is making life increasingly difficult for workers.  This story points to the direction all corporations are going in.  Capitalism is a political economic system that needs to collapse.  Sooner or later there is no force on this earth that can prevent this collapse.

This story points to just one more reason why we need a workers government.  Sooner or later masses of workers from all over the world will draw this same conclusion.

The Letter The Inquirer Refused to Publish

For several years I’ve been writing letters to the Philadelphia Inquirer.  I don’t have any illusions that these letters will make any profound changes in the world.  Writing these letters has given me the opportunity of expressing my views, and puts the seeming insanity of the Inquirer editors in context. 

Over the years the editors at the Inquirer have become a bit more conservative and it is more difficult today to get a letter published.  My estimate is that about one out of every 20 letters that I write to the paper will be published.

Force-feeding prisoners

The last letter the Inquirer declined to publish responded to a July 30 article reprinted from the Lost Angeles Times by Batsheva Sobelman.  The article reported on a new law adopted by the Israeli Knesset that allows prison authorities to force-feed inmates who are on a hunger strike.  Clearly, there are many horror stories in the world, but this one caught my eye.

Thinking about the force-feeding of hunger strikers made me think of the 2004 film about the life of Alice Paul who dedicated her life to advancing the cause of woman’s rights.  Hilary Swank had the starring role in this film titled Iron Jawed Angels.

In the year 1917, Alice Paul led a demonstration in front of the White House.  This demonstration ridiculed President Woodrow Wilson’s statement that the United States was a part of the First World War to make the world, “safe for democracy.”  Alice Paul and the other suffragettes made note of the fact that in 1917 women in this country did not have the right to vote.  So, they argued that President Wilson’s statement of making the world safe for democracy was absurd.

The police responded to this demonstration by arresting all of the participants.  Those who were arrested faced horrendous conditions in prison.  Alice Paul led a hunger strike against these conditions.  The authorities responded by inserting a feeding tube into Alice Paul’s throat, and force-feeding her with raw eggs three times per day. 

The film Iron Jawed Angels contained a scene portraying Alice Paul being force-fed.  I never forgot that scene.

The public eventually learned of this force-feeding, and the resulting outrage led to the release of Alice Paul and her supporters.  By 1920 the United States government passed the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution that gave women the right to vote.

The latest Israeli atrocities in a world in the midst of an economic crisis

The year is 2015.  This is 98 years after the force-feeding of Alice Paul.  Yet the Israeli government has had an open debate about whether or not to force-feed Palestinian prisoners who are on a hunger strike.  Indeed that government actually passed a law that told the world how they think it is appropriate to force-feed Palestinian prisoners.

As it turns out, also during the month of July, Israeli civilians burned a home in the village of Duma south of Nablus in the West Bank.  18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsheh died as a result of this arson attack.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a statement critical of the murder of Dawabsheh.  However, just last summer Netanyahu ordered the Israel military to bomb the Palestinian occupied Gaza Strip.  During those bombing raids over 2,000 people lost their lives.  This included over 500 children and much of the Gaza Strip was destroyed.

Tax-payers in this country should be aware of the fact that the U.S. government has responded to these horrendous Israeli actions by continuing to subsidize Israel to the tune of billions of dollars every year.  The question is, Why?

The Middle-East is the region of the world where most of the oil on this planet is located.  No corporation in this country will have even one dime’s worth of profit without a continuous flow of oil.  Israel has become the most loyal of the U.S. allies in this region.  These facts might have something to do with the reasons why the government of this country continues to use enormous resources to subsidize Israel.

The economies of Greece and Puerto Rico are showing the world that we are in the midst of a profound international economic crisis.  When the full force of the storm of this economic crisis is felt by all working people, the masses will demand a change. 

One of the necessary changes will mean that all working people need to be treated with the dignity we deserve.  When I say all working people, I’m talking about Palestinians, Jews, Blacks, Latinos, immigrants, women, men, as well as Native Americans.  As Malcolm X once said, “Either we will all be free, or no one will be free.”  

Force-feeding ordered by the United States government

The day after I wrote this post, I discovered another story that is pertinent to this column.  Force-feeding prisoners is a violation of international law.  However, this has not stopped the United States government from force-feeding its prisoners at its infamous base at Guantanamo, Cuba.

Apparently the United States has other things in common with Israel.  The government in this country stole the land from the original inhabitants.  Many of those original inhabitants now live in Mexico and today the government of this country considers many Mexicans who live here to be illegal immigrants. 

The government has also built a wall to separate the descendants of those original inhabitants from their homeland in the southwest.  This government has also been deporting hundreds or thousands of “illegal immigrants” every day.  Most of those immigrants come from Mexico.

My opinion is that ultimately working people have no reason for borders.  We are all a part of one human family.  This is the same in Palestine as well as the United States. 

     

Jimmy’s Hall

Screenplay by Paul Laverty

Director, Ken Loach

A review

The recent film Jimmy’s Hall was one of the best movies that I have seen.  This is a biography of Jimmy Gralton who was born in Effernagh, Ireland in 1886.  At the time of his birth, all of Ireland was a British colony.  This means that Gralton was born about 35 years after the Irish potato famine, when one million Irish people starved to death.     

The life of Jimmy Gralton

Gralton’s father was an indigent farmer.  His mother was a librarian who encouraged her son to read.  Gralton joined the British armed forces, and refused to serve the army attempting to crush the Indian independence movement.  Instead he joined the movement for an independent Ireland.

In 1909 Gralton got a job on a ship and sailed to the United States.  He settled in this country, succeeded in attaining employment, and gravitated to the worker’s movement.

In 1916 the British crushed the Irish revolution known as the Easter Uprising.  Patrick Pearse and James Connolly were two of the leaders the British executed.

In 1921 Jimmy Gralton returned to Ireland and organized his neighborhood community to build a community center on his family’s land.  The name of this center was The Pearse-Connolly Hall.  The center held dance parties in the evenings.  During the day, there were poetry readings, dance classes, boxing lessons, as well as political discussions.

The Irish government as well as the Catholic Clergy saw this community center as a threat to the status quo.  The pressure on Gralton became so strong that he left Ireland for the United States again in 1922.

Gralton returns to Ireland

By 1932, in the middle of the worldwide depression, Gralton returned to Ireland.  He felt the new Irish government might be a bit more tolerant of his ideas.  Eventually he reactivated his Pearse-Connally Hall. 

During these years, wealthy landlords evicted many Irish families from their homes.  Gralton organized to reverse these evictions.  He also organized farmers to use the land of the affluent landlords for grazing everyone’s cattle.

In one of the most moving scenes of this film, the actor who portrayed Gralton addressed a demonstration of farmers who took back a home that had been confiscated by a landlord.

In this speech Gralton talked about how this demonstration had walked by the manor of a wealthy landlord who had manicured lands for as far as one’s eyes could see.  He talked about the speculation he saw in the United States during the 1920’s that led to the depression of the 1930’s.  He argued that working people are not about throwing people out of their homes, but want to have descent lives where we might enjoy dancing.

On Christmas Eve of 1932 the Pearse-Connolly Hall was burnt to the ground.  Shortly after that event the authorities attempted to deport Gralton.  He was able to hide from the police for several months, but eventually he was arrested and deported to the United States.  Jimmy Gralton was the only Irish citizen who was ever deported from that nation.

Back in the United States Gralton helped organize the Transport Workers Union.  He died in 1945 and never was able to return to Ireland.

In a sense this film resembles the film Footloose that stared Kevin Bacon.  This was the story of a confrontation between a rebellious youth and a religious cleric.  The disagreement was about whether or not the people of a small town would be allowed to dance. 

Clearly this film didn’t attempt to have the revolutionary implications of the film Jimmy’s Hall.  However, the idea that working people should have the right to enjoy themselves, as well as to have an unfiltered education does have revolutionary implications.

For anyone who is interested in the kind of struggles it will take to liberate humanity, Jimmy’s Hall is well worth seeing.