> You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.
Meanwhile, The Intercept has mountains of evidence that Amazon itself knows that its workers pee in bottles[2].
It's so blatant that I thought the account was a parody, but it's real.
[1] https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1374911222361956359
[2] https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-bottl...
100% sure that wouldn't have happened if that tweet from @amazonnews didn't piss off some Amazon employee. They're really not doing themselves any favours by letting whoever posted those tweets to tweet from their official account.
Sanders is 1% of half of Congress. Not dictator of Vermont.
They lied about what Warren said.
A gentle reminder to everyone on HN, Not everyone lives in US, and even if they do not everyone is well versed in everything going on in US.
"I'll fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets."
If she brings an anti-trust suit against them, it will be so easy for Amazon's lawyers to argue that she is only doing so to violate their first amendment rights, which she full out admitted to today.
The tweets from their account caused significant negative press for Amazon on news and social media across the world.
Amazon is a global company, this kind of disdain for employees isn't looked upon as favourably in other countries. It's bad for business.
Especially from an official PR channel.
Amazon does not want its employees to piss into bottles. But sometimes employees (predominantly male I hope) do piss into bottles, because they did not plan correctly, or just had to go while on the road. If caught, these employees (and their managers) are then reprimanded. If they get a chance to defend themselves, of course they claim it was due to the deadline, not poor planning or bladder control or uncommon hygiene ethics.
Amazon factually states: Hey, if we required our employees to pee into bottles to meet deadlines, do you seriously think people would work for us, and not 100s of other low-paid jobs which don't have that medieval requirement?
Politicians: Hey, this you?! I have lots of pictures of bottles with piss! Where is your snotty reply now? You say that your employees do not have to piss into bottles, so how come I have those pictures?! Huh?!
It is embarrassing to both sides. Especially for official government employees (who also don't have to pee into bottles to meet deadlines, but I am sure you can turn up at least some pictures: if not, find any traces of cocaine use in the Capitol, then posit that the US congress have their senators use cocaine in the toilet to meet deadlines. Or, you know, bi-partisan plan to have low-skilled employees share in the American dream made possible by Amazon, but I guess that does not fit inside a tweet).
No, but solid rhetorics. This is the part you give proof of the fact that Amazon have their workers pee in bottles to meet deadlines. Not point to something else entirely that goes far beyond the things you pose as facts, which are not. Don't look at that! Look at this documentary that goes far far beyond it. Well played! And solid one for PBS for exposing the worker abuse that Amazon is now in court for! We need the free press to save worker laws.
I would agree that is a terrible problem. Perhaps Amazon should focus more attention on catching such employees early and letting them go (or offering them potty training with quarterly evaluations)? But then where does the average go? Deadlines get even tighter! Or you could make your wage relative to your worker speed: the fastest people earn the most. Only if you think you still earn enough for shitty work will you then be forced to keep doing that job. Or should Amazon be more kind to these employees who can't seem to manage their personal hygiene or fall way below average worker speeds? Treat and pay them the same as the 99% employees who don't shit and deliver? That would lead to an equal outcome for sure.
A US Senator threatening to retaliate and break-up a business because she didn't like tweets about her is straight-up authoritarian thuggery.
It's the same shit Trump used to do but when Liz does it...well it's GREAT, she's "fighting for the working class"
And it's okay for their official PR twitter account to lie and say it doesn't happen?
But it's not okay that a politician says they're going to do something about it?
If Amazon is breaking employment law or anti-monopoly law or anything else it can be fined or broken up. What it should not be is silenced.
I've quote the tweets below.
Warren has been campaigning to break up large tech companies.
What is so unprofessional about that? Clearly if she was to try and get them fined or broken up it would be through these laws.
She isn't silencing them. She's saying that there'll be consequences.
And Amazon's PR isn't a small company. They can take the heat.
I don't agree with you. A company that forces employees to piss in bottles and lies about it should have their lies face consequences.
Warren isn't removing their tweets. How are they being silenced?
Here is the quotes:
``` After she posted the video on Twitter, saying that companies like Amazon "pay close to nothing in taxes," the tech giant quickly fired back.
"You make the tax laws @SenWarren; we just follow them," it tweeted from its official news account.
"If you don't like the laws you've created, by all means, change them," it added.
Amazon said that it had paid "billions of dollars" in corporate taxes over the past few years alone.
Warren hit back, saying: "I didn't write the loopholes you exploit, @amazon – your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did.
"But you bet I'll fight to make you pay your fair share," she added. "And fight your union-busting. And fight to break up Big Tech so you're not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets." ```
Anyone should be able to heckle senators on twittwr! From Mark Zuckerberg to the homeless man in the nearby park!
If Amazon started running adverts about a giant space monkey that wanted to eat the moon, what would happen?
Care to explain it? Because it seems like the point of view advocated is "Politicans should not express views I don't like on social media"
Instead, she is going after amazon as a personal vendetta because she feels 'heckled'. She is explicitly attacking first amendment rights. It's a textbook case of corruption / abuse of power.
Like breaking up big tech companies is pretty much the only thing you hear about her in passing.
A personal vendetta against their twitter account just didn't start now.
Also this is corruption / abuse of power to you? You might want to get a new textbook.
It’s the “so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets” part that’s bad. Regardless of how you feel about her campaign to break up big tech, this is an appalling thing for a government official to say. I hate Twitter and Twitter culture as much as anyone, but “you shouldn’t be powerful enough to be snotty to a senator” is dystopian in my book.
US Senators should not be threatening retaliation against a company because of tweets that piss them off.
Why is this only bad when Trump or a Republican does it?
I presume the people that voted for Warren are on her side in this argument so she's being an advocate for their views.
Just because you think Amazon's employees being forced to piss in bottles isn't bad to you doesn't mean that others sees it as an injustice that makes people angry.
>Why is this only bad when Trump or a Republican does it?
Maybe treat each event on a case by case basis rather than a blanket rule?
This far predates a spat with an Amazon twitter handle
That's a huge difference.
But in all seriousness, it would be optimal for a society that values liberty and freedom to move away from platforms to standards. No need to breakup FANGS if NIST or something similar defines qualitative API standards for social networks, or more broadly societal network services. And this will also be a huge boon for the startup space and true non-predatory innovation in the virtual services space.
I thought I liked her policies but this sounds authoritarian. I'd prefer politicians stay tf off twotter unless they got the stomach for it. They're speaking about "authenticity" and the problem of people hiding behind handles whenever given the chance. But they are themselves only interested in "engineering consent" for those who bankrolled their move into office. The consensus should be that they have to be able to put up with a very wide variety of opinions (and most certainly the "snooty" kind).
they are scared. they are really scared.
it's like amazon entire business model is based on exploitation of labor.
Wait till you find out how the electronics and clothes in your house are made and how the materials they're made from are sourced or what the workforce that picks the fruit and vegetables you see in the supermarket, endures.
It is rarely (never?) discussed in the west how all the consumer goods are cheap simply because the supply chain relies on poor exploitable people and exploiting the environment.
All we hear about is the positive spin, how capitalism and globalization have blessed us with cheap goods and how those poor farmers halfway around the world now have paying jobs, woo-hoo!
I don't know, I see it talked about all the time, but nobody seems to be able to do anything about it.
Nobody seems to want to do something about it. It's easy, vote with your wallet. But since the choice is either A) help humanity by stop buying cheap consumer electronics or B) don't get any cheap consumer electronics to make your day 0.5% better, it seems we're stuck in exploiting humanity.
The parts of our society that profit off cheap offshore labor are quick to spin stories accusing people of being nationalist/protectionist/racist, but their profit margin is being defended in the process and the issues distracted from.
At the same time, if I lived in a largely agrarian society and factory work offered me the choice to get out of poor farm labor work, I’d jump at it the same way my ancestors did. I feel most of us can appreciate the value and prosperity that the global supply chain has brought, while simultaneously lamenting the destruction of domestic industry and the exploitation that has accompanied it.
We don’t have to be all-for or all-against, though I think when “free trade” agreements come up, they should be regarded very suspiciously, and when accusations fly about nationalism and protectionism, those should be seen as the cheap and distracting rhetorical devices they are.
There is no ethical consumption under captialism. Blah blah blah.
I also can’t relate to your “all we hear about” point at all. I feel like I really have to go out of my way to find any discussion about anything good in the world, the vast majority of what I hear is negative takes like yours about how everything is horrible and everyone is oppressed.
If you adjust your definition of poverty to local inflation, you also barely see any difference anymore.
I have also heard some compelling arguments that a similar transformation is likely on the way in sub-Saharan African over the next few decades.
Also these are real dollars, they are adjusted for inflation.
As for Chinese people, it is amazing that they came out of poverty. But clearly it's not thanks to free market capitalism.
The poverty line is also arbitrarily low, with many countless people over the poverty line who are dying of hunger. A more realistic poverty line would probably be several times bigger than the current value, which would fuether skew the numbers.
Not to mention, as others have pointed out, the vast majority of people taken out of poverty were taken out by dictatorial China's social programs, not capitalism.