Recruitment programs for ex-military personnel, in the US private guards
and police used as vigilantes, in Europe an anxiety-inducing pressure onemployees. "Our work is shrouded in secrecy: it feels like being in the
barracks". This is the philosophy with which Amazon manages work in its
hubs. ---- A gigantic laboratory in which to experiment on a million and
a half employees, in constant turnover, the application of the most
innovative technologies to traditional methods of work organization.
"Digital Taylor-Fordism", is how Bruno Cattero and Marta D'Onofrio
defined work at Amazon a few years ago on Rassegna Sindacale: division
of labor and assembly line enhanced by the intensive use of AI, Big Data
and algorithmic management to obtain from workers the slavish repetition
of standard procedures, high pace, rigid observance of the rules.
In the United States, a group of researchers from Michigan State
University discovered that in some southern US towns, where the
residents are mostly Amazon employees belonging to the black and Latino
minorities, the company pays private agents and off-duty police officers
(but in uniform and with service cars) to monitor them, guard warehouse
entrances and parking lots and even settle labor disputes. "We are
talking about the militarization of the employment relationship,"
explains Maite Tapia, a professor of Comparative Employment Systems, who
is part of the group, "based on three elements: strict surveillance, the
use of public and private police forces - in addition to internal
security and hundreds of cameras - and management like a 19th-century
cotton plantation." But it is the workers themselves, she emphasizes,
who are talking about militarization and the prison system. "One of them
told us that he was followed into the bathroom by a boss on the phone
with management: ‘Yes, it's him, I recognize him by his shoes,' he
said." In the United States and Europe, Amazon has dedicated hiring
programs for former soldiers, which it justifies with their "leadership
skills." "A move from a military career to a civilian role at Amazon is
a natural transition...," we read on the company website. "Amazon
Warriors," Amazon founder Jeff Bezos called them. But even in Italy,
former soldiers are given a preferential lane both to work in warehouses
and to manage them. "I, a former Navy soldier, now lead the Amazon
center in Bitonto, the hub of Puglia," headlined La Repubblica in March,
and a year earlier, Corriere della Sera interviewed a manager at the
Spilamberto center: "From army captain to manager at Amazon." In the
"Military" category ads, experience proportional to the role is
required: two years in command of 100 men, one year in command of 30,
etc. Translated from corporate language, this means former company
commanders, battalion commanders, etc. To the point that Angelo
Mastrandrea, author of The Last Mile. A journey into the world of
e-commerce and logistics in Italy, between Amazon, riders, container
carriers, warehouse workers and organized crime, talks about a
"military-corporate model" based on "order, discipline and control".
"They control you and at the same time keep you in the dark", says Ivan,
an Amazon driver in central Italy. "They know everything about you, even
personal things. If you change your Whatsapp status, they are the first
to see it. They check with the office number". He talks about his
company, but in fact it is Amazon that exercises an iron control over
the drivers' work performance, to the point that in July the Milan
Public Prosecutor's Office issued a seizure order for 120 million euros
against Amazon Italia Transport, accusing it of having unduly deducted
the VAT relating to fake contracts with the companies that carry out the
deliveries and which in reality mask a simple illegal intermediation of
labour. "Every morning the routes arrive and are distributed to us based
on our performance data: over a hundred parameters with which Amazon
dissects our work and measures our results," Ivan says, and shows me the
daily reports he receives on his smartphone: Excel sheets packed with
data - about ten parameters concern only the photos that the delivery
men have to take of the package once they leave it at the customer's
door, to certify that the delivery has taken place and that the box has
been placed according to Amazon's guidelines.
But compared to what is written in the Milanese judges' order, he adds
one more detail: "Side by side with our company's dispatchers there are
also Amazon employees: together they monitor our digital devices, see
how deliveries are progressing and, if necessary, intervene to ‘help
us', as they say. It took me four years to find out, though, because
they don't say a word to us more than strictly necessary: it feels like
being on a military base". A "good cop/bad cop" dynamic is also
established between the client and the subcontractors. "Amazon
encourages you to ‘respect the highway code', to ‘hydrate yourself when
it's hot' - Sara, a colleague of Ivan's, tells me - but if you're late,
the phone call from your company arrives inexorably: ‘Are you having
problems?', which means ‘Go faster!'. The first few days I came home
exhausted, I cried, I didn't even have the strength to cook for my
daughter".
Rules whose logic is inscrutable also intervene to increase the
pressure. "Amazon's sophisticated procedures do not contemplate that the
tape for the parcels (ecological, of course!) runs out," explains
Massimiliano Cacciotti, a journalist who has worked for a year at the
Passo Corese hub, from which he drew the multimedia long form
"Amazoniade." "So you have to go and look for it, but the algorithm only
sees that you are out of position and sooner or later a boss asks you to
account for it." "One day the machines stopped," says a warehouse worker
at the Castelguglielmo nel Polesine hub. "We couldn't work and I took
the opportunity to sit down, because we stand for hours and hours
without breaks and since I've been working there I've been taking
medication for back pain. Result: they gave me a report, they call it
‘constructive feedback.' It said: ‘Worker sits on the pick-to-rebin
ladder.'" It recalls a motto that was in vogue at the Naval Officer
Academy in Livorno: "What is not logical is formative".
As is well known among the military, unions, at least as we commonly
understand them, are prohibited. In the US, Amazon openly boycotts them,
discouraging membership by all means. In Bessemer (Alabama) it even
managed to change the timing of traffic lights to hinder union activists
who were trying to stop workers at the gates. And in 2020, the Vice
website revealed that in addition to its own security analysts (some
from military intelligence) it used the infamous Pinkerton to spy on
union activity and assess the risks of unionization in various
warehouses. Amazon's first recognition of a union came only last year.
It was obtained by Amazon Labor Union founded by Chris Smalls, fired in
2020 because he had denounced the company's inertia when Covid was
spreading in the hub in Staten Island, New York. In Germany, after the
first strikes in 2014, Amazon opened some hubs across the border, in
Poland, to which to divert orders when the union blocks the German
warehouses. In the United Kingdom, the GMB union, defeated in July in
the referendum for official recognition in the warehouse in Coventry,
denounces the use of intimidating means against its supporters. In
France and Italy, union protections are greater and Amazon is more
cautious, to avoid problems. Nevertheless, the French privacy guarantor,
precisely on the union's report, fined Amazon 32 million euros for
overuse of data extracted from employee performance. "At the start of
the shift, employees swipe their badge and if they don't reach their
workstation in the expected time, the first report is triggered",
explains Michele Molè, PhD in Comparative Labor Law in Groningen, who
followed the case. Control over breaks and work rhythms, through
scanners, cameras and other digital devices, allows Amazon to track and
memorize every single individual action, moment by moment, up to a month
before and if the reports accumulate, first the "invitation to improve"
is triggered, then the "retraining". For Molè, "the most interesting
annotation of the Guarantor, in addition to the violation of the rules
on privacy, is that this establishes an anxiety-inducing system of
pressure on workers". In Italy, the first official recognition for the
union came only after the strikes that broke out during the pandemic to
ask for measures to contain the contagion and there is no shortage of
problems. For Francesco Melis, Nidil-Cgil, "the company hides behind
safety to justify forms of control over employees and a lack of
transparency on work processes". "The problem," confirms Pierluigi
Costelli, secretary of Filt-Cgil of Bergamo, which follows the hubs of
Cividate al Piano and Casirate d'Adda, "is the systems that control the
single workstation, where a worker identified by the badge works:
because in our opinion the control is not on the organization, as they
say, but on the single worker."
And the individual worker is often helpless, because "Here you don't
find factory workers," Costelli points out, "but people who can't find
work in the factory: immigrants, women, in short, people who can be
blackmailed, to whom Amazon offers a simple model: standard procedures,
massification and great respect for those who work and don't ask
questions. In short, yes, you could say that the logic is military." And
if even politics, in addition to the union, allows itself to "stick its
nose" into the warehouses, Amazon takes it badly, as it did with the
European Parliament. In December 2023, a delegation of MEPs was denied
access to some plants in Germany and Poland. The official reason: "work
peaks during the retail period." Two years earlier, it had not shown up
for a hearing of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee on respect
for union rights in its warehouses, which it deemed "clearly one-sided."
In February, Brussels revoked the badges of Amazon's fourteen accredited
lobbyists, but it is simply a symbolic measure, which the new Commission
is already considering withdrawing. What is most worrying is the
possibility that the Amazon model will expand. Economists say that good
money drives out bad money. When it comes to work, the exact opposite
usually happens. Marco Veruggio, journalist, activist and researcher,
writes about economics and international politics for national and
foreign newspapers. He is editor of the website and newsletter
PuntoCritico.info and co-author of Da New York a Passo Corese. Conflitto
di classe e sindacato in Amazon (PuntoCritico, 2024).
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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