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Amazon. com's Workers Are Low- Paid, Overworked And Unhappy; Is This The New Employee Model For The Internet Age? This is the second of a three- part series exploring Amazon’s business model. On Wednesday, we examined the company's lack of profitability relative to its revenue growth.

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• Working conditions at Amazon.com aren’t any better than they are at Walmart. The difference is you don’t see Amazon's employees.

Today, we probe the company’s labor practices. On Friday, we'll look at the company's impact on small retailers. NOTE: This story has been updated to include Amazon. It’s easy to miss Amazon. Breinigsville, Pa., while traveling along U. Watch Enemies Closer Youtube. S. Route 2. 22. It’s one of several large, nondescript concrete boxes in the Liberty Business Center a mile south of Interstate 7. United States. Inside one of two warehouses Amazon has at the industrial park, a mix of about 1,6. Recently, they began seasonal mandatory overtime of five 1.

BibMe Free Bibliography & Citation Maker - MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard. At a press conference on Sunday, angry citizens ran off Jason Kessler, the organizer of a disastrous rally for white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other members of the. NASA astronaut and biochemist Peggy Whitson will return to Earth as the planet’s new record holder for longest time cumulatively spent on space by an American or a.

That pace will continue through the new year before workweeks are dropped back to four 1. After the holidays, hundreds of temporary employees at the facility will return to the ranks of the unemployed. Dozens of trucks are lined up along one of Amazon's warehouses in Breinigsville, Pa., Nov.

A mix of roughly 1,3. The total number of Amazon workers (including temps) at any given time is unknown publicly because of Amazon's heavy reliance on temp recruiters who have offices inside facilities like this.

Photo: Angelo Young / IBTimes. Warehouse work isn’t easy in the best conditions, but in recent years the No. Breinigsville - - a spotlight usually reserved for companies like Wal- Mart Stores Inc. NYSE: WMT), which are favorite targets of labor rights advocates.

And increasingly, workers are coming forward to discuss the work culture at the world’s largest online retailer. Amazon’s employees are viewed as a necessary evil. If they could get machines to do this work they would,” Neal Heimbach, who has worked for Amazon in Breinigsville since August 2. Amazon is not happy with 1. One hundred percent to them is, 'Well, at least you’re doing your job.’”Eastern Pennsylvania’s unemployment and underemployment rate remains above the national and state averages, which means fewer job options for people like Heimbach. Lehigh Valley, which includes Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton, as well as many smaller nearby communities such as Trexlertown and Breinigsville, has never really returned to its economic heyday when well- paying, secure jobs were plentiful in mining, steel, rail and textiles, a situation famously chronicled in the song “Allentown” by recording artist Billy Joel in 1. In 2. 00. 9, Allentown lost its last major manufacturer, Mack Trucks Inc., when the Volvo subsidiary relocated to Greensboro, S.

C., taking with it 6. But the region’s shedding of decent jobs has been a human resources goldmine for warehousing and distribution companies, and Amazon.

Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has certainly dived right in; Pennsylvania joins Kentucky and Indiana in having the highest concentration of the company’s fulfillment centers. Amazon warehouse employees typically have few choices but to work for $9 to $1. But in return, they endure physically demanding conditions under constant surveillance and an unforgiving computer- based system demerit program, with zero job security. Mary Osako, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the company’s wages for these workers are 3.

And that doesn't even include the stock grants that full- time employees receive,” she added. We also offer full- time benefits including healthcare.”Amazon warehouse employees (or, as the company calls them, “fulfillment center associates”) contend they’re told by Amazon and outsourced managers to meet productivity goals designed to be unattainable for most in an effort to keep them in a perpetual state of insecurity about their continued employment. If they give up or are fired, there’s a legion of temp workers - - recruited by subcontracted labor recruiters who have offices inside the warehouse facility - - waiting to take their turn processing hundreds of packages per hour.

Employee vs. Employer. Amazon, founded in 1. Internet, has only in the past few years become the target of labor- abuse allegations, most recently this year with several U. S.- based lawsuits in five states, including one brought by Heimbach in Pennsylvania. Chief among the complaints, which could soon be consolidated into a nationwide class action lawsuit, is the allegation that Amazon. Aimed at combatting product theft, this process can take up to 2. The suits also contend that while employees get a strictly regimented 3.

The lawsuits also claim the company is so radically fastidious with workers’ time that it requires employees to count the start and end of their two paid 1. If it takes three minutes from the moment the bell rings to get to the break room, now you've only got 1. But then you have to use three minutes to get back to your work area before the next bell rings, so your break is really nine minutes,” Heimbach told International Business Times. And they constantly monitor you with supervisors that look at computer screens.”The complaints allege that if Amazon had to include these tiny increments of time, many workers would top the 4. Heimbach’s suit asks for at least $5. In its latest earnings report outlining future risks, Amazon said: “We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in these matters.”‘Management By Stress’A 2. Pennsylvania’s Morning Call newspaper chronicled the plight of Amazon warehouse employees in Breinigsville.

According to that article, Amazon hires were forced to work in dangerous summertime heat conditions, temps as high as 1. In fact, so many workers ended up in the local hospital that an attending physician reported the case to federal workplace safety regulators. In the wake of the Morning Call investigation, Amazon spent $5. But apparently the company hasn't lowered the heat on the productivity requirements it sets for employees, goals that are well beyond the industry norm for other warehouse and shipping companies. A source who went undercover at an Amazon sorting center in California for eight weeks this summer as part of academic research into warehouse working conditions told IBTimes that Amazon wanted its employees to pack about 2. A floor manager, with experience at multiple logistics firms, conceded to this source that the industry standard was only about 1.

The source spoke only on condition of anonymity because his research is ongoing. Amazon doesn’t publicly disclose the number of packages per hour its warehouse workers are expected to process, but Heimbach’s estimates matched what the source claimed: About 2. CDs.“If you’re 8. Heimbach said. “The reality of it is they’re primarily concerned about getting product out the door at the fastest rate possible.”Amazon spokesperson Osako said the claims that productivity goals are set to be unattainable for most warehouse employees are “simply inaccurate.” Moreover, Amazon’s productivity numbers are apparently purposely designed to be unattainable for most workers so that the employees feel that they are falling down on the job and push harder to hit the impracticable levels.

This strategy, known as management by stress, was described in the book “The New Ruthless Economy: Work and Power in the Digital Age,” by Simon Head, a fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at the U. K.’s Oxford University, as "one in which a significant minority of workers are operating at the margin of inefficiency, so that supervisors can bear down and get them to work faster.”Indeed, the California undercover warehouse worker told IBTimes that his Amazon floor manager admitted to him that the packages- per- hour goals were set higher than was expected from them. This came up because the worker was able to pack only about 2. Amazon’s.“[The floor manager] and I got friendly a little and he was willing to talk to me openly about these productivity goals,” the source told IBTimes in a recent telephone interview. He was under the impression I was working my way through school. Don't worry,' he said.