Comment by whatyoucantsay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by whatyoucantsay | Hacker News Reader

Much of Microsoft's historical behaviour was objectionable. Amazon, however, has been troubling on a much deeper level from the beginning.

Their attitude towards labour has been nothing short of Dickensian. I'm not speaking so much of their habit of writing dystopian employment contracts and turning to legal intimidation when employees leave, though that is also a problem, as I am of their treatment of lower paid staff. Refusing dock workers adequate rest, hydration or cooling is indefensible.

However impressive the accomplishments and intellect of Mr. Bezos may be, we can no longer hold any faith he or Amazon will bow to even minimal concerns of human decency. The only levers are the threat of financial and regulatory consequences. The further Amazon's power places them beyond such levers the more dangerous they become.

https://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons...

> The series revealed the lengths Amazon was prepared to go to keep costs down and output high and yielded a singular image of Amazon’s ruthlessness—ambulances stationed on hot days at the Amazon center to take employees suffering from heat stroke to the hospital. Despite the summer weather, there was no air-conditioning in the depot, and Amazon refused to let fresh air circulate by opening loading doors at either end of the depot—for fear of theft. Inside the plant there was no slackening of the pace, even as temperatures rose to more than 100 degrees.

> On June 2, 2011, a warehouse employee contacted the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration to report that the heat index had reached 102 degrees in the warehouse and that fifteen workers had collapsed. On June 10 OSHA received a message on its complaints hotline from an emergency room doctor at the Lehigh Valley Hospital: “I’d like to report an unsafe environment with an Amazon facility in Fogelsville. . . . Several patients have come in the last couple of days with heat related injuries.”

It's also worth adding that Amazon eventually did retrofit their facilities with cooling devices but only after their practices drew international media coverage.

Wonder how long they can go on like that. They tried to recruit me a few years ago but I ignored them because I didn't like what I has heard about them plus I didn't want to move to Seattle. After a few weeks I received an angry email demanding I explain my lack of response even though they initiated contact. I wonder if HQ2 isn't as much about finding a new talent pool that they haven't yet peed into as it is about swimming in the public treasury. I'm really curious what happens to them should there be a large reduction in work visas available. No doubt they'd open development centers around the globe but that's going to be a much different course of action than their apparent preference for handling software labor.

The Amazon Camperforce is such an interesting thing to me http://www.amazondelivers.jobs/about/camperforce/

While this is terrible, is it worse than say Apple who offshore much of their labor costs to places with far worse standards?

Apple only outsources (technically not offshoring, since it isn’t done in the same company) it’s manufacturing, almost all of its R&D is still done states side (better than Google or Microsoft, who have substantial overseas R&D operations, though not necessarily in low cost countries).

Does it need to be worse? Both need improvement.

Did I say otherwise?

For some reason it’s always things happening at the ‘Apple factory’ but in reality these are megafactories that produce the items sold by just about every consumer electronics company, like Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Logitech and many others.

Sue, but Apple are the most obvious example with definite examples of this.

Should Apple provide US style standards and pay for labor in China?

Depends if you believe that safe work environments are human rights, or just for Americans.

Standards yes - these should match standards of countries they sell in (or even better take the high road and just match Europe). Chinese wages are on their way up anyway and if anything, improving standards will keep wage costs down as part of the package (and I strongly believe improved standards would improve productivity/quality to more than offset costs). It's win win.

Bear in mind people are ready to queue up to pay a ton more for Apple on the basis that they strive to produce a better product on all dimensions - they are the poster child for quality across the board being a viable business approach. That should go consistently through the products and services like a stick of rock and include things like work conditions and green manufacturing.

We should be encouraging everyone to have decent working conditions.

While this is terrible

Then we should probably stick to discussing what's terrible about this, and how to fix it. We can "what about" Apple in a later discussion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com