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Comment by Zenbit_UX | Hacker News Reader

As much as Amazon deserves some bad publicity for how they handle their warehouse and wholefoods workers in the US, in this case I feel like they're being vilified unfairly for the shipping of non-essentials.

Walmart is shipping whatever-the-fuck, I can order nightstands and a bed on wayfair and weed from the SQDC (government)... Let's be clear, marijuana is not an essential for all but a very small percentage of the population using it as medecine...

Yet everyone's roasting Amazon for operating like it's business as usual while the smaller players run wild.

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Shipping non-essential items is not the problem here. They can ship whatever they want, but while doing so have to protect their workers. Amazon is infamous for creating horrible working conditions in their shipping centers, it's not a surprise that how they react to the virus is observed very closely. Especially in a country like France that already has a critical stance towards big US companies.

> Amazon is infamous for creating horrible working conditions in their shipping centers

Has anyone actually done a fair comparison of Amazon warehouse working conditions with those of other warehouses? Other than the presence of robots to help our their workers, nothing I've seen and read about strikes me as being out of line with any other warehouse. Or are they just the ones getting the flack because they are the largest and most visible?

It's not a race to the bottom.

This has been my thought every time something like this comes up. Nobody ever cares about Johnny's Distribution Center and their paying minimum wage with poor working conditions. Amazon meanwhile is a big easy target.

Similar to folks on HN every time someone discovers that the Facebook SDK exists in <random app> while generally ignoring every other tracker and app that is possibly much more nefarious... Bobs Tracking App™ doesn't make headlines like "Facebook is stealing your data"

You don't need a fair comparison to read articles like https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-wo... and decide that this is not acceptable. Other warehouses being equally bad - which I doubt - doesn't fly for a company that is that profitable, big and popular.

Being large and visible might be a part of it, but their system being unnecessary cruel in the first place is reason enough.

Fair comparison doesn’t matter if we are proposing changing labor laws to solve the issue. A law would apply to all parties, including ones we don’t hear about in the news.

However, many people want Amazon to unilaterally change its labour practices. It’s not fair that they do this, while competing with Walmart the largest company in the world, if Walmart doesn’t need to change merely because they have better PR.

My cynical mind suspects Walmart has better PR merely because it’s part of an establish oligarchy who knows which hands to grease, and owns the media companies.

Hard to write this without using too inflammatory language. It's not an either or, a society can criticize bad conditions while being unable to provide labor protection laws. It says something about the country that is unable to do so, it might say something about the power of global enterprises if it happens in multiple countries, and it definitely says a lot about the importance of unions, how much their diminished power is felt now.

That's not limited to one country - but leads a bit far away from this specific french court decision. On the other hand, all of these contexts play into conflicts like this one.

Which you doubt? Cool, talk to any Kroger warehouse worker. That position is well known to pay 'ok', but will burn you out with awful conditions within a few months. Sounds a lot like Amazon doesn't it.

Don't underestimate just how many jobs countries have to maintain our standards of living.

If Amazon is "infamous for creating horrible working conditions in their shipping centers" then the only people you would expect that would be working there would be the bottom of the barrel workers, the people who can't get jobs elsewhere. Everyone else would move to better jobs.

Is this is what is happening?

Several answers:

1. Yes, in a way. Articles about Amazon warehouses regularly describe that people can work there only for a while before either burning out our simply trying to find something better. High fluctuation was a common theme.

2. Despite the issues Amazon has with unnecessary cruelty, quotes suggest that there is a higher and a steady pay, compared to shadier alternatives. Working there during the holiday season to make more than with alternatives was a regular motive in articles.

3. In anarcho capitalist countries like the US people risk dying or falling into utter poverty when not accepting work conditions like this. Not everyone can fall back into a programmer job (and now even less so), and most can't be sure that an alternative will turn up if they stop working and start searching. That bad jobs get taken does not show that they are acceptable in a system providing a basic standard. Same is true for countries like Germany, where not accepting bad jobs can mean not getting state support anymore (and yes, people died because of being sanctioned like that and then starving, that's not hyperbole).

You have some good points, but calling the US ancap is a bit strong.

Yes you're right. A lot of the critical work we depend on pays minimum wage and has awful working conditions and if those people had any opportunity to change their circumstances they would do so.

Are you referring to developing country jobs that are implicated in the supply chains for consumer products, or are you talking about first world minimum wage, like in France or the US?

I'm assuming you didn't read the article? Banning the sale of non-essential goods is mentioned multiple times.

>Amazon.com Inc. threatened to stop activity at its fulfillment centers in France after a court order banned the sale of non-essential goods, concluding the retailer isn’t doing enough to protect staff from the Covid-19 pandemic.

And 24 hours to implement improved health procedures? Without being told which ones specifically to implement?

There's basically no limit to improving health procedures. They could go as far as hourly temperature checks, glove changes after every package, no more then 10 people in the entire warehouse, etc etc. And if they don't go far enough (according to the courts, in 2 years when all the appeals are finally figured out), then they could be fined 1.1 million a day since tomorrow.

I did. My understanding is that they are banned now from selling non-essential goods as long as - or at least, because of - the proper health requirements are not fulfilled. The issue is not that they sold non-essential items in the first place. This is not a conflict like with gamestop misdeclaring their brick-and-mortar store activity as essential. The ban is the effect of other ascribed transgressions, the non-essential sales are not the cause.

I should have written: "They were free to ship whatever they want ...".

Just FYI, the guidelines for this form mention:

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

This article is wrong about that; they are free to ship non-essential items as long as they demonstrate that they protect their workers' health.

https://www.lesechos.fr/economie-france/social/coronavirus-l...

>But the American e-commerce giant was condemned to "restrict the activities of [its] warehouses to receiving goods, preparing and shipping orders for food, hygiene and medical products", "until the company has carried out, with the participation of employee representatives, an assessment of the occupational risks inherent in the Covid-19 epidemic in all of its distribution centres and the resulting measures".

I don't understand what Walmart has to do with France? They don't have any operations there...

Replace Walmart with Auchan and it's the same.

My comment is global in scope as many governments have imposed essential business only rules and Amazon is getting roasted for continuing selling non-essentials though their business is classified as essential. This was covered in the article and is one of the main reasons why they're being ordered to shutdown and only sell essentials.

The same media attention is happening in the US, even vloggers with different demographics are getting their kicks in, Louis Rossman who kicked off the right to repair movement made a video about Amazon selling dildos at prime speed when ppe is delayed weeks.

I would argue marijuana sales are essential. Not for the users necessarily but for the operations of the government itself. My state of Oregon just had its highest liquor sales ever in March. Recreational MJ sales haven't been released but are likely similar. The tax receipts from this will help offset the huge hit to income tax revenue that is coming and give the state government at least a chance to keep things running as this drags on.

> The tax receipts from this will help offset...

On the flip side, if “highest liquor sales ever” also means “highest liquor consumption ever”, I could easily see long-term health costs exceeding short term tax receipts.

Marijuana is a medicine therefore more essential then 99% of other products for sale now that are listed as essential.

You may have missed some of the nuance in the GP's argument.

I covered this exception.

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