If one wonders whatever circumstances started the Russian
Revolution in 1917 – exactly hundred years ago – or roughly 130 years earlier
the French Revolution, he should look at the lower class and middle class workers
and impoverished people in his country. And first and foremost to the way they
are treated by the wealthy people and (large) companies in this country.
Then this
person should realize that most revolutions start because these simple workers and
the non-working poor are utterly fed up with their living circumstances and
want to make a drastical change, even if that might cost them their life eventually.
If the lower class workers and the poor in a country are
treated humanely and are given chances to work themselves up towards a better
life, no revolution will ever break out.
However, if such workers are treated like poor,
talentless and useless people, who are only good for one thing – for which they
are not appreciated at all and paid very poorly too – revolution could be looming
when the humiliation reaches its peak.
To this respect it is good to look at the grim developments
at one of the largest and most popular companies in the world: Amazon. This company is extremely successful in both sales of food
and non-food articles to the general public and rendering cloud services (i.e.
the rental of broad computer services) to companies. Its status in the
digital world is iconic, just as the status of its founder, Jeff Bezos.
Yet, this company seems well on its way to become one of
those companies that is hated and
despised by their personnel for the inhumane treatment of their workers, if the
following story is indeed true.
This story, which was based upon research done by a
reporter of the British newspaper Daily Mirror, was printed in the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad a
few weeks ago:
Personnel
of a British distribution centre of webgiant Amazon is severely underpaid for the long,
long working days they have to make around the holidays. Some employees make
working weeks of 55 hours for a minimum hourly wage of around UKP 8.20 (roughly
€ 9,16). This became clear from undercover research of British newspaper Daily
Mirror.
Journalist Alan Selby worked five weeks for
a distribution centre in Tilbury, where he saw that the personnel was treated
as ‘live stock’ and became so tired that they fell asleep standing. Some
workers had to be treated by ambulance personnel. “The personnel receives a wage
that is lower than the average cost of livelihood. One of them asked: ‘Why is
it not allowed to sit for a moment when it is not busy? We are people, not
slaves or robots’”, according to Selby.
The
journalist, who runs marathons in his leisure time, experienced that himself:
“The only times that I did not stand up, was during my breaks. My body ached, I felt dizzy and was afraid
that I would topple over. One of my colleagues told me she overstretched her
hamstrings, but had to continue anyway”. Selby saw the managers screaming at
those who dared to rest.
Also
the daily targets would lie too high. It is expected from the packaging
personnel that they prepare for shipment 120 products per hour. Those who did
not make that number, were fired...
When asked, Amazon did not exactly experience the urgency
behind the cause for this article. Again the Algemeen Dagblad:
Amazon informed us in a reaction that they ‘offered a safe and
positive working place’. “We are proud upon having created thousands and
thousands of job in the past years. The targets have been based upon earlier
results of our personnel”.
“Nothing to see her, folks. Everything is cool! Carry on,
as you were!”
There are roughly three possibilities with respect to this story:
- a. Alan Selby is a stargazer and a liar who makes something out of nothing. Amazon personnel should simply shut up, enjoy their work and be glad that they have a job.
- b. Amazon is a cynical club that doesn’t give a rat’s behind about the wellbeing of their personnel and only hunts for impossible targets and yet more efficiency on the way towards full robotization of their workforce.
- c. Amazon is not aware of treating its personnel badly and truly believes that they offer a good job to their personnel.
The first possibility of the three is not very plausible,
as at the same time of the publication of this article in the UK, the personnel
of Amazon in Germany and Italy was on strike to get improvement of their labour
circumstances too.
Remain the two possibilities in which Amazon is either
extremely naive or cynical...
Both possibilities are not favourable for the company.
And looking at Amazon’s reaction when confronted with the news in the Daily Mirror (see red and bold text),
I tend to think that Amazon is just extremely cynical.
Probably the company cannot wait for the moment that they
can either move most of their operations to the low wage countries, where workers
are less critical and too much strapped for cash to complain about labour
circumstances, or fully robotize their operations so they don’t need human
workers at all.
Anyway, the result is shocking, to these eyes!
And unfortunately the situation around Amazon is not
unique. A few weeks later, an article appeared in the Dutch online magazine The
Correspondent, in which the situation for the workers at Schiphol airport had been put
under scrutiny.
Also this article was written by an investigative reporter,
Dick Wittenberg, who spoke with workers in the lowest qualified jobs at
Schiphol.
The tendency in this article was very much akin to the
situation at Amazon: long working hours without toilet breaks, poor payment and
uncertain situations around the prolongation of contracts:
At
Schiphol I stumble upon uncertain workers and working poor. Masses of workers
are running around. Labour Union FNV estimates that at least a quarter of the
65,000 people, who work at the roughly 450 companies, does not have a steady job.
At some companies or departments of companies, their share rises above 70 per
cent.
They
run from one temp job to another, or from one temporary contract to another.
They hardly earn the minimum wage. A large share does hardly build up a pension
or does not get paid at all during sickness. And in the meantime they can always be
‘written off’ and be exchanged for more productive workers.
Everything
at Schiphol is aimed at keeping the tariffs for the aviation companies as low
as possible. This means that insufficient demands are made towards the companies that work on Schiphol. And that
goes at the expense of the personnel of these companies.
Take
for instance the luggage and passenger handling companies. In the battle for
the goodwill of the over hundred aviation companies that land on Schiphol,
these companies feel forced to work as cheap as possible, according to a
spokesman of the FNV union, Leen vander List. “This simply means more
production with less personnel involved and - as a consequence of this modus operandi - also more poorly renumerated and very insecure labour
contracts”.
In
order to prevend that now insecure workers can claim a fixed contract after having
three sequential, temporary contracts within two years, companies at Schiphol
use a trick, making use of temporary labour organizations.
After a number of
contracts at one company, the temp agency places the worker at another company
for a certain amount of time. After a while, the temp worker starts again at square
one at the first company. Annually, over 10,000 uncertain workers are pumped
around this way. FNV spokesman Van der List calls this the ‘merry-go-round of uncertain
workers’.
Both articles are either based upon first-hand
experiences of the journalist (in case of Alan Selby) or testimonies of direct
witnesses at these companies in The United Kingdom and The Netherlands.
However, the tendency of both articles is fiercely denied by the main corporate
protagonists in it.
Hence, the credibility of both stories is based upon the
credibility of the reporters in question, who state things that are 180 degrees
opposite of the image that both involved companies Amazon and Schiphol want to spread to
the general public: an image of happy and satisfied workers being part of one happy family at
their respective companies.
I believe these aforementioned stories, however. Personally,
I see a disturbing trend towards the further dehumanization of workers over the
last number of years. These are workers, who increasingly have to act like
robots, in their quest for their nearly impossible targets.
People, who are
denied the simplest things like toilet and smoke breaks and a few minutes to
put their feet to rest, outside the bare minimum of work breaks they are granted. Because this
could harm their ability to meet those aforementioned targets.
Besides that, people are suffering from (too) low wages
and from lack of certainty in the form of fair contracts for a longer period of
time or – even better – fixed contracts. Contracts, that build up a fair pension and fair
sickness money.
The same has happened in health care and home care were
nurses and other health care workers are fighting their impossible targets of
having to give so much aide in only a few minutes per patient. No more room for
talking with patients and giving aide beyond the bare minimum. They have to work like emotionless machines, if they want to meet their targets. Nothing else is possible.
Many healthcare and homecare workers are so sick and
tired of these impossible targets and the accompanying pressure that they gave
up their jobs, according to the local newspaper Eindhovens Dagblad:
This
is exactly where institutes for homecare warned for for a long time: it is
simply impossible to take new clients in, irrespective of the urgency of the
demand. They are seriously short-handed. There is no influx of new workers. To
put it even stronger: healthcare and homecare workers are leaving their job by
the dozen. Only in Brabant [i.e. Dutch province in the south] already 10,000
workers left their job this year [2017 - EL].
Also in the cleaning industry this development is
underway, as cleaners have to clean a class room or an office in roughly five
to ten minutes. This leaves them only enough time to do a poor job, as thoroughly
cleaning a class room would take at least 30 minutes.
No good job can be done
in this minimum amount of time and thus no job satisfaction can be reached, due to a job well done.
Everything is arranged for meeting the nearly impossible targets, to be able for their employer to offer the cheapest price at their principals.
The biggest problem, to these eyes, is the ongoing dehumanization
of workers.
Workers are not seen as the living, intelligent, hardworking and curious people
that they are, but as durable means of production that are only appreciated for
their possibilities to meet their targets. Nothing else!
When the targets are not met, the appreciation for the
workers is gone at the spot and the workers must be replaced by better, quicker
and more successful workers. Their opinions, worries and ideas are not
important for their employers; just their sheer output.
One reinforcing effect to their misfortune is that
workers, when not sufficiently unionized and represented on higher levels in society, are
often extremely poor represented in the political arenas. The large, successful
companies and the rich citizens on the other hand are overly represented there,
because of their money and (thus) their influence on the leading politicians.
This means that the needs of the lower class workers and
the poor are often neglected, in favour of measures that are aimed at the rich
people and the large companies: lowering taxes and rising subsidies for
investments. And preparing more building ground for expensive owner-occupied housing than cheap rental housing for the lower and middle classes.
These groups have the money and the influence to “buy” their
opinion and their interests into the political arenas.
Perhaps, the United States political arena is the most
blatant example of this phenomenon, due to the nearly unlimited amounts of
payments that can be made to the political parties and their representatives,
as well as the extremely costly election campaigns that cause that all parties
and all representatives are strapped for cash with respect to their
(re-)elections.
Paying money in The United States means buying direct influence, via the carrot
(the money) and the stick (no more money for the next re-elections) clause.
Nevertheless, my gutfeeling says that the emotions of the
lower class workers could come to a boiling point within a few years, when the
working circumstances do not further improve and serious payment rises are made
for everybody in the company, instead of the top management alone.
The only problem is, that a lot of the current, lower
class anger in society is now aimed at immigrants and (religious) minority
groups, instead of at the people who are behind their financial backwardedness
and disdain for their position. This is expressed in the misunderstanding and sometimes sheer hatred against the religious minorities and the immigrants from Africa and Asia, that are looking for a safe refuge. This is a dangerous development, that has led to extremely bloody wars in the last century.
When this will turn around, however, and the anger of the lower classes and poor people WILL be aimed at the leading classes and the companies who treated them poorly, these leading
politicians, (large) companies and rich citizens could be in for a rough ride,
just like it happened more often in the past.
I personally hope it will not come this far, but the signs are not exactly promising, given the aforementioned widespread examples of antisocial, corporate behaviour.
Nevertheless, the recipe to solve this issue is fairly
simple: forget the impossible targets and forget the fairytale that the robots
are ready to take over most jobs.
Start to give the workers in the simpler, but nevertheless extremely important jobs the respect and the remuneration that they deserve. Make sure that their targets are feasible and that they have enough backup to do their job in a normal way.
Make also sure they live in
decent houses in decent areas and make sure they enjoy their jobs and get
satisfied by it. Don't take their efforts simply for granted, as if they are slaves or robots.
Frits Philips, one
of the leading entrepreneurs behind the expansion of the now world-famous
Philips brand, understood this lesson very well and he acted accordingly. He
built and bought good houses for his workers and gave them sports and leisure
time and the means to do so. By doing so, he earned their eternal respect and gratitude.
I wonder if Jeff Bezos of Amazon has this grandness in
himself or that he is one of the infamous American entrepreneurs that treats
people like slaves… or robots, as a matter of fact.
Even robots need some
maintenance every now and then; just like people do!
