Amazon comes to Bessemer, Alabama, a city that is struggling financially and with a high unemployment rate, a city where the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
Amazon offers 15,000 jobs, free health care insurance, and a $3,000 education reimbursement program for employees who would like to learn new skills or improve on skills they already have.
What’s the catch? Well, Amazon likes to supervise their employees via a smartphone app to make sure employees are doing what they are supposed to be doing. There is no in-person supervision. Communication with managers and supervisors is done mostly through the Amazon app.
It seems like a reasonable bargain to me. Employees get $15/hour jobs (Double the minimum wage), health care, and education grants in exchange for supervisable labor.
Amazon provided 15,000 jobs in a small town with high unemployment. Amazon employs 950,000 people in the U.S. Jeff Bezos is willing to pay twice the minimum wage, but he wants high performance from all the employees, from warehouse workers to the upper levels of management.
It is unrealistic to expect to have a job with no supervision. The big Amazon difference is that the supervision is done via an app vs and in person manager. If this is a huge problem, the best thing is not apply to work at Amazon.
Amazon workers decided by an overwhelming majority not to unionize. 1,798 voted “no” while 738 voted “yes.” They decided not to risk losing a good job by unionizing. They have to look out for their own families and their own future and right now, an Amazon job is the best they can do for themselves.
Unions have been losing ground since shortly after World War II. In the 70s, over 30% of the workforce was unionized, now about 11% of the workforce are unionized.
I think that Amazon workers made a wise decision by not unionizing. They examined their choices and decided that being represented by a union and paying union dues for that privilege was not the best option for them.
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