Should Not the Radical Left Take into Account the Attitude of Workers Towards Their Own Jobs? Part Six, The Case of Amazon Workers

Introduction

One of the few things that I agree with the academic leftist Jeff Noonan, professor of philosophy at the University of Windsor, Ontario, is that leftists must start where workers are at:

Political engagement begins from trying to understand where people are coming from.

But where people are coming from can be interpreted in at least two ways: objectively–what their real situaiton is, and subjectively, what their attitudes towards their interpreted situations are. In relation to workers, there is their objective situation of being treated as means towards ends defined by employers (see The Money Circuit of Capital).

Subjectively, though, there are undoubtedly a variety of attitudes and interpretations of their own work and life situations.

Some among the radical left do not even address the issue of what workers think of their own jobs. It is hardly idealist to inquire into such attitudes.

I will start to gather evidence about the attitudes of some workers in unionized (and non-unionized) settings where I have calculated the rate of exploitation of those workers. I will also in the not-too-distant future start a similar inquiry process  for unionized public-sector workers with the largest employers in Canada and in various Canadian cities.

Objective Exploitation and Oppression of Amazon Workers

I have been unable to calcualte the rate of exploitation for this capitalist employer; in both the 2019 and 2023 annual reports, there are no data for wages or salaries and benefits, and without such data it is difficult to estimate the rate of exploitation (it is possible to guestimate based on average employee costs times the number of employees, but again that would require data on the average employee costs. Perhaps others can share such data). However, given that there was, in 2023, 37.557 billion U.S. in “Income before income taxes,” there is no doubt that Amazon exploits its workers since the source of such profits is the exploitation of workers. Of course, even apart from such exploitation, while workers produce the equivalent of their wages/salaries and benefits, they are subject to the power and dictates of management  and hence are unfree (see, for instance, Management Rights, Part Four: Private Sector Collective Agreement, Ontario and   Employers as Dictators, Part One).

You would think that, given these circumstances, Amazon workers would find their work situation mainly negative.  Indeed, there are leftists who have argued that workers explicitly experience alienation from their work. David Graeber (2018), in Bullshit Jobs A Theory, states (page 19):

The result was to reveal that men are far more likely to feel that their jobs are pointless (42 percent) than women do (32 percent).

Drawing upon data provided from another survey, he states:

… the survey makes abundantly clear that ( 1) more than half of working hours in American offices are spent on bullshit, and (2) the problem is getting worse.

In another survey, we read the following (Peter Fleming (2015), The Mythology of Work: How Capitalism Persists Despite Itself, page 3):

A recent survey … reveals that only about 13 per cent of the global workforce considered themselves ‘engaged’ by their jobs. The remaining 87 per cent feel deeply alienated.

Indeed, two more recent survey studies specifically focused on Amazon workers provide data that expresses a generally negative attitude towards their working conditions and towards Amazon as their employer. 

Subjective Attitudes of Amazon Workers Towards Amazon and Their Working Situation

The data provided below, however, contradicts such views.

To obtain such data, I provided a review of my last employer–Lakeshore School Division–for the website Indeed in order to gain access to company reviews.

There were 1,714 reviews for Canada at the time that I started this post.

Of course, the numbers above will have changed in a relatively short period of time.

In similar posts, I provided a more detailed quantitative breakdown of the reviews (see for example Should Not the Radical Left Take into Account the Attitude of Workers Towards Their Own Jobs? Part One, The Case of Magna International Workers),but such detail requires much more time. Unless there is a political reason for engaging in such detailed work, I will only provide the total quantitative data.

The ratings are from 5 to 1, with 5 being the most positive evaluation and 1 the worst.

Distribution of the Evaluations to the Various Ratings: Quantitative Data

#5

500

#4 

380

#3 

389 

#2 

176

#1 

269

I will consider #5 and #4 ratings to be positive evaluations of their work experiences with Amazon. I split the #3 into two since some ratings with a #3 rating are positive evaluations while others are negative. I will consider #2 and #1 ratings to be negative evaluations.

I justify the categorisation of #5 and #4 as positive because, in addition to being quantitatively higher than #3–a nominal middle evaluation–comments made by some workers that correspond to the quantitative evaluation seem to indicate a positive evaluation. Further on, I give a couple of arbitrary examples drawn from each numbered evaluation.

Positive attitude towards working for Amazon

500+380+195=1,075
1,075/1,714×100=63%

Negative attitude towards working for Amazon

194+176+269=639
639/1,714×100=37%

To get a flavour for the ratings, I include immediately below a couple of comments from each rating. They are not meant to be representative since I chose them to reflect the above characterizations of the evaluations.

A Few Comments from Each Evaluative Category: Qualitative Data

#5

1. Fun workplace and freedom to work The hardest part is carriying heavy items
   Associate (Former Employee) – Ajax, ON – 22 January 2024
   Working in Amazon is good
   Amazon is good company and very friendly good environment.
   Work place culture is multi culture
   Management is good
   Hard part is long time to stand up position
   Pros
   Chance to move the next position
   Cons
   Some times carry the Heavy items
2. Productive and Fun
   Warehouse Associate (Former Employee) – Balzac, AB – 18 July 2022
   Really tiring at first and long hours but you’re going to have fun if you make friends and help each other. Managers are good but depends on a person. Have to meet your rate or else you’ll get warning otherwise its fun at amazon
   Pros
   Good Co-Workers
   Cons
   10 hours shift

#4

1. everything in company are good just unfurtunaly some amcare personnel care just favorite persons
   Personal Trainer (Current Employee) – New Westminster, BC – 23 September 2024
   I love amazon policy
   I learned lots of experience, I grew up over there ,fun, ,food ,snack, entertainments, lots of prize and more
   I have lots of good coworker
   Hardest time was for me when management force and rude to you
   when we had peak order time we be exited to help amazon grew up
   Pros
   free coffee and tea, celebrate all event, friendly coworker same as family
   Cons
   management and discrimination
2. Fun but repetitive
   Associate (Current Employee) – Calgary, AB – 22 August 2024
   Work is hard, however it is fun while working. Sometimes it may repetitive work, but managers are helpful and cooperative. It is long shift like 10 hrs with includes nights shifts.

#3

1. Good place to get experience
   Warehouse Associate (Former Employee) – Brampton, ON – 23 October 2024
   Decent hours, and good benefits. It’s a good place to start in order to get some experience. Potential to work overtime and also to move up positions.
2. Some nights are stressful, some are decent
   Sortation Associate (Current Employee) – Laval, QC – 9 September 2024
   I work ten hours four days a week on a night shift. It can be stressful since it’s hard to sleep during the day and when working at night, there are times when I feel like collapsing while at work. The job is not that hard, it’s just physically demanding and there are times when you thought you have worked too hard, 40 hours a week, only to find your salary doesn’t even keep up with the amount of hours I work. No pay increase despite the economic inflation.

#2

1. 3 months was enough to know I don’t want to continue with Amazon
   Returns Clerk (Former Employee) – Mississauga, ON – 15 July 2024
   What is the best part of working at the company?
   I work there and I get paid. That’s pretty much all there is.

   What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
   Stressful parts are : extremely fast paced, and standing so much.

   What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
   People are ok, but they don’t know sign language so it can be a little isolatingj.

   What is a typical day like for you at the company?
   Busy busy busy then short lunch then busy busy busy!!!

2. Good people, but bad at the hours
   FC Associate I (Current Employee) – 12340 boggy creek – 2 April 2024
   The people there are really cool, but everything else is messy and also managers depending on who don’t really care about you if they ask how are you doing is because they want to know why are you not packing in the time frame they want, if you don’t pack quick enough you will get called out

#1

1. It’s like working in Hades
   Order Picker/Packer (Former Employee) – Ottawa, ON – 9 October 2024
   What is the best part of working at the company?
   Only work here if you like being a human robot

   What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
   The rates they set are unreasonable

   What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
   Everything revolves around the computer’s and what they say and you can’t dispute it

   What is a typical day like for you at the company?
   10 hours days of very physical work and you are not allowed to get tired

2. Will never work here again
   Fulfillment Associate (Former Employee) – Balzac, AB – 19 July 2024
   Management was horrible, expect you to reach crazy numbers on the daily, they don’t promote socializing amongst workers, only good thing you can get as many hours as you want.

Political Relevance

Such analysis forms only a preliminary tool for socialists interested in relating to workers working for this particular employer. It is crude quantitative and should be supplemented by a qualitative analysis of comments–a much more labour-intensive task.

Unlike Jane McAlevey’s approach, which focuses on organic leaders–leaders who form a key focus since winning their allegiance leads to other workers (or community members) being convinced to join a union or community campaign (see my review in the Links section)–the issue here is to see which workers are the most disgruntled and the least disgruntled in relation to a particular employer.

It may be thought that the more disgruntled workers would then be the focus of socialists’ efforts. That may well be, but the issue is of course more complicated than that. For example, for socialists the issue is not just being disgruntled against a particular employer but generalizing this to all employers. It would be necessary for socialists to use their judgement in determining how susceptible disgruntled workers are to such generalization. In some cases, less disgruntled workers may well be more susceptible to generalizing than more disgruntled workers. Initially, though, it does give socialists a preliminary method of approaching workers, at least in a general way. Of course, no specific workers can be identified through such an approach. That would be the responsibility of socialists engaging with specific workers or community members.