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The “Awareness Cabin” of the Amazon warehouses, where you can “Recharge”. Why doesn’t Fedez tell us about working conditions?

3 years ago babelfish

Amazon is infamous for the grueling working conditions in its warehouses, especially in the US, but now we've pushed the boundaries of even the ridiculous: the company now praises itself for giving employees a space to recharge their mental batteries, a box just over 65 cm by 65 cm. They call it "Mindful practice room". Judge for yourself.


"My workday feels like an intense nine-hour workout every day, and they keep track of our every move," Amazon employee Jennifer Bates said in a US Senate Budget Committee hearing on wealth inequality in March. . “I learned that if I worked too slowly or had too much free time, I could get disciplinary measures or even get fired,” she added. Of course Bezos and Madame are delighted with it, and especially their wallet. What a beautiful world we are preparing for.

The Bates experience appears to be common among employees of Amazon's "fulfillment centers" in the US, who in some locations have struggled to unionize against the wishes of their superiors. The retail giant is regularly listed on the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health's "Dirty Dozen" list of unsafe American employers, with the most recent pre-pandemic report citing 13 deaths since 2013, " a high incidence of suicide attempts "and" workers who urinate in bottles because they are afraid to take breaks ".

However, Amazon allegedly noted the toll its workplace has on employees' mental health and gave them something back: "a space where our employees could focus on their mental well-being," according to a video posted by Amazon on Twitter. Wednesday. – only to be canceled hours later.

The "space" in question is apparently a pod the size of a telephone booth in the warehouse that Amazon calls "ZenBooth" . Inside are shelves with a bonsai plant and a computer terminal allowing stressed out employees to "navigate with mental health tools and meditation practices to recharge the internal battery." Disconnecting from the computer seemed ugly.

Online commentators are horrified. “Imagine working for such a dystopian company where conditions are so dire that they need to put a gray cabinet in the middle of the floor, and the company tries to sell it as a good thing,” one wrote. “If you provided a positive environment for your employees, why would you need this in the middle of your warehouse?” Another tweeted.

At least now workers will have privacy to pee in bottles.

Others saw the box as a glimpse into a dystopian future, where productivity declines translate into a journey into the "mental health pod," the idea for which it seemed to have been removed en bloc from the "THX nightmare movie. -1138 "by George Lucas.

Or from the Futurama series, with the "Suicide Booths":

It is unclear whether Amazon intends to roll out awareness booths across all of its locations or whether the idea is still in the concept stages. It will be interesting to see what our local unions will say when it is applied in Italy. By the way, does Fedez have nothing to say for the next worker's party about the conditions of Amazon employees? No, because he has a nice and rich contract with the American multinational. Ah, these modern Piddini civil rights revolutionaries. Real tough guys.

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Minds

The article The "Cabin of Awareness" of the Amazon warehouses, where "Recharge". Why doesn't Fedez tell us about working conditions? comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-cabina-della-consapevolezza-dei-magazzini-amazon-perche-fedez-non-ci-parla-di-condizioni-di-lavoro/ on Sat, 29 May 2021 06:59:08 +0000.