White Collar Workers at Amazon; How Much Is Too Much?

White Collar Workers at Amazon; How Much is Too Much?

The evidence of blue collar workers toiling in extreme conditions has long been an openly kept secret in the corporate sphere. While the Amazon warehouse scandal in Allentown, Pennsylvania (Huffington Post, 2011) made news headlines, a new, more sinister, trend is surfacing within the giant E-commerce powerhouse; the mounting strain on white collar workers, who are facing brutal work pressures and a quantification of productivity, with marginal benefit. The current labour situation of white collar workers within Amazon are a result of a need to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving, ultra-demanding marketplace, but how responsible are businesses for the health and wellbeing of the employees that generate their profits?

A recent article by the New York Times shed light upon Amazon’s practices, which included overwork to the point of employees weeping at their desks. The lines between working and non-working times have blurred, employees are expected to be on call 24/7, and are held to standards that the company boastfully describes as ‘unreasonably high.’ (New York Times, 2015) Low-level managers that are held to cutthroat deadlines hold the same expectations for their subordinates, causing stressful practices to trickle down the corporate hierarchy. Employees are expected to tear apart each other’s idea’s, while coworkers scheme to bash each other through the ‘Anytime Feedback Tool’ to ensure they do not end up at the bottom of the rankings and get eliminated. As a former employee notes ‘Amazon is running a continuous employment improvement algorithm on its staff’ (New York Times, 2015) subjecting them to higher and higher standards. This causes older employees to drop out when they can no longer keep up with the immense work pressure, instilling a culture of disposability within the company. Even while stress levels are mounting, white collar workers are constantly told to ‘count their privileges’ and to ‘stop whining.’

In a world where the rapidness of innovation is quintessential to the longevity of a company, the online retail sphere exemplifies this truth like no other. As a multinational consumer electronics and internet retail company, Amazon faces competition on multiple fronts; retail, cloud based services, consumer electronics, and in the operating segment. In order to achieve its impressive 19.88% yearly revenue growth (almost 4% ahead of the industry average) (CIS Market, 2015), it must resort to measures that improve efficiency to never before seen levels. It all boils down to the quantitative measure of success of a company: profits. We, consumers, expect nothing less than our package to appear on our doorstep in 2 working days, or that the newest iPhone be available immediately upon release. We want our products and we want them fast; our consumerism is straining both production line and office workers to do faster, think faster, and innovate faster. Achieve this, and you have profit.

‘Amazon does not pretend that catering to it’s employees is it’s priority,’ (New York Times, 2015) but should it be? Any company’s main motive is to make profits, but it should do so in an ethical manner without having to strain employees to increase Jeff Bezos’ already immense net worth. Workers are a company’s most valuable asset, and should be treated as such. Due to its prestige and profitability, Amazon can afford to treat it’s employees as disposable and hire a new young fresh recruit straight off the bat, and it’s corporate greed capitalises on our materialistic obsessions by forcing us to work harder and faster to be able to buy the products that we help produce at an immense human cost. A healthy ‘work-life balance’ is not a perk of a job, it is a necessity that all employers should facilitate so that their employees