08: Amazon’s Scandal Collection

H eleven for Cool Zone Media. So in this series we've gone from the Amazon warehouse, to the Amazon picket line, to the Amazon accounts office, to the Amazon Spine operations, and then to the Amazon sort of space mission. Now, in between all of that there are several various scandals that haven't quite fit into their own episode. So today this is a sort of amalgamation of various Amazon madness,

a patchwork quilt of disgrace if you like. So, first let's take a look at Amazon in Germany, where in they were accused of hiring security guards with neo Nazi connections in a bid to intimidate foreign workers. Amazon punk endersty effect Senans Can Diets in Dudgeland, Germany's a r D t V channel made a documentary allegend the Amazon hired security personnel from Germany's Hess Security. It claimed that the guards were tasked with keeping order at the hostels

and budget hotels where foreign Amazon workers stayed. The documentary showed guards in all black with military boots, searching the bedrooms and the kitchens of the foreign staff. One of the foreign workers said that the security men lie to them, telling them that they were actually the police. Another said she was thrown out of her hostel by the security for drying her wet clothes on a wall eater. The security men were apparently aggressive and intimidating. So what is

HESS Security well? A r D said that Hess Security was run by a man named U E. L and apparently he has ties to football hooligan firms in Germany and convicted neo Nazis who are quote known to police. A I D says the name of HESS Security is even a slight noder to a leading member of the World War two Iran Nazi Party, Rudolph Hess. They say it stands for Hencell European Security Services. From an independent

article about the HES security situation. In regards to the treatment of Amazon workers, A r D said the following quote. Amazon's temporary staff worked eight hour shifts packing goods at the company's logistics centers in bad Hrstfeld, Constants and Augsburg. Many walked up to seventeen kilometers per shift, and all those taken on could be fired at will. On arrival in Germany, most were told their pay had been cut to below the rate promised when they applied for the

jobs at Amazon. End quote. Amazon denied that they directly hired hair security, saying quote, although the security firm was not contracted by Amazon, we are of course currently examining the allegations concerning the behavior of security guards and will take the appropriate measures immediately. We do not tolerate discrimination

or intimidation. End quote. Just as a side note here, I would argue that they do kind of tolerate intimidation because they literally trained people on how to act like spies in a bid to union bust. But anyway, according to d W News, the security firm was contracted by an employment agency, not Amazon directly. However, the accommodation where they were was full of temporary Amazon workers from outside of Germany, brought in to deal with the Christmas rush.

Most of them were brought in from Spain. One of these workers, a woman named Sylvia, said quote, it's like being in a machine, and we are just a small part of this machine. End quote. A spokesman for the German United Services Union said, quote, they don't see any way of complaining. They're all too frightened of being sent

home without a job end quote. Now, you could argue that Amazon has some responsibility for the security seen as they asked the employment agency to provide them with workers and their workers were staying at the place where this security was. Also, you could say, to be fair to Amazon, they said they would investigate and they didn't personally contact has security. But this is just another example of what can happen when human beings are treated. There's nothing more

than flesh robots for the warehouse floor. Proper checks were clearly not carried out, likely simply due to the fact that profit was all that mattered, and as we've learned in this series, Amazon often doesn't look out for its workers. This is reflected on the ground in Germany more recently also, as workers there went on strike in November one to protest wages and work conditions. Unions They're said Amazon has failed to meet industry standards when it comes to the

wage rights. A union rep there said, quote is unacceptable that a multinational corporation worth billions earns itself silly and yet refuses to give its employees the wage increases the other companies in the industry repay their colleagues. End quote. Yeah, I agree with that guy. That's kind of what this whole series is trying to get at. Amazon employees almost thirty thou people in Germany and plans to build more

warehouses there in the future. In November, there was a staff walk out in Leipzig and at two sides in Bad Hersfeld, which is also where the foreign workers harassed by her security were working. This was yet another account of workers being mistreated directly by Amazon or via proxy of the people that employed them to work for them, as we've seen many such cases. Now we're going to go from foreign Amazon workers harassed in Germany the mysterious

Amazon workers on Twitter. This is actually kind of mad and it really shows how potentially devious Amazon is. So Basically, in March one, as many Amazon workers in the US state of Alabama voted to form a union, some Amazon workers took to Twitter to say how much they loved Amazon. They were a group of so called Amazon FC ambassadors

Fulfillment Center ambassadors. They were generally starting off by tweeting what was a template sort of message with an image of themselves, saying things like this, quote my name is Leo, I'm an Amazon ambassador and rebin at Jack's two. Any questions about the FC, just ask. I'm also into riding motorcycles, the beach and slash or pool. I'm retired public service Newark, n J c R seven support Portugal National Soccer Club and Sporting Football Club end quote. Or there's Michelle, the

Amazon FC ambassador. She tweeted, quote, I I am Michelle. I am a Pick ambassador and trainer at b F I four in Kent, Washington. If you have any questions about what it is like to work at an FC, feel free to ask me. I am passionate about my family and love to cook, bake, and garden. It gives me peace. End quote. Then it led to things like this. One user named FC Dalla began to speak out against

the Amazon unions. She said, quote what bothers me most about unions is there's no ability to opt out of jews. Amazon takes great care of me. End quote. That was quite weird to say. Is seen as Dalla claimed to be based in Alabama, where reported by the BBC, it's actually illegal to have a union without a jew's opt out option. Another user named Burt, who said he worked at the Okay for Amazon warehouse, tweeted, quote unions are good for some companies, but I don't want to have

to shell out hundreds a month just for lawyers. End quote. Now, it just so happened that Burt's display picture on Twitter was actually a guy from a YouTube comedy group called Dude Perfect. They have almost sixty million subscribers. A short while after these anti union tweets were sent out, it was noticed online that some of the Amazon FC ambassadors suddenly changed their names. So the quote we just read about Michelle was actually now from an account called Sarah

at Amazon FC. Sarah, as first reported by a journalist Karen Weiss, Rick, became James, Leo became Sierra, and Michelle became Sarah. So what's going on? Well, as you've probably clocked by and now, these were not real people. These were fake accounts set up to smear unions, made to look as if they were the opinions of genuine workers at Amazon. The BBC wrote about this and they contacted Amazon to ask about these fake accounts, of which there

were many, but Amazon didn't respond. Now, I don't think it takes a genius to realize who the most probable company behind them is fake accounts. Aside, Amazon actually pays real workers to do this online. These workers are paid to promote and defend Amazon on Twitter, these name changing accounts I just mentioned, though they weren't even real in the end that Twitter had to suspend many of these

fake accounts as they broke the spam and platform manipulation rules. Now, if it was Amazon who was behind these fake accounts, which personally I believe it almost definitely was, everything points towards them. They even actually pay workers to do this without them being fake accounts. If it was them, I think this really shows how unbelievably dishonest and devious Amazon can be when it comes to busting unions. They do not want their workers organized, and they don't want them

to make a better working environment for themselves. That much is clear to me. At least. A way to play the long game to stop workers organizing unions could be to basically coach people from young that unions are no good. Now, how could Amazon. Do that you ask, We'll have to listen to this. In Could John High School in the US state of California began offering a Amazon Logistics and Business Management pathway courts. This was reported first by Vice's

motherboard writers Aaron Gordon and Lauren Kori Girley. They described the course as quotes, a first of its kind series of courses intended to help students get a head start in a career. In the gistics end quote, Amazon donated fifty dollars to kick start the course. You could argue that that's not a donation and simply a payment or a bribe provided to the school to get them teaching and Amazon business syllabus, but I'm not saying that now. If you didn't think this was starting to sound a

bit weird before, get this. The classroom where this Amazon Business courses being taught was redecorated, painted in Amazon's signature yellow branding and with Amazon's Leader principles written on the walls. Those are customer obsession bias for action deliver results. So you go into class in an Amazon colored room with their odd catchphrases written all over the walls. Customer obsession bias for action deliver results. Sounds like a really weird

business cult. To get a better idea of what's going on with the Amazon Logistics and business management pathway, course, I spoke to Lauren Cotory Gurley about the article that she co wrote about this. You had this scoop recently. I can only describe it as like an Amazon indoctrination kind of course in a school. Maybe you can explain to us all about this article, you know you recently wrote, and the kind of ins and outs of it what

it actually is. Sure so. UM About a year ago, I came across, UM, of course, a program that Amazon was launching at a high school in southern California in the Inland Empire, which we can talk about later, but it's near Los Angeles. Uh, there's a big Amazon presence, UM and in the program was specifically to prepare students to UM for work in the logistics industry, so for

warehouse work. UM. You know, we know knew Amazon sort of had STEM sponsorship programs and high schools and middle schools around the country, but this is the first time UM there had been sort of a program specifically about preparing a very young workforce for warehouse work. UM. And this is in an area where there is a ton of warehouse jobs. UM. And so we ended up floying UM the school district and this is where this high

school is located. It's called cohone High School UM to see sort of what we could get about the class UM and we got a couple of uh, what would we call like syllabi um for two courses that are currently going on at this high school. The program is called Amazon Logistics and Business Management Pathway. And the two courses that we got ahold of the syllabi for were Business Management and Entrepreneurship and Global Logistics and Concepts. And I guess I would just start off by saying that

Amazon did not design these courses. We talked to the school district, and the school district told us that they did not play a role in designing it. But they are sort of a partner in this, uh in this program, and they are sort of oversee it. So they provided a load of money though right, like fifty grand I think it would, yeah, fifty grand. They donated fifty grand UM. And this this is all going on in a in a classroom that is um painted with Amazon's leadership principle.

So we have some photos in the article if you look at it, but UH it says customer session bias for action deliver results like on the classroom walls. UM. Amazon UH is very UM customer centric, as your listeners probably already know. But sort of the models like do anything for the customer, UM. And so yeah, the students I learn in a classroom with UH these UM these things written on the walls, right, So so tell us

about the syllabus of the courses. So the first course, the Management and Entrepreneurship course UM has is just like sort of pretty standard I think for what you would get in like a class like this in high school.

But UM, there's a there's a section on motivating employees, a very large section motivating employees where they talk about UM Frederick Taylor and scientific management, which is sort of like Frederick Taylor was an industrialist UM and during the Industrial Revolution who sort of developed ways of streamlining work processes in order to maximize the productivity of workers with

a stopwatch. This is very similar to sort of Amazon's practices today where they're just constantly trying to find new ways to squeeze productivity and and and and you know, profit in other words, out of out of their workers. UM students are also learning about Maslow those hierarchy of needs, which is interesting because Muzzle's hierarchy needs like sort of teaches you that people will UM sort of sacrifice like I don't know, their own personal fulfillment or mental health

for basic physical needs if they need to. UM. There's a section on mergers and acquisitions where they ask students why our mergers and acquisitions important to a company's overall growth? UM sort of a section on Uber actually where UM they talk about like sort of things that Uber has done wrong and they say what can Uber do to ensure its competitors are not chipping away at its dominant market share as a result of such bad press. So it's very much like UM a course that was designed

for from the perspective of someone wants to go into business. UM. There's another course that UM that we had the curriculum for which goes on to have called about global supply chains, and there's a large section on Amazon. UM. It goes through Amazon's history, it's vision um sort of its impact on e commerce globally, and it's just found the language that they're using you can tell that this is very pro Amazon. Um, it's described as exciting and why people

should be excited to join these industry. Oh and then as both as part of this entire program, the stab I say that like students have to take a participate in an internship and the place they suggest the internship

being is at an Amazon warehouse. Um so um, yeah, so it's it's it's not like Amazon played a central role in designing the course, but clearly they are very much, you know, involved in this because they're trying to prepare the future generations of their warehouse workers sort of give them a tay east of or like have their first

experiences with Amazon b ones like these. Um, and just want to note that, yeah, your listeners probably know, but Amazon has a long record of of union besting and being anti union and so it's it's ironic too, and it's it's very warring to a lot of people to have young people have their first you know experience of like what is a labor union coming from a company that is extremely anti labor. I think it raises a lot of questions for for the community and for people

who are um, you know, activists in this area. Roughly like what kind of age group the students that were in this class. Currently there are ninety four students who are in this class and they're um, I think mostly uh sophomores, juniors, and seniors, so they're like sixty and

eighteen years old. Um. And it's unclear this course was designed in partnership with a with a state college and a community college is unclear whether Like I asked the school and as district, it was like, do a lot of students go on how many of your students go on to work in Amazon warehouses it? Or do they go off to college or sort of what? Um, where are a student? Like are they preparing students directly warehouse

work or what? And they didn't. I couldn't provide any statistics, but I do know in in the Inland Empire, a lot of people working in Amazon warehouses are college students trying to get through college. To me, if it was like kind of like subversive feudalism, you know what I mean, like putting the seed in there from really early, like everybody should be a part of Amazon, Like it does feel kind of creepy to me. I mean, what do you work? Oh yeah, I mean I think that's totally

a part of it. Like companies, and this is not just true of Amazon, like companies want to I mean, like look at like Instagram trying to make Instagram for like babies or like children or something like they want to, um, create a relationship, or like banks wanting young people to open up bank accounts, they want to create relationship with you,

like as early as possible. Um. There's actually and I don't know a ton about this either, but there are these things called Bezos Academies, which are preschools that are popping up all over the country over the past few months. There's some in Florida, Texas, Washington State. UM. Besas Academy starting when you can't even read yet. So we've got the ironically named Amazon principles being taught in the warehouse, on social media and now even in some schools. I'm

not saying rich business people shouldn't invest in education. I think the opposite is true. They definitely should if they want to. However, when you look at who Bezos is, what he believes in, and how his company treats its workers, I think we need to take a step back and consider what the Amazon long game is in the next episode of Megacorp, we're going to be digging into who Jeff Bezos actually is. Is the richest man on earth,

the founder of Amazon, and much much more. Megacorp is made by my production company H eleven for Cool Zone Media. It's written, researched, and produced by myself, Jake Hanrahan. It was also produced by Sophie Lichtman. Music is by Some Black, graphics by Adam Doyle and sound engineering by Splicing Block. If you want to get in touch, follow me on social media at Jake Underscore Hanrahan. That's h A N A A h A n