11: Everything We’ve Learned About Amazon’s Bad Practice

final installment of Megacorp. For this series, at least over the past twelve episodes, we've dug into almost every Amazon scandal. There is dangerous working conditions, union busting, spin on customers, and much much more. This series has been very information dents. So for the final episode here, I'm going to recap everything we've learned and take a look at what people might want to do now they have all this information.

You can maybe use this last episode as a primer to get people interested in listening to the whole of megacorps. Or you could use it as a too long, didn't read version. It's up to you anyway. Let's go back to episode one. We heard about the mistreatment of warehouse workers at Amazon, where they're worked off their feet. As we mentioned then, Amazon warehouse workers are paid around seventeen dollars an hour in the US and around fourteen pounds

an hour in the UK. For these wages, employees will often work ten to twelve hour shifts, constantly on their feet, where they're expected to hit never ending targets. A package must be dealt with every thirty seconds. If you're working as a pick you're expected to process three hundred items per hour. You've given nine seconds to take each item from a robot that delivers shelf upon shelf of Amazon packages. Staff are constantly filmed in the warehouse as they work,

and their toilet breaks are even time. Workers get two fifteen minute breaks, much of which can be taken up by just walking to the toilet through the vast expanse of the warehouse. People often fall asleep standing up will become injured at work. Leak documents revealed in the New York Staten Island Amazon Warehouse reported injuries over three times the industry average. To put that into context, the injury percentages at the Amazon warehouse will worse than its steel

refineries and sawmills all over the world. Workers have voiced anger at these horrific working conditions, so as any of this changed in a few months we've been doing this series. The short answer is no. There have been some victories for unions here and there, but Amazon continues in its mission to crush them. Workers are exhausted, overworked, and in my opinion, are often treated like flesh robots on a

warehouse floor. For that, Amazon managers now remember Bezos is worth an estimated one and seventy seven billion dollars, and on working conditions at Amazon, he has said quote, I'm very proud of our working conditions end quote. After twelve episodes of research for this that quote rings even more tone death for me than it did at episode one, especially when you consider how sinister some of Amazon's union busting techniques have been, which we covered in episode two.

If you remember, we covered how in and internal and union Amazon video was leaked onto the internet. The video is essentially a training guide on how to stop workers unionizing. This video was sent to managers at the company Whole Foods amidst the initial stages of worker organization around June. Whole food was brought out by Amazon in seventeen for thirteen point seven billion dollars. The anti union video is forty five minutes long, and it's split up into six

different parts. The whole thing is animated. It takes place in a two D Amazon warehouse, where the narrator says, the purpose of the video is quote specifically designed to give you the tools that you need for success when it comes to labor organizing end quote. Now there's something quite all well and in the way this video portrays itself. As we said before, it's essentially a guide that Amazon is created to help recognize when workers unions are beginning

to form, but not so they can help them. It's so they can stop them. Yet the language used in the video acts as if it's somehow an ally of the workers. When they say they're helping give companies the tools they need for success when it comes to labor organizing, what they mean by success is basically crushing the unions. Amazon is training and encouraging workers to literally spy on each other. They suggest monitor in their behavior, their clothes, and even what words they use to try and work

out if they're involved in union organizing or not. The video goes as farmers to suggest that managers second guess the motivations of the workers by watching to see if anything changes in their behavior, even if they have not said anything regarding unionizing. So I think it's safe to say that the Amazon warehouse and anyone unionize in there is not in the healthiest place to be working if you want some level of autonomy in the workplace. So

what about the health and safety. Well in episode three we covered that too now. As we noted back then, in twenty the UK's GMB trade union obtained figures that showed injury rates weren't improving and we're perhaps getting worse. More than fifty of the country's Amazon warehouses. GMB used the Freedom of Information Act to get hold of the

figures that showed the dire situation of warehouse safety. In fact, as cited in a Guardian article, in three years leading up to twenty, more than six hundred Amazon workers have been seriously injured at UK warehouses. That's an average of two hundred plus Amazon workers a year sustaining what's classed as quote serious injury in the workplace. In the UK, the annual total of Amazon warehouse injuries was one hundred

and fifty two. In the years twenty sixteen to twenty seventeen, it went up to two hundred and thirty in twenty eighteen, and then up again to two hundred and forty in twenty nineteen. One study by the Strategic Organizing Center the s o C shows that workers more likely to be injured at Amazon warehouses than in any other warehouse in that industry. They're also more likely to be injured more

frequently at Amazon warehouses, even more severely. So basically, if you work in warehouses for a living, you are way more likely to catch a severe injury working for Amazon than any other of their competitors. So Amazon's warehouse work is borderline oppressive and even dangerous. When workers want to unionize to try and change some of this, Amazon truly encourages other employees to spy on them in a bid

to crush the union. So why is Amazon so underhanded? Honestly, at this stage, my best guess is quite simply because profit over everything. As we already know, Bezos is the richest man on earth. It's not like his business is struggling either. As we mentioned in episode four, in twenty twenty, Amazon made forty four billion euros in sales income in Europe. That's thirty eight billion pounds and fifty billion dollars they

didn't pay any corporation tax on this. Corporation tax is paid by businesses in the UK, and it's calculated on their annual profits in a similar way to income tax for individuals. The corporation tax rate has been for all limited companies since April. Prior to this, the rate very dependent on the company's profits. Unlike individuals, companies don't receive any kind of tax free allowance and therefore all profits are taxable. However, there are a number of expenses and

deductions that can be claimed to reduce your bill. Either way, Amazon should pay their way like everyone else has to. Now, as I stated before, I am not a big fan of any state, and I'm certainly not a fan of my government here in the UK. But this is just the way things are. If you're a mega rich company making money under these conditions, you should have to pay

the proper tax under these conditions. Why well, because if you, or me, or your average man and woman earning normal money on the street don't pay their taxes, we get sent to prison. Now, your average man or woman is not rich enough to hire top of the range accountants firms that help you dodge at tax Amazon is. I say this because what they're doing is actually perfectly legal. Now. I don't know about you, but for me, that makes it all the more frustrating. Europe has become a playground

for mega corporations. They're able to do acrobatics with their tax payments because they can afford to make it work for them. Meanwhile, companies like Amazon willingly abused their most important workers, whilst paying as little as possible back into the countries they make money off of. If all this wasn't bad enough, we went on to discover in episode five and six that Amazon is also spying on everybody too. So we asked the question, is Amazon spying on you?

We took a look at several of their products and the answer was a resounding yes they are. First, we looked at their smart speakers. In nineteen, it emerged that Amazon employees have been listening to voice recordings captured via Amazon's Echo smart speaker in consumers homes and offices. This wasn't a couple of rogue employees either. Amazon literally hired thousands of people to do this. Their job was to not only listen to what you're saying, but to also

transcribe and annotate it. They then feed it back into the software with the aim of apparently helping Alexa understand voice commands more effectively. Either way, they're listening to your conversations and they're writing them down. This raises extremely serious questions about a citizens personal privacy, and trust me, it

gets a lot worse. Reported by Forbes, the people tasked with listening to your conversations quote required to record the data, whether the device has been activated on purpose or not. End quote. So by buying an Amazon Echo, you've essentially invited an employee of Amazon to listen into your private conversations, whether you've given Alexa a command or not. If Big Brother is always watching, it's clear now that Amazon is

always listening. If the people hired to listen, in record, and annotate conversations in your home via the Amazon Echo here private data such as your bank details, they're told to just market down as quote critical data and move on. Let's just hope every single one of the thousands of people Amazon employed to do this honest and didn't steal anyone's details. Next, we looked at Amazon's home security devices. Specifically, Ring Ring is a home security company owned by Amazon.

They bought it in eighteen for one billion dollars, and millions of people across the world used the technology. Ring provides a line of WiFi connected security cameras for your home. You've likely seen footage of Ring doorbell security systems online. Is basically you usually a little camera in the doorbell or wherever they put it in their house, and it allows the home owner to see what's going on outside

before they open the door or inside. For example, if you want to keep an eye on your kids as they're playing through the WiFi, you can pull Ring up on your phone or your tablet, or your laptop or whatever. In nineteen it was reported that hackers had built themselves

dedicated software for hacking into Amazon's Ring security cameras. It becomes clear how funked up this is when looking at a story from Mississippi in the US, where it was discovered that hackers had managed to get into a Ring security camera placed in the bedroom of three young girls, one of them was just eight years old. The hacker managed to take control of the Ring security camera, playing music through its speaker as the young girl has played

in their room. The hacker played the song Tiptoe through the tulips, and when one of the young girls asked who was there, the hacker replied, quote, it's Santa, It's your best friend. End quote. If that wasn't bad enough, it was later discovered that rings own employees have been improperly accessing rings user video data. It doesn't stop with

the home security systems either. We learned that Amazon had been allowing law enforcement to use customers home security systems, specifically the ring doorbells to access video footage in the wake of the George Floyd riots across the US. They've also been building huge systems for America's CIA of Britain's g C h Q After that. This brings us to episode seven, where we looked into Jeff bezos trips to

near space aboard his Blue Origin projects. Blue Origin, the Bazos commercial space company, stresses that to keep costs down, their rockets are all about reusability. Well, actually, when we looked into it, according to the two World Inequality Report, one space flight amidst more carbon dioxide than most of

the world's population creates in their entire lifetime. To me, knowing that, it seems a bit ironic for Blue Origin to be talking about paving the way to a brighter future for our kids, as they do when their very own m oh of regular commercial space flights will possibly destroy the Earth's environment quicker. Now, whilst Blue Origin says it wants to make commercial space travel cheap, they don't mean the same kind of cheap as the way most people understand it cheap to me, for example, is say

thirty pence for a point of milk. My point is the people who will be taking these space flights will almost definitely already be very very rich. For their michere might be cheap, but for your average man and woman on the street, Blue Origins space trips will be completely

and utterly unobtainable. So in theory, whilst these rich people are flying around like the Jetsons claiming to be advancing society, for us, your everyday man and woman are getting blasted in the long run with unprecedented levels of carbon dioxide build up in the atmosphere. Now why does that matter, Well, if there's too much carbon dioxide, the Earth gets too hot. If the Earth gets too hot, we are all completely fucked. The oceans will go toxic, food will become scarce, crops

won't grow, and brutal climate wars will undoubtedly erupt. Carbon dioxide levels have been steadily rising on Earth for the past one hundred years now, hitting levels that scientists say have been unprecedented for hundreds of thousands over years. So we already reckoned the shop due to excessive pollution, and now the rich commercial space people want to save us by dumping out a load more carbon dioxide via space shuttles will never be able to afford a ride on.

After taking a look at Blue Origin and Bezos is Early Life, we came back to Earth and the present day to learn about the Amazon Flex driver pyramid scheme, a scandal in which Amazon drivers had had their tips stolen from them by Amazon as a means to pay their daily rate. For this, Amazon got fined sixty one point seven billion dollars, and believe it or not, almost immediately they became even richer. Listen to episode eleven to

find out how. Now, that was all a very long way of summing up the key points of what we've already gone into in this series. But as I said, you can use this as a means to draw people into learning more about the mistreatment, corruption, and on stop scandal inside Amazon. Now, if you've got to the end of this series, you've listened to every episode, you might be thinking, should I boycott Amazon or not? Well, maybe you shouldn't, Maybe you shouldn't. I don't know that. It's

entirely up to you. I didn't make this series to preach or tell anybody what they have to do. Let's be honest, Amazon has become so intrinsic in our lives and so useful that it's hard to totally detach from it. Spending money with Amazon obviously doesn't make you a bad person, and it doesn't mean you have no ethics, And if anyone tells you that, honestly, just tell them to mind

their own fucking business. Saying that, at the very least, I do think if you're purchasing from a company as soulless and as ruthless as Amazon often is, the very least you should be aware of what they're really up to. With this series, I've tried my best to cover all of that with as much detail as possible. Outside of being aware of Amazon's theft, spying, worker mistreatment, and tax dodging,

I'd suggest supporting any Amazon workers union you can. Don't worry too much about are you represented politically within it. These are workers that are coming together and they want a better future and a better working environment. That is definitely worth supporting in my opinion. Also, I would say this, but also spread this series far and wide. I didn't make this for other reporters. I didn't make this specifically for people that want to be outraged. I made this

for everybody. If you are shopping at Amazon As, millions and millions and millions of people do, I think again, the very least you should do is be aware of their bad practices. Also, I would suggest checking out the works of the many reporters I've cited by name throughout this series. If you ever happened to be in contact with Jeff Bezos for any reason, tell him to look after his workers. They're the most important facet of his empire. Without them, he is fucked. This has been mega core

with me. Jake Hanrahan, thank you for listening. Mega Corp 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 Lichtmant. 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 Underscool, Hanrahan. That's h a n a A h a n The Break