Amazon Subprime

In the back of your mind you always knew this is where those great Amazon discounts came from: Desperate workers, including pregnant women, passing out in stifling 110-degree warehouses, some of them required to sort or pack a different item every 30 seconds over a 10-hour shift.

The Allentown Morning call, a small newspaper in the Tribune chain that has been pummeled at least as bad as its better-known sisters, has a depressing and revealing look at life inside an Amazon warehouse in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. It will make you pause next time your mouse hovers above Amazon’s “Buy Now” button. Here’s the top:

Allentown, Pa.—

Elmer Goris spent a year working in Amazon.com‘s Lehigh Valley warehouse, where books, CDs and various other products are packed and shipped to customers who order from the world’s largest online retailer.

The 34-year-old Allentown resident, who has worked in warehouses for more than 10 years, said he quit in July because he was frustrated with the heat and demands that he work mandatory overtime. Working conditions at the warehouse got worse earlier this year, especially during summer heat waves when heat in the warehouse soared above 100 degrees, he said.

He got light-headed, he said, and his legs cramped, symptoms he never experienced in previous warehouse jobs. One hot day, Goris said, he saw a co-worker pass out at the water fountain. On other hot days, he saw paramedics bring people out of the warehouse in wheelchairs and on stretchers.”I never felt like passing out in a warehouse and I never felt treated like a piece of crap in any other warehouse but this one,” Goris said. “They can do that because there aren’t any jobs in the area.” [My emphasis, as if it were necessary.]

It’s a long and instructive read about what people will try to endure when they’re desperate for work, and what companies will do when they know the workforce is desperate. In this case, it appears a temporary labor agency dangled the promise of permanent employment  Amazon to get people into its warehouses and then fired them when they began to show signs of injury or fatigue. Very very few workers were ever taken on by Amazon. It appears that hundreds busted their guts and then were let go, often for capricious reasons.

The story is full of examples of general corporate heartlessness, but I want to highlight this one: A worker in his 50’s told reporter Spencer Soper that his job required him to spend much of the day on his hands and knees.

The warehouse is organized like a library. Bins labeled “A” were on the floor. Dim lighting in the warehouse in which he worked made it difficult for him to find items stored in the low bins, especially novels with script titles or CDs with small writing, he said. Often, he got on his hands and knees to find things in the low bin, and would crawl to other bins rather than continuously stoop and stand, he said.

“The worst part was getting on my hands and knees 250 to 300 times a day,” he said.

This recalled to me Vanity Fair’s July 2008 oral history of the Internet, and this anecdote from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos:

Jeff Bezos: When we started out, we were packing on our hands and knees on these cement floors. One of the software engineers that I was packing next to was saying, You know, this is really killing my knees and my back. And I said to this person, I just had a great idea. We should get kneepads. And he looked at me like I was from Mars. And he said, Jeff, we should get packing tables.

We got packing tables the next day, and it doubled our productivity.

If the world’s biggest online retailer can’t afford tables for the workers in Pennsylvania, or air-conditioning for that matter, the least if could do is spare them some knee pads.

Lest you think that the workers Soper interviewed are simple malingerers who couldn’t handle the pace of blue-collar work, he makes a point of speaking to an employment agent who places workers in other local warehouses.

But one staffing industry recruiter whose company serves the Lehigh Valley shipping industry said he has interviewed roughly 40 job applicants who complained of difficult working conditions at the Amazon warehouse. Ordinarily, if someone only lasted a few months in a warehouse job, it would raise questions about their abilities, he said. But he has placed former Amazon warehouse workers in other warehouse jobs and they were able to meet expectations, he said.

“A lot of places spend time and money to make something ergonomically designed so that the average person can do the work. They don’t have to be a professional athlete to do the work,” he said.

I bet the people at Powell’s get benefits. Hell, I bet they’re even in a union.