Posted on 05/23/2023 7:16:18 PM PDT by DoodleBob
Some Amazon employees in Seattle are making plans to stage a walkout later this month, according to a recent report from The Washington Post.
On Monday, some Amazon staffers began distributing Slack and email messages calling for other workers to join the protest at the company's headquarters on May 31, the Post reported.
The one-day walkout aims to address employee concerns over the company's return-to-office directive, as well as recent layoffs and the company's impact on climate change, the publication said. The event coordinators told the Post they need at least 1,000 Amazon employees based in the Seattle area to participate in the protest.
The action is the result of two organizing groups at the company, a group that formed on Slack as a result of Amazon's return-to-office policy and the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, the Post said. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Post.
Amazon spokesperson Rob Munoz told Insider: "We respect our employees' rights to express their opinions."
The move to stage a walkout comes after Amazon announced in March that is was eliminating about 9,000 more jobs after it cut 18,000 roles in January.
And the layoffs haven't been the only unpopular decision the company has made in recent months. In April, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy doubled down on the company's return-to-office plans in his annual letter to shareholders even after the company had faced backlash for its mandate that employees must be back in the office for at least three days a week starting in May.
Munoz, Amazon's spokesperson, told Insider that the company has had a "great few weeks with more employees in the office" and added that Amazon has explained its thinking around the return-to-office over the past few months in "different forums" and plans to "continue to do so."
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
My suggestion, get the h-— out of Seattle.
Now Amazon will know who to let go
Looks like the next 1,000 lay offs have self identified. Stupid should hurt.
Bezos on his super yacht will order floggings.
..until morale improves.
Walking out about layoffs seems stupid. Those peeps SHOULD be let go.
When my boys were younger I used to tell them that “lobotomies will continue until grades improve”. :)
Exactly! Later losers! With all these illegal aliens surging across America, I’m sure they’ll find someone to fill that role.
The brave workers trying to undermine the US to bring in Communism (/S) had Pete Seeger (Communist Party member) to lead them in song in their protests in the 1960s. Hi “aw, shucks” “just us plain folks here” phony affectation and accent are humorous now.
Listen to this live recording, probably just like the Amazon workers today.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J_AuTJ_lkQ
I Ain’t Scared of Your Jail (Cause I Want My Freedom)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsg7z8BYTWo
We Shall Overcome (after appeal to raise funds and join marchers)
I’ve been pondering this. In many ways “hybrid” is the way to go actually. The best of both worlds. Not 3 days a week though—two. Three is unnecessary and one is not enough. Two is optimum.
Amazon hires and fires a thousand people all the time.
No will notice these people gone.
I left that for a position with a state agency. That was a personally rewarding experience, unfortunately it didn't pay good enough amid a Biden economy. I had to leave it.
I thought I could go back to Amazon but in the past six months there hasn't been a single job opening at the facility I had been at, not even during the holiday rush. I've been making do with other jobs that are not satisfying (but do pay the rent enough).
My guess: in the few years since I've been there Amazon has SERIOUSLY automated a lot of the tasks that I had been doing.
Agreed.
At some point, there is no place left to run.
No problem. We’ve got a flood of dumbass cheap labor wading across the Rio Grande right now who are ready to jump in and fill the void at Amazon.
Amazon owns their headquarters office building. It was constructed to meet the office needs of X employees who work in the office five days a week. If the company adopts a business model in which employees work from home two or three days a week, then it is effectively wasting all that office space that will be unused 40% to 60% of the time it was originally designed to be used.
This is why I only see two eventual options for work that can be done at home: either 100% work-from-home or 100% in the office.
Simple solution for the empty office space.
The higher-ups at Amazon go to the office.
The other 70% of the building is used to house homeless people, safe needle drug use zones, etc. Maybe an area where people can drop off their donations of used clothing and matteresses.
Just think of the huge ESG score Amazon would get! And the workers that want to stay home can. Win-win-win!
Back in February of 2020 I was working with a client and I was very cued in with what was going on with Covid in China and had been for about 6 weeks. I bought into the fake fear videos coming out of China.
But - I did warn him that Covid was going to drastically change how we did things, how we worked, etc. He thought that I was nuts.
A few weeks later (so a couple of weeks into the shut-down) I was talking about the project with him and when we were done he apologized for thinking I was nuts.
He is still working from home, as are lots of folks. Of course some jobs allow for that, while others require more hands-on collaboration with others on the team. And there is a mix as well - in the office for two or three days and home for the other days.
LOTS of empty office space in Seattle.
My old man was a home builder. He had been approached by people to build office buildings. He always declined. He said that when the economy slows down and you are working on a house it is one thing to have a house or two built with $50,000 invested in the house (1970 prices) with no sales. (Which happened during the Carter years). But to have millions invested in a large office building - and the more common downturns in the business cycles, he didn’t want any part of that. Although I suppose most buildings aren’t owned by the developer - but are owned by the company using the building. Maybe it was different 50 years ago.
Of course I didn’t read the entire article or thread before I posted. I now realize you are talking about the difficulties of hybrid working, with the employees coming in some days during the week.
My idea could still work, but with the added complications of scheduling the homeless sleeping schedules around the employee’s schedules.
I better stop posting. Some Seattle council person might read this and finally realize that most of the office space in Seattle sits empty during the night and could be used as sleeping quarters for the homeless.
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