TRASHFUTURE - Hell Is Other Human Resources ft. Alex Press

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

We are joined by Alex Press (@alexnpress), of Jacobin and the Primer podcast, to do some more Amazonology. This time, we look at the specifics of how HR operates at this company, how its shittiness ends up hurting workers, and how Amazon is gearing up to export more of its working practices to others. But first, we wonder at why and how it was the parties that finally turned the British establishment against Boris Johnson. If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture If you’re in the UK and want to help Afghan refugees and internally displaced people, consider donating to Afghanaid: https://www.afghanaid.org.uk/ *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

A breaking news. There's breaking British news. The story that no British, no British news organization can stop talking about. It's at the heights of our political and media discussion over here. It is absolutely all over the airways. Scandal in London and British politics. That's right. Matt Hancock gets COVID for second time as he tells fans he's self-isolating, says Yahoo News. He's going for the Bolsonaro. He's going for the record and I for one support our special boy. Well, it's I think in terms of like trying to beat Bolsonaro for record number of times, number of different COVID strains that have mutated actually are unique to living inside

and can't live outside him. Matt Hancock is like, he's the main character of the inspirational sports movie and he's the underdog now. But he's just going to believe in himself so hard that he is going to absolutely destroy Bolsonaro as the world COVID Olympics. Bolsonaro has an advantage because he actually has like 50 headmates who each have a different kind of COVID. I'm just happy that Matt Hancock has taken the time to reach out to his fans. Us. Specifically us and tell us that he's okay. He's just self-isolating again. My God, you can't move for discussion of this story. Is Yahoo News like Yahoo answers where just anyone can go on there and write what the news is? Matt Hancock is reaching out to his fans.

Get well soon, Matt. We are all pulling for you. We'll do a whip round in case you need to go to the vet. Get your hip displayed. Get your hip displayed should dealt with. Yeah, that's right. We're sending Matt Hancock to the big horse vet. That's right. New market jockies enclosure. Absolutely. No. Hi, everyone. It's TF. It's Riley Alice Hussain and Milo. And we have a special guest this week, returning champion, Alex Press. Alex, how's it going? It's great. How are you guys? Very, very well. Well, very well, except for- Not great. Our friend has COVID for the second time. This guy we're a fan of. I feel like pure shit just on him. Our idol.

You have a parasocial relationship with Matt Hancock. I think over the years of doing this podcast, I sort of do. We basically do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I subscribe to like his like $15 tier on Patreon. He sends me a nice message once a month. So I'm much close to him. I love on the- I feel like you could get COVID from him to bring you guys closer together. Oh, that's a good idea. That's right. Yeah, we should all bug chase Matt Hancock. Absolutely. Just hitting Matt Hancock raw in the hopes of getting some of that.

That is, that is just disgusting. Just so vulgar. How dare you, didn't mean Matt Hancock like that. How dare you, first of all? Yeah. Sorry. I would let him hit me raw. No, it's gross to talk about bad Hancock in those terms. That's right. It's not, it's not right. It's basically pedophilia. He has the mind of a child. To those people I say, good evening. Can I, before we start,

if you're listening to this on the day it comes out, which is Tuesday, I have a smoke comedy this evening. What are you doing this evening? Throw it away and go to that instead. There's a link to my website in the description where you can buy that. Also, on the 1st of February, I will be doing a preview of my show, Voicemail, which has changed a lot since the last time it was in London, because I did it around the country. So you're just doing, you're doing your plugs up front now.

I did the plugs up front. Yeah. Fuck you. You want to listen to the podcast? Well, get through the advertising, bitch. Well, I'm sure all the American listeners, especially many of the Americans who follow Alex for labor journalism updates on Amazon and so on, are gonna be like, I got to get to London in six hours. It's cold and plain. Get on one. How much do you even like this podcast? Come on, prove it to me.

So why we have Alex here with us today is we're going to talk about Amazon a little bit, and especially trying to, because you can never talk about all of Amazon all at once. No, this is our second Alex Amazon episode, which you put in the notes as Alex Press Amazon 2. And when I read this, I had a brief moment of terror that they had invented an Amazon 2. Oh, no. Half-day delivery. Half-day delivery, but you have to actually replace your body with a robot body to work there.

Amazon 2. And it's a clone of Bezos running it. Oh, of course. Yeah. He's debuting. And they shall vie for global domination. One's on the moon. It's a whole thing. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna zoom in a little bit and think about Amazon as the organization that is controlling not just this vast swaths of infrastructure

distributing labor around the country, but how it acts as a controller of people's livelihoods, looking at their HR department and how they use that to an almost weaponized form of incompetence similar to something like the DWP in Britain to continue keeping the boot on labor's neck, essentially. Unfortunately, we live in Britain and therefore we have to engage somewhat with the news of this awful country. And there have been two big instances of news. I think we should have our dessert before our vegetables and talk about the fun one first, which is that Prince Andrew is now a private citizen.

He's still the Duke of York. He still gets to live in the palace and everything, but for legal reasons due to being... No longer has 10,000 men. Yeah, no, that's right. Exactly. The Queen took his 10,000 men away from him. I mean, the good thing is now he can come on podcast, right? He's been unmuzzled. He can go on compound media in New York.

Moms basement. No, he's going to go on Legion of Skanks. It's going to be great. But no, I will say, Alex, there's someone seeing this whole sort of psychodrama around like the British royal family unfold from overseas, right? Seeing like and Prince Andrew is now facing like not personal now as having to not even face a consequence necessarily, but stuff is happening to him. How does this strike you? I'll be honest with you. It doesn't strike me at all. I don't pay attention to the real

family. I hate to tell you you're being provincial, but I truly have not been paying attention. I saw, you know, he's going to be like tart and feathered in the streets or something. We can only hope. He's been disowned by his mother and basically is that what's going on? Well, essentially, yeah. What if your relationship with your mother was predicated on you like being the patron of the UK Chiropractic Association and like nine other trade bodies?

Having like a fake argument and that your relationship with your mother was predicated on you doing a bunch of fake jobs. He's lost those fake jobs, basically. Buckingham shares in first nonce rifles. Yeah, that's right. More more to that, right? I think once again, what's happening is kind of a shadow play of accountability because what people always forget is that institutions don't protect the people inside them.

Institutions protect institutions and how an institution protects itself is by protecting the people in them until it has to spit one out. You're saying this is a limited hangout, if you like. And so I think what we're really seeing is that like the thing that enabled him to do all of the things that he allegedly would have done is protecting itself from consequences. What a beautiful sentence structure. The things that he would allegedly have done, working in a position to have allegedly done those things,

then he would have been able to have been able to do that. You know what I'm talking about, right? This is this is armor that is ablative. It is it is the Prince Andrew, the Royal Heech. More or less, you know. And so I think it's and if you want to talk about shadow plays of accountability, I think it doesn't get any better than Boris Johnson getting in hot water for throwing another lame party a year ago, not in the hot tub at the party,

which would have been the cool way of getting in hot water. Just basically getting together with some people in the Downing Street Garden and having some drinks, again, photos that were taken a year ago that have just been released to the press now. Again, palace coup British politics is a snobs versus slobs comedy where the snobs are like the Blue Tech journalists and the slobs are like the Tory cabinet. And they're just like, oh, over at the slob house, they're having a hot tub party again. We're going to call the dean.

What actually is happening, though, is it's the thing is right. I know we always say, I'd like to see Boris wiggle his way out of this one. And then he does, right? But like there is now this sort of, you know, attitude within the press and also within the Conservative Party that this is the thing that's just going to finish him, right? Like it's it's over for Boris at this point. And I want to seriously consider something, which is whether or not we're owned, right? Because we like our consistent policy on these parties has been this is stupid.

This is a side show. Yes, it's insulting. But it's like the fifth most insulting thing he did that day. Who gives a shit? But like even without the media like full court press, even without the internal Tory knives, this does seem to be the thing that has like angered a lot of people. And I wonder, do we just not understand the British public? I mean, that's no bad.

I don't want to understand the human being, but like so I want to again, I want to sort of turn to turn to Alex as the external perspective here. Sort of someone who may have usually seen this in passing. There are now some New York Times articles about like Boris's slipping grip, right? It does that the fact that the entire the entire nation basically is mad that someone had a party when they technically weren't allowed to it is prepared to change the government over it. Again, as like someone who's not British, does that strike you as insane? I mean, I mean, the United States, I have no right to call a people insane.

I mean, it sounds like snitch culture has just is on the rise, you know, people can't have parties. That's happening here, too. We are a nation. I have to stand with Boris. That is very true. Oh, yeah. I think that's an act. I mean, it's it's it's hypocritical.

But like everything that Boris Johnson has ever done in his life has been hypocritical. So people are people are really mad beyond the journalists and the press. It genuinely seems so. Like the polling sort of seems to reflect this also. The Conservatives have like lost people over this, which look, the people of this country have spoken clearly. And what they want is a man they could never imagine having a party. Me, Sakya Stammer.

Can you describe this party for me? Oh, can I ever? Oh, lit as fuck. It is. Well, OK, yeah. Have you ever seen the film Eyes Wide Shut? It wasn't. It wasn't like that.

What basically talking about is about 70 or so civil servants having some like supermarket wine in like the garden behind the townhouse that the government happens in in. It basically is just it's sort of like a bit. It seemed a bit student-y, to be honest. Yes. Yeah. Just a bit like all of these. The thing that I find funniest about all of these scandals is is like every single,

like, you know, get together that happens. Number one is preceded by an invitation that's like, hey, everyone, shall we get together while it's illegal? Don't leak this to the press. And then, by the way, they didn't for like a year until it became politically useful for like the rest of what you like the British establishment, British capital, wherever you want to call it to get rid of this guy who's like, not can't run the country predictably or well.

And they actually did have the discipline to sit on it for like a year or more. That disciplined little freaks in the Tory party, you know, they've got it down. Absolutely. And I hate to say it, but Michael Fabricant made a good point about this, which is that like all of these people works together and saw each other every day. Anyway, like it's like an entirely like it's an entirely rules-based quibble. Like, oh, are you doing this and it looks bad? But no one's actually contending that this is some kind of super spreader event

or like it's purely like the rules. I'll tell you why. Right. Number one, the thing I find most funny about all of these parties, the Christmas party, this one that they couldn't help themselves from having yeah, these parties, but they were all so fucking sad looking. Yeah, like I just I'll remember just like that senior civil servant sitting beside Boris Johnson with his head next to his chest, like looking half asleep, wearing a little tinsel crown and just looking just like a face of death as long as I live.

So these are like crappy red solo cups, store-bought wine for the grocery store. There's like spin the bottle, but no one wants to bring your own. It genuinely was bring your own bottle. It was a party where they didn't serve alcohol, but it's just so 10 Downing Street is Sharia and they won't serve you alcohol. I think like, you know, this also gives us I think a little bit of a an insight into like because Alice, as you raised this question, well, what does this actually mean?

I mean, yeah. And are we over? I think you can we can talk about a little bit of a theory of how like British political culture operates, like the state and the media being one entity, right? And and and this the theory and how they promulgate a theory of politics where this is the greatest sin, because the theory of politics that they that they have, that you might call the British establishment media theory of politics, British British realism, whatever is the theory of politics that you have if you don't really think of yourself as political and you kind of read the

news, right? Because all these events are all these events are interpreted for you by people whose lens is basically this. And so when we talk about media manipulation, we're not just talking about individual lies or stories, but one story spun one way or another or whatever. What you're talking about is a whole worldview, right? A whole form of realism that has been like, you know, we've had basically, I don't know, as long as we've had a press and the British realist view, I think, sees the it's like the British realist view of the world, right? Sees the actual bad things that someone

like Boris Johnson does or something that's the British state does, right? These things that are caused untold amounts of suffering and death and all this as inevitable, unconnected with one another, fundamentally moral, like, for example, the or that happened to, you know, people who you don't think of as human. I mean, that's that's the thing that underlies all of why they never connect this stuff, right? Because you don't think of people in other countries as human. Then you can imagine that we have to bomb them to keep us safe. But then when they come to us as refugees, because we bombed their country, that the

refugees are dangerous. So we have to do more bombing to keep ourselves safe, right? That these these fundamentally incommensurable positions just line up in British realism because these big things are not worth your time to understand. They're too complicated. If anyone tries to tries to link them together, they're condescending to you. It's a way of seeing the world, I think, that is pushed by a class of deeply paranoid, resentful, cruel and stupid people. And it's a deeply resentful, paranoid and cruel and stupid world view. And so although it's so you never so it's so 120,000, 150,000 dead from austerity, never sort of breaks through the concept of social murder never breaks through.

Because anyone trying to explain social murder to you is condescending to you. And also, oh, we had to do that and oh, you're just manipulating. But what this is, is this is a personal slight, right? This is someone, oh, this is someone who is having a good time at your expense, or it feels like someone's having a good time at your expense. And I think then also the other fact, right, that one of the other sort of forms of British realism, right, that you that you see is that you're supposed to take things in politics personally and only personally. And so when I don't know, Jeremy Corbyn like, you know, gives gives like those and does like a soup kitchen on Christmas. He's not doing that because he wants to he's

doing that to make you feel bad for, you know, having a big lunch. Yeah, he's doing it to own you. And so I want to be really clear. I'm not saying that like the people who are in this situation are stupid and cruel or whatever. I'm not saying that it's that the ideology that is swirling around the sort of the British mainstream opinion, British mainstream press is pushed to be that. And when we think about media manipulation, I tend to think of it in this big, big, big sense of the lens that is given to people to view the world. And we are being given a very stupid and cruel lens that is very quick to take offense and is deeply, deeply insecure and looking for personal slights. And then and what Boris Johnson did, this member of the sort of British media

establishment, one of the creators of British realism has committed it's the greatest personal sin, which is he has he has it has indicated through his actions that he thinks he's better than you. And there is no and that's and the last person who did that was Jeremy Corbyn, because the most fundamental British energy is not I want to be having as good a time as you, it's I want you to be having as bad a time as me, which has been exemplified through all the actions. Like I saw one bluetick guy on Twitter who was going like Boris Johnson was having a party on the very day when my wife and I were debating whether she was allowed to come for a walk with my son and I outside because she'd already been for a run that morning. And it's

like, are you an idiot? Do you have the brain of a dog? Like that was a rule that people were joking about because everyone just ignored it because it was obviously stupid. Like if you were actually obeying that rule, you're the idiot. Like, I think it's actually very based on you let your wife out once. It was actually for like more than reasons not like. I mean, it's interesting because, you know, not not British specific, but like the joy of celebrity culture that exists is like, what about a world where there is no material suffering or scarcity, right? Everyone has money and is an elite. And then you can get joy about like the grudges and the pettiness and these people are fighting. This is like the Real Housewives franchise,

right? What if everyone's problems weren't actually a big deal, then they would be entertaining but applying it to politicians and people who actually are inflicting harm. Yeah, I mean, it's just an incredibly elitist view where in fact, no one is suffering. Really, all that matters is has someone slighted you today or said the wrong thing. I think the concept of elitist is a good one, right? It's that I think the other sort of, I get this sort of this way of seeing the world that is promulgated by the British establishment is Boris may be a liar, the country may be cruel, we may be killing people with austerity, we may be killing people overseas, but it's on your behalf, you know, voter.

All for you, Damien. So the message to like, I don't know, middle-aged, conservative, home-owning voters has always been, we're going to be a massive piece of shit for you. And this time, it's they're being shown being a massive piece of shit are like, again, on the basis of pure like rule-following ideology, I guess, but not on anyone's behalf, but their own. And again, like there were never being a massive piece of shit on behalf of anyone, but like, you know, themselves in capital and whatever. But this is, I think, if you want to ask the question, why did this cut through? This is, I think, my best explanation I can give.

So we're not owned. A nation of hall monitors. Oh, for sure. 100%. 100%. Absolutely. A bathroom. Maybe that's like the reeks. I don't think like hall monitors is a thing in like most British

schools, right? I guess like, I guess you have like, the nation of prefects. Yeah, but those are only in like certain types of schools. And you also know the kinds of people that become prefects, right? So I think for like the vast, like a lot of the country, they never sort of got that type of like hall monitor situation that, you know, when you're young and you're sort of given this arbitrary power because you're good to miss, like you're good to miss every so often. I think like, so because most people have never been given that level of arbitrary power when you are given it, suddenly you get this like rush to your head, right? And I think, yeah, I think that kind of like feeds into the pathology.

It's also very funny that the Americans would have a workman like term, like hall monitor, like, oh yes, the child who monitors the hall, whereas the British are like, the prefectus, the Latin one, made foremost among the children. Yeah, it was actually like lunchroom quest room. I was the broke on soul of the break room. That's right. Actually, I had, I had promincia over the sports field. Yeah, you're actually immune from, from prosecution while you hold the title of prefect. So that's enough Britain for one day and maybe ever who knows when we'll be free of it.

I want to talk to Alex about what she knows about. That's right. Amazon. Indie books or that we, that we all love. Yeah, the company that we all love to like purchase our things. Started in a garage by the son of Cuban immigrants. Yeah, that's right. That's what I hear. So I want to start with some, some of the developments that have happened since we last spoke because many things that we talked about have kind of come to a head and in fact turned out sort of well. The, for example, the NLRB has ruled that the Bessemer union vote will rerun

because Amazon for some reason felt it needed to break the rules. New England Patriots cheat even when you're going to win. So what's, what's, what's basically what's happening there? Yeah. So they're going to rerun the union election in Bessemer. The, and both sides actually wanted an in-person vote this time. Last time it was Amazon who wanted in-person and it was obviously the height of the pandemic. Now both sides for different reasons wanted it in person. The NLRB instead is doing mail-in ballots again.

I think the reasoning was still about COVID. So those ballots go out February 4th, come back end of March. I mean, it's good news in that Amazon did clearly break the law and completely broke the laboratory conditions that are required for a union election. I would just tell people who don't really, you know, fortunately, because they have hobbies or something, don't know the details of, you know, stats about union elections in the US. Rerun elections are harder to win than original elections, right?

The sort of stalwarts of the union, many of them have left, right? They were being retaliated against after that union vote. Also, they work at Amazon so that, you know, they would have left anyway. No one stays at these jobs long. So the rate of success is like 40% for reruns, whereas it's like two-thirds of first time around union elections win. So I would just warn people not to expect that this is a slam dunk. I have no idea what the odds of winning are.

But that said, I mean, it is correct that, you know, they should have this rerun. And so that is now happening. Amazon, of course, has hired the best of the best anti-union consultants once again. Oh, they've got the Pinkatons in. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. But the other thing, right, and I think the thing that's sort of more our focus, right, is last time we talked about this bill in California that was going to attempt to regulate algorithmically managed work.

And AB 701 became law. And it basically, and again, Alex, I welcome you to correct me if I'm wrong. It basically means that if you have, if you manage via an algorithm like Amazon does, you have to disclose the productivity quotas to workers and to regulators. And workers can either say, I think this is dangerous. And if you don't change it, the worker can then sue you to change it. Have I described that more or less correctly? Yeah, I mean, it's about making sure that these algorithmically generated productivity quotas

can't be used to prevent workers from, say, using the bathroom or taking legally mandated breaks, right? That said, like the devil is in the details of how you enforce this. How, you know, the business alliance that was opposed to this and did successfully water it down in some respects said that this is just going to encourage workers to file lawsuits, which is very unlikely, right? The amount of time and effort it takes to file a lawsuit with the state board is just incredible. But that said, yeah, I mean, this is about sort of getting some level of transparency

at about something that Amazon and other companies say is like a trade secret. They don't want to disclose this. They deny it's a quota in the first place. But this is a step towards like democratic oversight about these working conditions. And yeah, it did pass into law. And actually, the person who is behind it, Gonzales, she has since left the legislature and gone to work directly for, I think, the California Labor Movement. I love to aggressively oppose regulation of a thing, which I also simultaneously claim does

not exist and that I do not do. It's a bit like Prince Andrew simultaneously claiming that he's not a pedophile and also trying to get the lawsuit thrown out on the basis that she promised not to sue any pedophiles. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, right? Because it's this, on the one hand, it is removing some of their plausible deniability that they can say they aren't doing what they very clearly and obviously are doing. It removes some of that impenetrable shout of secrecy. But as you say, Alex, right?

If you think that your quota is going to prevent you from going to the bathroom or it's going to be dangerous or whatever, you are now, you, you know, some guy are now welcome to sue Amazon and the majestic equality of the law. Yeah, that's going to work out well. I like your chances, absolutely. Because that would, would you say it's that one of the sort of core issues you think? Yeah, I mean, it is. And there were stronger provisions about a warehouse specific injury code that were removed.

That said, you know, there are state regulators now who are empowered to sort of investigate warehouses that say they might be getting tipped off about from the workers. So there is, you know, some level of institutional support. It's not like an Amazon worker has to navigate this on their own. But that said, yeah, I mean, I always emphasize that it's really hard to overstate the amount of the odds that you're up against. If you feel like everyone in your warehouse is being overworked, even if you have it in writing that you're being overworked,

to make that case to an entity like Amazon is very difficult. But you know, it's the thing you said about them like fighting a thing they say doesn't exist. I mean, it does show that they are, this is a concern, right? These companies don't want any sense that other people can have a say over their, their profit generation or any of their sort of workplace models. Absolutely. And the thing is that there's this, this idea of this digital bossing, whatever you want to call it, algorithmic management,

it's this, there's being fought in the warehouse. But actually, and this is sort of where we get into the intentional and weaponized stupidity of organizations like Amazon, it extends its tendrils through the organization entirely. It's in HR as well. It's, it's throughout like, and that's where we're going to focus today in fact, right? Because the Amazon makes its money, right? Building infrastructure or a lot of its money building infrastructure and selling that infrastructure on to other businesses, right?

Like Amazon Prime was Amazon's data center. They realized they could rent space out in it. Now they make huge amounts of money from Amazon Prime. They can, they sell their infrastructural capabilities, all this stuff, right? Amazon Prime, excuse me, Amazon Web Services rather, right? Right. This is, this is all about building the infrastructure required for a business that has to do everything for everyone everywhere and then renting it out to other businesses. And I mean, some of that infrastructure isn't just about picking and packing.

It's about calling in sick, taking leave, disputing a pay deduction, like all of these HR functions as well. And I mean, I actually, as, as I, as I often do, I read some reports before, before doing this. And I mean, some, again, quite booster-ish research firms are claiming that, yeah, like 80% of like the Fortune 500 or like other like top 500 companies, whatever, are going to start using these digital managers, right? Algorithmic management, not just of looking at productivity quotas, but also hiring, firing, training, management of time and so on, right?

And, you know, Amazon hasn't yet sold the software that it uses to do this. We're going to talk about how that works in a bit to other companies. But Amazon has started selling tools designed to like, to automate other tasks, not in warehouses to other organizations. So AWS recently announced a suite of products to like, to not just to monitor other kinds of factory lines, like not just warehouses and call centers use Amazon's call center automation software. So that manages people at call centers as well.

So it's trying to get more of its approach in to more of the economy, not just warehousing. And I mean, so Alex just want to ask, right? Like using HR as the example, what's Amazon's HR like? Yeah, that's a great question. So Amazon's HR is a mess. Like even within the HR world, like everyone sort of understands that this is a company that has just built separate systems and tried to operate them all at the same time. I mean, the sort of sympathetic view is this, this company is building so quickly, it's hiring

literal like armies, entire cities worth of people at an astounding rate. And it hasn't actually integrated these various software systems within HR. So there have been incredible reports, like the New York Times has done a couple of long investigative pieces about this, of the result of these systems not speaking to each other, say a system that tracks paid, you know, any kind of leave you might be on, whether it's vacation, disability leave, workplace comp, workplace injury, that system doesn't necessarily talk to the system that's actually dealing with, you know, what's this worker's attendance and are they getting docked points for lateness?

Often the result of this failure to integrate these systems is that workers are getting fired by the algorithm at just astounding rates. Like, you know, some of this reporting is just huge numbers of workers who are fired, they're kicked out of the system, they're told they've lost their job for failing to show up, even if they were on an agreed upon disability leave, say, or they had COVID and they were on an understood sick leave. These systems don't talk to each other, right? And actually, you know, so I spoke to someone who worked in Amazon's HR

and had just horror stories about her own working conditions there. And, you know, as she told it from her sort of entry level position, answering these calls, she was placed in a position where she's not allowed to give a worker who calls her their case manager's information. She can't access the same systems that say the HR on the site at the warehouse can access, and those people at the warehouse can't access her system. So these systems aren't speaking to each other and we're talking about armies of employees working in Amazon's HR.

And so the result is that everyone sort of rings their hands, is under stress, they, you know, they can't properly handle each worker's claims. And, you know, I mean, I think the reality that, you know, it's in that article I wrote speaking with this woman is that workers are suicidal, they can't pay rent, they can't eat, they can't get anyone on the phone to even talk about having been accidentally or incorrectly fired. There's a new report actually just published today at NBC News about how during COVID now workers are spending like nine hours on the phone trying to get,

to talk to a human being who works in Amazon's HR and they just get kicked off the phone, you know, they'll be on, they're really on hold for like eight hours, right? One thing that she, that these people who work in HR have told me is like, you know, a worker is spending their entire break trying to meet with the HR person at the warehouse and they run out of time, right? I mean, famously Amazon workers don't have enough break time. And so that's how they're spending their days. They're just in a panic.

So Amazon as the leader who's sort of exporting these software management tools is a horror story, right? Because they are absolutely not good or effective in any way. I'll tell you, you know where I've recognized this approach to managing people who are, say, having problems with maintaining their income is, right? It's the British department. France, Kafka or the department for work and pensions. Depending on what reference you want to make.

Yeah, it's of, it is, it strikes me as very similar to a lot of the, to a lot of the way the department of work and pensions manages itself, one of which is to be sort of so difficult to work with and cruel and arbitrary that someone is, you're discouraged from, say, claiming benefits, for example, by just how hard it is to claim them, right? You know, if you are, say, unwell and at a doctor's appointment, you can tell one system that you're unwell and at a doctor's appointment, but it's so shittily clutched together that some other system will send someone to visit your house to make sure you're applying for jobs

and will kick you off your benefits and you can't talk to anyone and it takes eight weeks to appeal and you get no money in the meantime, right? It's, it's the, what you wrote about there, it just, it's, it reminds me of, of the, of dealing with, yeah, like this institutions of a residualized welfare state. I was going to ask Alex, maybe like one thing I've been thinking about a bit, looking at like other like social media platforms and not only they're like very bad HR, but also even when you're sort of like, as a user trying to troubleshoot and how like impossible it is to do it once like platforms kind of reach a certain mass and like this kind of contradiction between

like platforms who are like by design trying to chase like as many users as possible, like trying to kind of expand as much as possible and in doing so, in order to kind of manage that user base in a way that like makes these platforms like valuable, so to speak, there's, you know, employing like algorithmic moderation systems, employing algorithmic like checking systems in the case of Amazon, employing like algorithmic hiring and firing systems, but are designed to sort of be nebulous and decide, like they're designed to sort of obfuscate and they're designed to disorientate, right? I guess like the question I have is like, you know, where we can talk about government departments being dysfunctional, like partly in the case of like certain councils,

there's like lack of funding and kind of like turning to technologies as a way of like cost cussing. You can't really apply that to places like Amazon because they clearly have the money, they have a lot of money. So like, is the system like designed by this on purpose, which is to say that like all the problems with, you know, HR and managing and everything, like it's a trade-off that's sort of seen as necessary or at least acceptable in order to kind of keep the, in order to kind of keep Amazon expanding and kind of attain it, like maintaining its monopoly status. Yeah, I mean, in the case of Amazon, it's a matter of what is valuable to the executives, right? I mean, the idea that you need to retain

these low-wage workers, certainly Bezos himself from the top has said he doesn't want to retain these workers. He said things that are incredibly insulting, like they're lazy, these aren't the people we need to invest in. So I mean, obviously having good HR for a company that has up until now almost an infinite labor pool to pull from isn't a priority, right? You can lose people, you can leave them to starve or be evicted. It's not your problem. You can always find new workers, right? There's no sense that you have to have functional systems beyond the legally mandated minimums, right? So I think it's a sense of we don't need to invest here. You know, executives in the company have said that, you know, one chose to move to HR and was quoted in some New

York Times story saying his colleagues thought that was insane. You know, this was like the loser department, right? It wasn't a place that generates profits. So why would you want to focus your time there? So I think in the sense of a profit, you know, a company that's motivated by profit, it's different than a government agency in many ways. But one is that there's just no reason that you would care. Now they're sort of forced to in part because they're getting, there's so much reporting about it. The other is that they're starting to actually run out of people to hire in certain locations at least in the country because they've expanded so quickly. And so there is a sense of like, oh, we can't fully just be kicking people off the roles

by, you know, automated termination. We actually do kind of need some of these people. But what's interesting about that as well is that what they've seen, it's the ideology of, you know, the people who do matter and the people who don't matter, how the people who make the decisions all talk to each other about how the people who don't matter who are on the sharp end of these systems. Oh, well, they're lazy. They're shiftless. They would take advantage of us if we could, if they could rather. You know, it seems like, and then that justifies, I mean, you know, the phrase poor services are poor services that justifies like, have making sure that when they interact with the company, you know, well,

we can't make it too nice for them, or we don't care about making it nice for them, because, oh, if we made it super easy, it's, I'm, I don't, I don't, I wonder if this is the case, right? Where it's like, oh, if we made it too easy to call in sick, they'd all call it sick. You know, it's because you, you have to have like, what it means is that you have a fear of and a disdain for like, that's the, that is like the two main feelings of, I think, the two main elitist feelings is fear and disdain. And that's what causes you to design a system like this, right? Yeah, I mean, my tendency is to think less that it's about someone's, you know, inner feeling about, you know, the poor or the working class, and more just a total

disinterest, right? Like if my business model, if I have enough labor supply to pull from, that this doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter. You know, I mean, part of that comes from not seeing these people as deserving, humane living and working conditions. But at the end of the day, it's just like, I'm going to get away with as low a cost on both, you know, at any expenditure related to labor, right? So not just wages, but also the entire infrastructure of HR and anything else that is going to have to go to servicing those workers. But yeah, absolutely on some level, it is about sort of disdain or disgust or fear. I mean, but it's so incredible because the opposite has just been happening for years at Amazon where workers who are in fact injured on the job or have

disabilities have legal rights to these breaks, don't get them at all. So the idea that people would be taking sick leave all the time when they don't need it is just has never been borne out by the facts at all, especially at Amazon. So I want to read from your from your article a little bit, right? So another couple of examples. So you mentioned the New York Times earlier, right? It says, workers at as many as 180 Amazon warehouses were paid incorrectly for more than a year, with an internal report finding that Amazon had been short changing new parents, parents, patients dealing with medical crises and vulnerable workers on leave, attendant software frequently marking people as no shows and firing them even when they're on medical leave, workers

being unable to access case managers, spend their entire break talking to HR, and workers who never receive incorrectly docked pay nor gain reinstatement after being fired and how people seem to manage to get redress. I mean, this is only anecdotal, right? How it seems to work is if they can get outside the institution and publicly embarrass a senior person, then there are some anecdotal cases. I've got sort of notes here. By showing that he had apology, for example. They'll then get a call, an apology, all their docked pay reinstated, and it shows that they can do this. It's just you have to go outside this almost iron layer of enforced stupidity or not again, like stupidity in terms of refusing to know something, right?

We replaced our HR department with a sort of like imperial system of petitioning. Well, this again makes me think about the way that the British system is constituted, right? Because it's kind of like knifey-spoony. I mean, this is a super banal example, and obviously these policies, as you said, by the DWP are employed super violently in ways that lead to people actually being killed by their consequences. But even on just the banal level that anyone could experience, like, if you try and book a doctor's appointment at my doctor's surgery, when you call them, there is an automated message that says, we're experiencing a high number of calls today, so we're only accepting calls that are an emergency. And then you call

and every day it says that. And so eventually you just stay on the line because you're like, well, if it's going to say this every day, and then they pick up the phone and they say, is this an emergency? Because we're only taking emergency calls. And then basically what you need to say to get a doctor's appointment is, yeah, but you say that every day. And if you say that every day, eventually it's an emergency. And then they go, I see you've played knifey-spoony before, you can have a doctor's appointment. And so it's basically the same with your HR thing at Amazon. You just have to go outside, do some chicanery, and then eventually like, oh, I guess you can have your right. I mean, that does remind me of the classic case in the

United States, at least, where this has long been true, is journalists role in sort of getting redressed for people who are incorrectly billed for medical services. You'll see some horror story in Vox or The New York Times about someone who was given like $100,000 hospital bill or otherwise had their benefits cut off. But only if they get a writer and a mainstream outlet to write about that does then, you know, the system overwrites itself, right? You have the people at the insurance company or whatever, reach out and say, actually, we'll cancel it. So yeah, it's the same thing. If Amazon workers can get some journalists to talk about their problem, then you can have an executive or a high-level manager at Amazon go into the system and just overwrite the bots,

right, and fix the issue. But they're not willing to do that. We need an equal number of journalists to Amazon workers. We need to, like, I'm like the sort of like, I've gone more mass-aglazious than mass-aglazious. We need 300 million journalists. America needs to adopt the British model of just having hundreds of thousands of columnists. Yeah. So the example of this that I was able to find, right, is if you recall, there were recently a number of tornadoes at an Amazon distribution center in Illinois. And a number of people called and said, there's a tornado warning. I won't come in. I can't come into work. To which Amazon responded basically, we don't recognize tornado warnings. We don't, or at least we don't recognize

this one. I don't believe in any of them. Well, tornadoes are in your head. Jeff Bezos as King Canoe. That's right. I don't believe the tornado will strike my way out. But also has banned workers from carrying cell phones, even though those cell phones often contain crucial tornado warning information in areas where that's very important, right? And, you know, what happened was someone said, there is literally a, they said that she tweeted this at Dave Clark, an executive at Amazon. I'm an Amazon worker in a Kentucky. Tornado hit two miles from my house and I physically couldn't get to work for my shift. The ERC teams, the human resources team, essentially, told me that they had no record of tornadoes in Kentucky and couldn't help me not getting, and couldn't help me with

not getting attendance time reduced for today. And so before she tweeted it, Dave Clark, she would call and call and call. And as you say, Alex, either be kept in hold forever or just say, there literally is a tornado warning. I can see it from outside my house. And FHR say, I don't believe you. And then she reaches out to a guy who's got like a LinkedIn style avi on Twitter who's like, I don't know, head of not doing evil stuff, head of lighting at Amazon Prime. That guy Dave Clark, Dave Clark early in his Amazon career was nicknamed the sniper. Oh, I remember this guy. Yes. He would hide in the warehouse and try to find workers who weren't working hard enough so he

could fire them. Amazing. And of course, he was in the Dave Clark five. Yeah, that's right. And so only after reaching out to Dave Clark and basically publicly embarrassing him getting like getting just having that tweet go sort of semi viral, right? You're going rock music. It's not very good. She then she then finally got a call back. And this is a quote from from Leslie Campbell, the worker. The person seemed suddenly very, very excited. And HR rep said that they would excuse my Saturday shift and pay for the 11 hours I missed. Campbell, this is from an article in MPC said she was shocked that Amazon would even give back, give her back the time and pay her and even repeated it back on the phone to be sure it wasn't a mistake. She 100% believed she

would have been fired if Clark didn't see her tweet. It's kind of like, oh, we're going to put you in a system. And what the system says you do the human element of it is missing. And this is sad. And so she managed to it took basically intercession right by by an executive to get to get the Amazon's HR department to acknowledge reality basically, right? And the HR department said that they didn't know she was saying that was a tornado. They couldn't hear over all that wind. I will just say, you know, in that case, there's there's many horrible and interesting things that came out of that tornado that hit that facility. But one was that almost every worker who was operating out of that facility was not directly employed by Amazon.

They were third party contractors. So they were especially delivery drivers. And so they had to try to petition their bosses who work for these small kind of independent, you know, these companies that pretty much exist solely to service Amazon. And those companies not to excuse them because that there are horrific text messages where they're telling the driver, no, you have to stay on the road, you have to keep going, you know, until my boss tells me otherwise. But the thing is, those companies themselves are too terrified of bucking Amazon's directive that they just also then add another layer of person who is going to absolutely just follow whatever Amazon's preexisting standard is. And they don't want to say anything different or

allow any flexibility. So you just have yet another layer of bureaucracy to go through in a case of emergency like that. I kind of wanted to ask sort of coming to the point of all of this, right? We say like what this kind of sort of like layer of weaponized stupidity between the people working for Amazon and Amazon, right? That's what we can say like what it accomplishes for them as you say is just they want to invest the minimum in this that they possibly can and don't want to have anyone hired to do it. Does it sort of do you think it serves any other purpose or is it just like is or is it literally just a case of we don't want to try at this and we know that we can get away with not doing it? I mean, I do tend to think that's

basically it. I mean, people sort of discuss is the turnover rate at Amazon intentional? There's some degree to which it is, you know, it helps them to not have workers sticking around to actually try to organize or fight these bad conditions. So this accelerates that of course by just forcing people off the job rolls. But you know, I don't think there's necessarily some sort of malicious idea behind it. I really think this is a company that like Amazon is such a useful object of analysis because it really is sort of like, you know, capital embodied like out of a Mark's book, right? Like it really is operating solely for the basis of how do you enlarge the profit generation. And when we talk about them starting to sell these workplace management tools,

I mean, Amazon just constantly looks inward and says, what are we doing that we could then export as a new object to sell? And so I think this is all part of that. And you know, to Amazon's benefit into the sort of the worst for the rest of us, other people are buying, right? Everybody wants to operate like Amazon wants to normalize the sense that you can treat people this way. How can I sell more sex dildos like you, Jeff Bezos? Yeah, Amazon linen coats. That's right. So I almost want to come back to that California law where you can see in the context of like what we're talking about here, that's definitely a step in the right direction, right? But there is this, I would say it's one of these things where they get the fundamental

relationship that Amazon has with its workers is sort of one of, I mean, I think I'll revise my earlier, my earlier statement, it's not even so much sort of fear and disdain its impunity. And, you know, as much as sort of governing specifically like warehouse algorithms, helps to deal with certain elements of impunity, the impunity goes much further than warehouse algorithms. I mean, even if we just restrict ourselves to algorithms, we can talk about the HR ones, you know, and as you say in your article again, I mean, go back to sort of plagiarizing your words here, that it is a strong legislative agenda that can only be carried out with workers themselves organized inside the warehouses to monitor enforcements of such measures,

holding contracts that upend Amazon's dictatorial control over their every movement. That company control is what creates the intolerable, dangerous pressure that leads to such high injury rates and ultimately forces many workers to leave Amazon jobs within weeks, much before much of anything can change. And I guess I think you can sort of think about that as extending to the way that they treat their workers from an HR perspective as well. It's the same culture of impunity, I think. Yeah, I mean, and I should bring up, since we're talking so much about that HR article, which I have to say was one of the few that I was really worried Amazon was going to get extremely mad at me about. But fortunately, things seem okay

right now. They really don't like you talking to their HR employees. But the end irony of that article is as it sort of ends the piece itself, is that this woman was so ground up by the incredible overwork she was subject to. I mean, she told me she was working until like four in the morning, six days a week, sometimes seven, that she ends up so depressed that she's not even eating anymore. And her doctor tells her she has to quit Amazon, right? And her family says the same thing. And she goes on a disability leave, a mental health leave that gets approved by the system that she has spent her entire year at Amazon being the one answering the calls for other people seeking to use that system. And she thinks she's on leave, she thinks she's approved, and she starts

getting emails from Amazon automated saying, you're no, you're, you know, no call, no showing, you're, you are now fired. And she actually does have to similarly appeal up to, she called it her boss's boss's boss, she sends him an email, and only he then steps in and fixes it for her. So, yes, I mean, it's from top to bottom, you know, left to right, as far as how Amazon is sort of just churning through people in the sense of impunity, absolutely, which is why Amazon, like so many other employers, especially in the United States, resists even the concept of a union, not because a union is going to be incredibly strong, but the sense that anyone else has the right to have a say over these conditions really does threaten Amazon's basic model.

What I find interesting about something like that is that, like, you know, Amazon for all of their faults, they're quite good at like software and technology stuff. So why do they have a system that works so badly? Like, it almost seems to me as though having an entirely computerized system, you would expect less errors, you would expect, okay, it's logged in the computer system that I am on leave, and therefore the computer system knows that. Whereas if you told your boss, but then your boss didn't tell the other guy whose job it is to fire people, that would make a manual system would make more sense for why there would be that kind of error, because people are stupid and they forget things and they don't talk to each other,

whereas the all seeing eye computer system, if anything, should be better at not missing that But there's the eye, the eye is very occluded because, you know, you don't want to give that eye lacy, because you don't care about that. You don't care about what it's really looking at you, because you know everything they're looking at is totally replaceable. It doesn't matter if it's right or not. The kind of surveillance that matters is the kind that stops people from like stealing your packages off of the line or something like that, right? It's not the kind of but it's not the kind of surveillance that stops you from, you know, killing your workers with a Or the kind of surveillance that means that when you purchase, you know,

some pencils from Amazon, it like recommend, it asks whether you want to sex still though, as well. More often than the same packet of pencils again the next day. I don't know. You're hungry for pencils, you little slut, you little pervert, you want more pencils. Is this what you're into? Yeah, run out of pencils. But I think there's like a good point in that. And again, it's like, it's very similar to how even with like some social platforms, how they treat like users that aren't influences and stuff, right? Or like those types of systems, which is very much, well, if you're kind of, if the goal is just to kind of like expand users and like get kind of get those numbers up in the same

and I guess maybe in a similar way with Amazon, because the number because you can like, in theory, like replace workers, like low wage workers very easily. And why would you invest in the system that like helps them or like kind of like creates a or like can facilitate at least a tolerable working environment. So like you kind of create the bare minimum and then everything else, like all the stuff that doesn't work is just kind of passed off as like an externality and crucially an externality that like somewhere like Amazon can very easily like afford to like handle. Well, I also think it's important to remember, right? Is the HR systems even working well or never designed to help you? They're still instruments of control. It's just this is,

I would think, very, this is the control of someone who doesn't care if that control hurts you, right? Yeah. And it's, and we'll also kind of be like, well, it's your fault if like you didn't understand how the system works or it's your fault for like not checking on it. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, it's, it's, that's, that's what, and that's why one of the reasons I go back to why I think it's important to talk and think about Amazon as well, right? Because like, like, like we said, this is, this doesn't stop there, right? The Amazon, Amazon might not have, it might not have invented sort of a digital boss, but they certainly figured out how to profit from it most and their model is now the one that is, that other people are looking at.

And it does, and, and that's why I would think like the idea, the idea of how to stop or resist them is sort of so becomes so central to thinking about labor generally, right? Because if you want to look into the future, that's what it is, right? Right. I mean, this is my general ethos about Amazon and why I bother focusing on it. I mean, on some level, you can't write about labor in the United States and not talk a lot about Amazon, just a numbers game, they're employing, you know, a million people. But they are forging one possible future, right? And I think it's, it's very bleak to accept that because they're doing, they're winning, right? I mean, the forces that would build a different future remain incredibly disorganized and weak.

But it is the case that like I said, you know, Amazon sort of is the vanguard of capital and the other places, both major corporations and also smaller businesses, you know, especially during the pandemic, are looking to Amazon and saying, how do we remotely and algorithmically handle HR and job performance? How can we, as our workers are far away, let's think about what it would look like to automate these processes so we can control people wherever they happen to be. So everything is sort of, it's, everything's coming up Amazon for Jeff Bezos, especially over the past two years. And so I think, yeah, there is value because it really does lead the trend and the fact that it strips itself of every one of its services to then say, how do we then

package this and sell it to other employers? That's going to keep happening. I mean, AWS was such a success for Amazon in that respect. And all of its AI sort of experiments its use with, you know, Amazon Turk, all that stuff, you know, the value for Amazon is always that it gets to look at the data and the transactions that happen on its platform or its, you know, quote unquote marketplace. And then it looks at that data and says, how can we sell this information that we've now learned about how people operate and how people interact? And I think that's, that's as good a place as any, in fact, I think to sum it all up and leave it all in the past in podcast land. So I just want to say, Alex, number one,

thank you so much for coming back on the show. It has been a delight talking to you. No, I love, I love talking to you guys. It's been great. Thank you. And please also don't forget to check out Primer, which is all podcast on all things Amazon. It's worth listening to. And also to check out, of course, Alex's writing in Jacobin on sort of these and other issues of labor and union journalism. Lest you fall foul of the trash future all seeing eye, which we're checking if you have been reading Alex's articles. Uh-huh. That's right. If you don't read Alex's articles, then you will be, then we will use our algorithmic ability to manage things in order to get all

of your deliveries a little bit wrong for a month. That's right. Yeah. Well, no, what we'll do is when you order pencils from Amazon, we'll send you, we'll, we'll keep recommending you Alex's article. I think maybe you meant this. Yeah. The Hermes guy is going to throw your box of sex still does over the garden gate and leave them out there in the rain to embarrass you. And then, and then all your neighbors are going to see it and you're the prime minister. What's that? Another scandal. And you're at your party, but there are no sex still dose.

No, actually, to be fair, to be fair, if like, if, if like it was discovered that he had like Boris Johnson does have a box of sex still does, I think that would actually like take his poll numbers up. Yeah. Because the British people do love, they do love weird sex. They just don't like talking about it. Yeah. It's like, oh, he's a, he's a wicked lad. They would say. Yeah. He, he's a guy, he's a kind of guy. I would go to like, uh, go, go to one of the dogging spots near VM fourth with, um, and hang out and have a bear, unlike Kier Stammer, um, who would be very awkward in that such a grim place. See, I like the idea that his poll numbers are going down because the party looked lame.

Like if it was an eyes wide shut style party, he would be doing great. Oh, maybe if I vote for him, he'll, then they'll invite me. Anyway, uh, thank you again, Alex for coming on. Don't forget, uh, there is a Patreon. You can subscribe to it. It is a mere $5, uh, five American classic greenbacks per month. You get a second episode every week. You know the deal. Um, I believe this week we've decided to venture back into the land of cinema, uh, to watch the strange directed Netflix guy, Richie film, The Gentleman. I've seen five minutes of it. Oh, oh, it's fucking Hugh Grant doing a Giza voice. Thank you. Speaking of guys who've attended an orgy, Hugh Grant doing a Giza voice.

Uh, yes. Anyway, uh, so I think that's about it. Anyway, we'll see you in a few days in the bonus. Bye everyone. Bye.