PHIL272 Business Ethics: ‘We are not robots’: Amazon warehouse employees.
What do companies owe their employees? Is Amazon meeting its moral responsibilities to its employees? (In your answer, focus on one of the ethical theories we have studied in class.)
CASE STUDY
‘We are not robots’: Amazon warehouse employees
push to unionize
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/01/amazon-fulfillment-center-warehouseemployees-
union-new-york-minnesota
As Amazon’s workforce has more than doubled over the past three years,
workers at Amazon fulfillment center warehouses in the United States have
started organizing and pushing toward forming a union to fight back against
the company’s treatment of its workers.
Amazon’s global workforce reached more than 613,000 employees worldwide
according to its latest quarterly earnings report, not including the 100,000
temporary employees the company hired for the holiday season.
Just a few months after Amazon opened its first New York-based fulfillment
center in Staten Island, workers announced on 12 December the launch of a
union push with help from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
“Amazon is a very big company. They need to have a union put in place,” said
an Amazon worker who requested to remain anonymous. The worker has been
with the company for two years and was transferred to Staten Island when it
opened in October 2018. “They overwork you and you’re like a number to
them. During peak season and Prime season, they give you 60 hours a week.
In July, I had Prime week and worked 60 hours. The same day I worked
overtime, I got into a bad car accident because I was falling asleep behind the
wheel.”
Other employees cited working conditions as one of the prevailing factors for
wanting to form a union. “I support the effort. They have to be more
supportive toward their employees,” said another Amazon employee in Staten
Island. “Right now, at that fulfillment center, if an employee is a picker, they
want that person
PHIL272 Business Ethics: ‘We are not robots’: Amazon warehouse employees