Amazon Prime Ad Hits Just The Right Mark In These Troubled Times

In this Amazon Prime ad, a priest and an imam share
a deep friendship with one another.  

I'm not really a big fan of Amazon or Amazon Prime, but the sprawling company's new ad hits just the right note in these troubled times when hate against people of different faiths and backgrounds seems to be the big style.

This ad bucks that trend.

We see a priest and an imam who are clearly old friends get together. Unlike what we see on the news, the two characters in the ad share a real affection for one another, despite their different faiths.

No worries by the Christian about the Muslim in this ad, no spree!

An Amazon spokesperson says the ad was made before the presidential election results were known,  and is not meant as a slap to Donald Trump and his ilk.

But it kind of feels like that anyway, even if that wasn't the intention. The ad is a great signal for us to stop the hate already.

Yeah, the ad sells Amazon Prime, which of course it is meant to do, but it also sends a message that we should all hear over and over again.

Watch:

Some Employers Still Nickel And Diming Employees In Wage Theft Moves

A Hormel plant in Wisconsin. A judge
there ruled, reasonably, if you
must put on protective gear to do your
job at Hormel, they must pay you
for the time it takes to put that stuff on.  

Hormel is the latest company caught trying to rip off its owner workers in a nickel and dime fashion.

In this case, many workers at Hormel's large plant in Wisconsin have to put on sanitary clothing, hairnets, and ear and eye protection before they can hit the factory floor.

Hormel contended it didn't have to pay workers for the time it took to do this, because it really wasn't part of their job. As if the workers were putting on this federally required gear just to get their jollies, I don't know.

True, it probably takes only five or six minutes or so to take the stuff on and off, but that amounts to about 24 hours a year for each worker, according to the Associated Press. When you're not making much money, every little bit helps.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a 4-2 decision, said no, Hormel has to pay its workers to get in gear to do their jobs.

According to the AP:

"Cleanliness and food safety are 'intrinsic elements' of preparing and canning food at the Hormel canning facility,' Justice Shirley Abrahamson wrote for the majority. 'The clothing and equipment is intergral and indeispensable to the performance of the employees' job function....of preparing canned food.'"

More than 300 workers were awarded a total of $195,000 in back wages.

Hormel said in a statement, "While we are disappointed the decision was not in our favor, we value our employees and respect the court's decision."

No, if you respected your employees you would pay them for all the work they do for you, not just the majority of it.

As Gawker pointed out, it's a bit shocking that swaths of corporate America think it is controversial to pay its workers for all the hours they put on the job.

As Gawker editorialized:

"We are talking about multibillion dollar corporations adding to their profit margins by taking money directly out of workers' paychecks. In some cases, legally! 

In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court (with Scalia, may he rest in peace) rules that Amazon did not have to pay its workers for the time they spent standing in line waiting to be checked by corporate security guards to make sure they didn't steal anything from Amazon. 

That half-hour of time, which was not optional, the company got for free."

The line between work and leisure is more blurred than ever. People do regularly check their work email from home often. I did so today, even though the company I work for discourages it. They're one company that does not want its employees to work unless they're on the clock and getting paid.

But most people, like me, don't mind taking a few minutes every now and again to check in with work. We do want to do a good job, after all.

However, the tricks by Hormel and Amazon were so blatant you wonder if these companies think that workers should work for free.  

The editor at the Huffington Post UK says paying writers
 for their work would make their words "inauthentic."

That's true in the gig economy, too. Huffington Post recently took a lot of deserved grief.

They generally don't pay their writers, and especially not their bloggers, under the theory that the "exposure" of people seeing their words in the Huffington Post would lead to some sort of benefit.

Last mont, Stephen Hull, editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post UK, was asked in an interview why he doesn't pay his writers.

Hull responded: "If I was paying someone to write something because I want to get advertising, that's not a real authentic way of presenting copy. When somebody writes something for us, we know it's real, we know they want to write it. It's not been forced or paid for. I think that's something to be proud of."

Oh, so no writer should try to make a living at it? Or by Hull's logic nobody should work for money, because doing so is "inauthentic."

I trust that Hull collects no salary and does his duties as Huffington Post UK's editor-in-chief because that would make the end product inauthentic. How could I possibly trust anything I read in the Huffington Post if somebody is paid to edit the copy?

Or, as New Statesman editorialized, Hull's life must be very difficult if he's forced to live by his rules of authenticity:

"Presumably, he can't go out to eat at restaurants, because the food the (paid) chefs cook him is inauthentic. And when he's ill, he must have to research his symptons online instead of visiting a GP, because their salaries mean the diagnoses they give aren't real. He must have to walk to work because of all those pesky salaried workers driving tube trains and buses, ruining the authenticity of daily commutes."

There have always been people who want something for nothing.  Do some cheap employers think that most everyone wants to toil 40, 50, 60 or more hours a week for no benefit, just the joy of making some rich guy or gal richer?

Almost everybody wants to do a great job at work. But a well completed task has value. If you want something of value, you have to buy it, pay for it.

So pay your damn workers!!!

The New Reality: You MUST Always Work

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I didn't work at all, at any of my jobs, on anything for a couple days last week.

I had one of those weird sudden gastrointestinal illnesses that leave you unable to do ANYTHING.

I was lucky. I had the day off from my regular job, and even if I didn't they would have been understanding had I called in sick, and it wouldn't have threatened my future prospects at the company.

I'm also self employed at another job, and now I've fallen behind. But I'm catching up with that now,   so I'm lucky there, too.

But my bit of good luck with jobs and illness is going away fast for the rest of us, it seems.  The way I see it, getting sick to some minds in corporate America is a fireable offense, and falling behind on work, even if no human can do the amount of work demanded in one day, is another Off With The Head crime.

If I were to believe a lot of what I'm reading lately, you are a scumbag if you do not work 24/7. I know that's not true in reality, but in order to survive in this country nowadays, it IS true, unfortunately.

Don't get me wrong. Working very hard is terrific. It gives me a sense of accomplishment. You earn a little cash. You have a sense of pride for contributing.

Everybody must pull their weight. I don't have patience for lazy people, either. So work hard, everyone!

However, there's such a thing as too much of a good thing, and there's a lot of "too much" out there.

That was highlighted last week by that New York Times article on the workplace culture at Amazon that made such a splash.

Apparently, white collar workers at Amazon have to be superhuman. One employee felt compelled to work four all nighters in a row.   One person was pretty much fired because she had the temerity to contract thyroid cancer.

Oe woman was forced to go on a business trip the day after her miscarriage.

NPR, discussing the article, said, "One ex-employee's fiance became so concerned about her nonstop working night after night that he would drive to the Amazon campus at 10 p.m. and dial her cellphone until she agreed to come home. When they took a vacation to Florida, she spent every day at Starbucks using the wireless connection to get work done."

Of course, the white collar workers at Amazon have it easy, compared with some of their past history for blue collar workers in their warehouses.

Amazon had warehouse workers toil in overheated summertime warehouses where temperatures exceeded 100 degrees. Instead of cooling the air and giving the workers a few chances to recover from the heat, Amazon famously stationed a few ambulances outside a Pennsylvania warehouse to cart out heat stroke victims.

Then, they'd just replace the victims with somebody else, unless the poor overheated souls made a quick recovery. Pretty sickly Darwinian, no?

An emergency room doctor finally called federal authorities to report an "unsafe environment" after he treated several warehouse workers. Under pressure, Amazon finally put in a littl air conditioning. At least sort of.

Why did these workers put up with it? Or at least try to? There weren't many jobs in the area, especially when this problem peaked in 2011. So they took their chances.

I guess that's the way things are nowadays. You do what you have to do, given the stagnating wages and iffy job prospects for most of us who aren't in the 1 percent.

Also, despite Jeb Bush's assertion, most Americans really do want to work hard. Again, that's a virtue. But when does it become too much?

As the New Yorker pointed out, the white collar grind at Amazon isn't unique. Employees at elite investment banks and law firms often put in 16-hour days and work weekends.  They get paid a lot, so you can't feel as bad for them as beleaguered minimum wage workers, but still.

Workers at various dot com and other industries are increasingly saying they are being exploited. You know work around the clock, be on call all the time, but not being rewarded enough financially for their efforts.

The Guardian's economic editor, Larry Elliot, cites the decline of unions as a symptom of a return of the extreme pressure on workers last seen in the 19th century.

Unions "were originally formed as a respose to exploitation by 19th century mill owners..... (Keeping) a cowed workforce under the lash with non-stop pressure, bullying and psychological warfare, Bezos is the 21st century equivalent."

Which makes me wonder if the seeds of a new labor movement are starting. It's hard to tell, but I do see news of more and more unionization efforts at various workplaces.

At last check, unionization rates were still declining, but for how long?

It seems like the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders has really taken off in large part because of his long standing campaign to raise the fortunes of workers and to reign in the 1 percent.

It's morning, and I'm getting ready to go to work now. I'm looking forward to it. I want to have a very productive day, and not slack on the  job. Most people feel this way about their work.

The company I work for is being fair to me. Maybe because it's employee owned and we're all in this together?  Maybe my choosing to work for an employee owned firm is a bit of a rebellion against the 1 percent taking everything from their workers, I don't know.

I know it's kind of bad form to whine about the boss man making so much more than you do. But there comes a time when you don't want to cross the line from being an employee to being a slave or indentured servant.

That's why there's so much excitement about Bernie Sanders, and such a strong reaction to that New York Times Amazon article.

Don't Order Through Amazon Because Owners Think Their Employees Are Indentured Servants

Amazon just dropped an odious noncompete
rule on its workers after The Verge exposed
the clause, which technically would
prevent former Amazon employees from
working anywhere else for 18 months after leaving.  

Here's another reason to hate Amazon.

The giant online retailer had a horrible non-compete clause for warehouse workers that, if strictly enforced, would prevent them from working pretty much anywhere else for 18 months after leaving Amazon.

The Verge exposed this horrible work rule last week.

Amazon announced a day after The Verge article  appeared that it would get rid of the non compete clause.

I'm sure that's only because of the bad publicity. They probably would have had that clause forever.

When the publicity dies down they'll probably either reinstate the policy or come up with something more odious.

Here's how the clause worked, according to The Verge. 

Seasonal employees at Amazon warehouses had to promise not to work at any company where they "directly or indirectly" support any good or serve that competes with those they helped support at Amazon, for 18 months after their brief stints at Amazon ended.

Since Amazon sells basically anything, it almost seems like workers after leaving Amazon couldn't work at anyplace that sells anything.

That would be really tough to do, wouldn't it? Given that most businesses exist to sell something.

"It is quite broad in its scope," says Orly Lobel, a professor of labor and employment law at the University of San Diego, who has studied noncompetes extensively and reviewed the Amazon agreement.

Non-compete clauses can be great and totally legit, if focused properly.  If somebody learns specialized insider information at Company A, that corporation doesn't want the employee to quit and immediately go to a competitor and spill all those secret trade beans.

Usually, people who are under such non-compete clauses can go to work right away for another company, as long as they're not a direct competitor in that specialized field.

Amazon, however, takes things much farther than that, and targets a huge class of workers not normally subject to non-compete requirements.

The Verge article, quoting Lobel, said there could well have been more at work with this non-compete language than just trying to protect closely held company data:

"Although companies may push noncompetes on low wage workers to keep trade secrets from leaking, there's also a more cynical explanation: to simply deprive competitors of employees to hire,  according to Lobel.

Noncompetes can also depress workers' wages. Traditionally, a key strategy to keep employees from defecting to a competitor has been simply to offer competitive wages, but a company that uses non-compete agreements can feel less pressure to pay well."

Well, you gotta hand it to Amazon, then. They found a creative way to screw the little guy, again.

Of course, the workers involved in the Amazon non-competes could have declined to take the job in the first place.

But most low income people, desperate for jobs and money, don't read dense legalese they sign. Or they figure they have no other options, or that these noncompete agreements are just the way things are.

Once hired, the workers feel stuck.

Says Lobel in The Verge article:

"People very well might decide that, despite their unhappiness with their job, despite the fact that they think they can do better with another employer, they might decide that it's just not worht the risk and that they should just lay low."

Yep, that's a mild form of indentured servitude in my book.

As I noted near the top of this post, The Guardian newspaper reported that Amazon said it was ditching the non-compete agreement shortly after The Verge publicized it.  Amazon said they didn't apply it to hourly workers, such as those that work in warehouses anyway.

Then why did Amazon make them sign the stupid thing? (See above.)

Of course, I'm suspicious. That Amazon folded on this so quickly suggests to me they have another sneaky way to screw low wage employees up their sleeve.

Besides, this type of non-compete was probably unenforceable anyway. Plus, it's not known to have been actually enforced on Amazon low wage workers

But the warehouse workers didn't know that. They also figured they'd have to hire lawyers to fight it, and who on a near minimum wage job can afford a lawyer?

Besides, courts have sided with Amazon in the past when it comes to screwing over or not screwing over workers.

In warehouses, workers had to go through a security screening before they left their shift for the day to make sure they weren't stealing stuff. That part is fair enough.

But this would often take a half hour or more of waiting in line and such for each worker, and they weren't paid for it.

Last December, the U.S. Supreme Court said this was OK, because the time waiting to be screened wasn't an "integral and indispensable" part of their job.

True, but it should have been free time. Unless Amazon warehouse workers all thought they would like nothing better to do on their time off from work than hanging around warehouses waiting to be checked to see if they were thieves.

I know other major companies don't treat their employees well. (Hello, Walmart!)

But Amazon seems to just have disdain for its rank and file workers.

I don't call for boycotts. Do what you want.

But for me, I will NEVER order anything through Amazon. Unless they start treating their employees with maybe just a little respect.

Why I Won't Ever Get an e-Book

News about Amazon cutting a woman off from her Kindle library, permanently, without explanation confirms why I'll stick to old fashioned paper books.

Beware the Kindle.

Amazon wiped away her library, and when she asked for an explanation, Amazon said she violated the terms of service.

She didn't realize she did, or how she performed such violation, so she asked what she did wrong. They wouldn't tell her. She did get this:

"We have found your account is directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies. As such, yoru Amazon.co.uk account has been closed and any open orders have been cancelled."

The woman responded: "I am very surprised to read your email. What do you mean by "directly related to another which as been previously closed for abuse of our policies"? I can only remember ever having this one account, and I use it quite regularly to buy books for my Kindle, as you can probably see by my purchase history. How can there suddenly be a problem now? I use amazon.com and no couk for my Kindle, does that make any difference?"

Her questions seem reasonable enough, but the response from Amazon was basically "f*** you." They refused to give her any more information.

Even if she inadvertently did something wrong, is that any way to treat a customer? Apparently it is.

Now, if you buy a traditional non computerized book at a bookstore, as long as you pay for the book, the person who owns the store won't come to your house and take back the book if he doesn't like what you're doing with it.

Amazon, and presumably all e-book sellers, have no problem with taking back whatever you bought. Because you didn't really buy the book, as Wired points out.  In the e-book world, you just bought permission to read it on your device. The book isn't actually one of your posessions like it would be had you purchaased it from your neighborhood book store.  .

If you do something illegal, like shoplift from the bookstore, the cops get involved. You get due process. Unless you plead guilty, you get a trial where prosecutors have to prove your guilt in a courthouse, open to the public, before you are punished.

With the ebooks, there's no due process. A private corporation decides whether you are guilty or innocent, and that's that. Nobody has to prove anything. It's the corporation's way or the highway.

I suppose with ebooks, there's the risk somebody can illegally sell multiple copies of the publication, which violates copyright laws and screws over authors, publishers and others.

But, that's illegal, as I said.  Somebody can press charges and whoever is doing the illegal selling of ebooks goes to court and if found guilty, is probably punished. At least in a world that makes sense.

In the case of the Norwegian woman who had her library wiped away, there's apparently some complicated issue over territorial rights between different publishers in different countries that's involved in this, according to Forbes.

But how is the nice Norwegian woman supposed to know the intricasies of international publishing law? Couldn't they just tell her she was screwing up, and how she was doing it, in plain English, and make her promise not to do it again?

However, explaining this would make too much sense, and besides, cost a small amount of money better made available to billionaire CEOs.

I'm sure there's something in the terms of service verbiage that explains all that. But my theory is the companies that put out these long, complicated terms of service written in incomprehesible legalease that way so we're confusesd, we don't read them, and they can get away with murder. "Well, you agreed to the terms of service," they could say.

As if anybody in their right mind could read, much less understand that garbage.

When the media started poking around this case, Amazon responded with this:

"We would like to clarify our policy on this topic. Account status should not affect any customer's ability to access their library. If any customer has trouble accessing their content, he or she should contact customer service for help."

She did contact customer service and got no help, people!  No more details. Apparently, the media has no business asking Amazon about this, according to the brain trust there.

I know this type of incident doesn't happen too often, but it's enough for me to decide that my decision to keep buying traditional books is a good one.

People complain about government over-regulation taking away our freedoms. And there certainly is the potential for that. But why doesn't anyone complain about corporations coming up with dense incomprehensible rules. Doesn't that diminish our freedoms, too?