My husband informed me that we, meaning I, had 22 Amazon purchases last month. I got a little sick to my stomach at the thought that I had purchased that much and from a company that is supposedly so awful. In my defense, (as if I have to defend myself) I thought the items would just ship whenever. I honestly didn't know that people were working overtime to ship out my vitamins or face serum. Most of the purchases were things that I already purchase from them, sad, or get at Walmart, embarrassing.
Since it is so hard to find answers to anything other than a simple baking question on the internet, I decided to do some, you guessed it, internet research to either ease my heavy heart or force myself to wake up and do the socially responsible shopping that my laziness and anxiety have prevented me from doing. This is what I found.
In an editorial in The Augusta Chronicle from May 16th, 2 days ago, nothing nice was said about Amazon. Apparently, they are phasing out the paid time off due to Coronavirus issues. Also, they have stopped paying the $2 extra an hour hazard pay. On a lighter note, all the warehouse workers got free t-shirts. According to some employees interviewed, Amazon doesn't provide safe working conditions for its employees in that there is not enough PPE and it is virtually impossible to work socially distanced from each other.
In non-coronavirus news, Amazon puts retailers out of business by taking a loss on certain business sectors, (think books and shoes). This article also cited The Wall Street Journal who has accused Amazon of using data to lure customers away from its third-party sellers. Amazon vehemently denies this. I couldn't find a whole lot besides this same vague info over and over by Googling so I went to my trusty fallback, Twitter.
Elizabeth Warren and eight other senators have asked Bezos to explain why the whistleblowers were fired. These people spoke out against the working conditions at the distribution centers but Amazon says they were fired for other reasons. Through Twitter, I found a Forbes article that states that on Amazon's corporate blog, Amazon pledged to spend $4 billion between April and June on "Coronavirus Initiatives." That is a lot of t-shirts! I think I will keep my eye out on whether Bezos testifies and will keep researching. In the meantime, I will be shopping at Target!
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