Seattle Amazon Workers Plan Walkout Over Return to Office, Climate Concerns (cnn.com) 83
CNN reports:
Some Amazon corporate workers have announced plans to walk off the job next week over frustrations with the company's return-to-work policies, among other issues, in a sign of heightened tensions inside the e-commerce giant after multiple rounds of layoffs.
The work stoppage is being jointly organized by an internal climate justice worker group and a remote work advocacy group, according to an email from organizers and public social media posts. Workers participating have two main demands: asking the e-commerce giant to put climate impact at the forefront of its decision making, and to provide greater flexibility for how and where employees work.
The lunchtime walkout is scheduled for May 31, beginning at noon. Organizers have said in an internal pledge that they are only going to go through with the walkout if at least 1,000 workers agree to participate, according to an email from organizers.
The event comes a month after Amazon's return-to-office mandate took effect, reports the Seattle Times — with one software engineer saying they wanted to show Amazon's leadership that "employees need a say in the decisions that affect our lives." In response, an Amazon spokesperson said, "We respect our employees' rights to express their opinions." Drew Herdener, senior vice president for communications at Amazon, said there has been a good energy on the company's South Lake Union campus and other urban centers where Amazon has a significant presence. "We've had a great few weeks with more employees in the office," he said. "As it pertains to the specific topics this group of employees is raising, we've explained our thinking in different forums over the past few months and will continue to do so...."
[Since January], Amazon announced another 9,000 job cuts companywide, but has not notified Washington's unemployment office of the local impact. At the same time Amazon was re-evaluating its teams and workforce, the company announced it would require workers to return to the office at least three times a week beginning May 1. That was a change from Amazon's prior policy, put in place in the second half of 2021, that allowed leaders to decide for their teams where they should work. Announcing the mandate in February, CEO Andy Jassy told employees that senior leaders had observed that it's easier to "learn, model, practice and strengthen our culture when we're in the office together most of the time and surrounded by our colleagues." Boosters for downtown Seattle, where Amazon's headquarters campus is located, cheered the mandate and hoped that thousands of returning workers would enliven the neighborhood.
In response to the return-to-office mandate, more than 20,000 workers signed a petition urging Amazon to reconsider.
The work stoppage is being jointly organized by an internal climate justice worker group and a remote work advocacy group, according to an email from organizers and public social media posts. Workers participating have two main demands: asking the e-commerce giant to put climate impact at the forefront of its decision making, and to provide greater flexibility for how and where employees work.
The lunchtime walkout is scheduled for May 31, beginning at noon. Organizers have said in an internal pledge that they are only going to go through with the walkout if at least 1,000 workers agree to participate, according to an email from organizers.
The event comes a month after Amazon's return-to-office mandate took effect, reports the Seattle Times — with one software engineer saying they wanted to show Amazon's leadership that "employees need a say in the decisions that affect our lives." In response, an Amazon spokesperson said, "We respect our employees' rights to express their opinions." Drew Herdener, senior vice president for communications at Amazon, said there has been a good energy on the company's South Lake Union campus and other urban centers where Amazon has a significant presence. "We've had a great few weeks with more employees in the office," he said. "As it pertains to the specific topics this group of employees is raising, we've explained our thinking in different forums over the past few months and will continue to do so...."
[Since January], Amazon announced another 9,000 job cuts companywide, but has not notified Washington's unemployment office of the local impact. At the same time Amazon was re-evaluating its teams and workforce, the company announced it would require workers to return to the office at least three times a week beginning May 1. That was a change from Amazon's prior policy, put in place in the second half of 2021, that allowed leaders to decide for their teams where they should work. Announcing the mandate in February, CEO Andy Jassy told employees that senior leaders had observed that it's easier to "learn, model, practice and strengthen our culture when we're in the office together most of the time and surrounded by our colleagues." Boosters for downtown Seattle, where Amazon's headquarters campus is located, cheered the mandate and hoped that thousands of returning workers would enliven the neighborhood.
In response to the return-to-office mandate, more than 20,000 workers signed a petition urging Amazon to reconsider.
This could be a real dud (Score:3, Insightful)
'The worker, who asked not to be named, said organizers are focusing the in-person walkout efforts at the company’s Seattle headquarters but have also created a way for people to participate virtually so “all Amazonians are welcome to participate.” '
They'd better hope they have a robust in-person presence at that headquarters itself.
If you've only got a handful of people actually on-site with picket signs or whatnot, your walkout is just gonna look silly to the public at large - and the people you're trying to influence (Amazon higher-ups) are probably going to consider the "virtual" participants to be not very committed to the cause.
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You’re definitely not totally wrong but the big risk they’re dealing with at Amazon Seattle is that they’ll run out of workers if a bunch of people quit. The labor force is small there and everyone knows everyone, nobody needs to hold a picket sign when they can just tell all their friends that they walked out because it blows. There is physically no room to bring more workers in and if Amazon moves away other companies will happily replace it.
They talk big but Amazon is in a vulnerable p
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I do think you have a point. But it's worth mentioning that many of us who work in Seattle have worked with at least a few people who'd previously been at Amazon in tech roles, and it's pretty widely known (and has been for many years) they're a crappy place to work if you want to have a life outside of work. So it's not like this current batch of Amazonians is telling people anything particularly new.
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The Amazon burn-out/churn rate is a well-known local phenomenon.
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The labor force is small there and everyone knows everyone, nobody needs to hold a picket sign when they can just tell all their friends that they walked out because it blows.
Ya, they just have 55k workers with ultra-competitive salaries in South Lake Union. Tiny.
I live in Seattle. My office is literally across the street from the funky spheres. I toyed with the idea of becoming an Amazon drone, and like you imply you would, decided it wasn't for me.
If a bunch of people quit, a bunch more people will flock in to take those jobs. That's how that company continues to survive with its fucking epic level of 6-figure-a-year employee churn.
Even MS has campuses in urban areas like
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I have lived in Seattle it’s tiny in comparison to whats happening there. Maybe people will get tired of it and leave like I did and get replaced but everyone is tired as shit and amazon has a reputation. I went for a single interview and the first person I saw rubbed me the wrong way looking wide eyed power walking down the hallway and I knew it wasn’t for me and working there would be a double dose of everything I hate about my job already.
Realistically they’ll manage but the longer th
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I have lived in Seattle it’s tiny in comparison to whats happening there.
Well, I do live in Seattle, and Amazon is the largest employer here by a large amount.
The South Lake Union buildings are responsible for about $7.5B in incomes in this area.
They're not tiny in comparison to what's happening here.
Maybe people will get tired of it and leave like I did and get replaced but everyone is tired as shit and amazon has a reputation.
People are tired of it every day.
Amazon has a legendary churn rate.
People leave, and people come looking for that $350K base salary cap.
I went for a single interview and the first person I saw rubbed me the wrong way looking wide eyed power walking down the hallway and I knew it wasn’t for me and working there would be a double dose of everything I hate about my job already.
No doubt, brother. I don't disagree with you.
Being an Amazon Drone is.... I think more of a stepping stone than a career choice.
Realistically they’ll manage but the longer they keep up like they are the harder it’ll get to find talent.
Not with the s
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Well yeah that 350k salary is hard to ignore gotta admit.
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AI will solve this problem very soon. L1 tech support is totally in the wheelhouse of AI at this point.
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You're the kind of person I didn't want to call me back when I worked support.
If you say that you'd cease business with my company, I'd take that less as a threat than as a promise if I was still in support.
Re:This could be a real dud (Score:5, Insightful)
This is another example of the old saying, "Just because you *CAN* do something doesn't mean you *SHOULD*."
Agreed. Just because you *can* cram a whole bunch of creative people into an office somewhere and have them be functional enough to survive doesn't mean you should.
I'm tired of calling a business and getting someone who is working from home, complete with dogs barking, kids yelling, television blasting and dishes clanking.
Ironically, the call center workers are the only ones who I'm pretty sure aren't being asked to return to the office. Office space is way too expensive to use for customer service. The people in Seattle are tech workers.
Fuck you. Go back to work where you belong. It's long past time for these companies to grow some balls and start firing people who refuse to go back to work.
Spotted the MBA.
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Ironically, the call center workers are the only ones who I'm pretty sure aren't being asked to return to the office. Office space is way too expensive to use for customer service. The people in Seattle are tech workers.
We actually WFH'd our entire support staff about 5 years before COVID.
It made sense. Rent/worker downtown just doesn't fucking justify even a cubicle for that level of employee.
So ultimately, both the support workers, and the company benefit. The support works get a big increase to their quality of life, as well as a pseudo-raise due to the lack of commute.
In the office, we got the benefit of more space for more useful stuff.
Of course, my office has been sitting empty for 3 years now... well, not 100%
Re: This could be a real dud (Score:2)
I'm tired of calling a business and getting someone who is working from home, complete with dogs barking, kids yelling, television blasting and dishes clanking.
Unlikely.
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I'm tired of calling a business and getting someone who is working from home, complete with dogs barking, kids yelling, television blasting and dishes clanking.
Unlikely.
Personally, I've had relatively good experiences with "at home" call-center workers. One big reason is I'm not starting off fighting a language barrier just to get them to understand the issue.
I can't say I've ever heard a TV blaring or dishes clanking - I doubt those people would remain employed for very long. Have heard a dog barking quietly in the distance a couple times.
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I ran in to this when I called my insurance company (Alight) to work on my health insurance. Screaming kid and dishes clanking in the background.
Re: This could be a real dud (Score:2)
And you wanted wfh cancelled over it?
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Fuck you. Go back to work where you belong. It's long past time for these companies to grow some balls and start firing people who refuse to go back to work.
Problem is, most tech work can be done remotely, so you don't have to be physically present in an office. It's soon coming to a point similar to where you are asking people to use horses and carts when Ford and the others are pushing automobiles.
You can change with the times, or be left behind eventually.
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I think the warehouse workers should all walk out on the same day. No deliveries for WFH people. It's for the planet after all!
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Then I get my stuff a day later from a different Amazon warehouse. Not like that's never happened before.
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Seriously - what does the GP think people are ordering from Amazon where a delay of a day or two is going to be a significant issue?
When we need something that urgently, we drive to the store and buy it.
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Besides, we already know how Bezos responds to these things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: This could be a real dud (Score:1)
I found your comment very offensive so I'm going to virtually protest it by walking away from my de
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You need to account who's working where, and why.
Some people are spending most of their waking time trying to gather a sufficiently large amount of biomass to feed themselves and their progeny, and are very afraid of losing a job (there might be none other available, at all). Others have multiple options if they quit a job, maybe with mild inconveniencies, but they perceive having to go to the office as a larger issue.
To summarize: shocking news, people are not all equal.
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I think what the GP is trying to say is that these workers are very selfish. The workers now walking out to protest being inconvenienced themselves never walked off the job to protest their employer's abusive treatment of other workers.
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This could easily be spun the other way around.
Would you see Indian employees staging a walk-out because there have been layoffs in the USA branch of a corporation? Or the other way around? Most likely not.
People protest against things that affect them directly. It's just how things are.
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As someone who has been a lot of places in life; it’s a lot easier to get compliance from a bunch of easily replaceable workers with no savings, no education, no business knowledge, and very little understanding of how their own particular enterprise works beyond their own department.
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Let's see if you can spot the difference:
Warehouse worker: Has to work on-premise because it's unlikely they have the storage room available at home to stock all the products they are supposed to dispatch and can be replaced with the snap of a finger because "pick up stuff from shelf A and put it in box B" isn't exactly a skill that requires years and years of training and can only be done by a fraction of the workforce.
Office worker: Zero importance where they work as long as the place has electricity and
A union by any other name (Score:2)
internal climate justice worker group and a remote work advocacy group
"worker groups" eh?
Just unionize already and get the legal benefits of a real union. This is 2023. You're allowed to do this. Bezos may growl and look threatening but he can't really stop you ferchrissake.
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If people wanted to unionize, they would. You're asking people to give up some of their autonomy and pay for basically nothing in return. And that actually started well before Reagan, basically around the time that the federal government started heavily cracking down on organized crime. Laws like RICO made it much harder for unions to operate the way they used to.
https://scholarlycommons.law.h... [hofstra.edu]
And then it got even harder under the Bush 43 admin when they were required to make their financials more easily
In other news (Score:1)
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Like everyone else.
Problem is, there's not exactly a lot of workforce to go around. I see the problem myself, we're trying to hire skilled personnel, hell, we're even willing to hire unskilled and train where possible, but there's a limit. In security, I can teach someone the intricates of nmap, but I can't start at "no, TCP is NOT the Chinese secret service".
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>we're even willing to hire unskilled and train where possible
My first IT job I got hired because I applied. Horrible employer (as you might expect) but I took the opportunity to add a line to my resume and grab some experience before bailing.
My next IT job I got hired because I was one of four candidates with a resume completely devoid of spelling or grammatical error. Didn't seem like the best way to select a candidate, but it turned from a job into a career and I only eventually moved on because loc
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I thought that the rank-and-yank plus the lay offs will turn many people off and they will have trouble hiring.
Never happened. Between the H1-Bs and the fresh graduates, high compensation attracts enough people so they wont have to think twice.
Re: In other news (Score:2)
internal climate justice worker (Score:2)
Seattle Amazon Workers Plan Walkout Over Return to Office, Climate Concerns
The work stoppage is being jointly organized by an internal climate justice worker group and a remote work advocacy group, ...
I'm confused, is the A/C is set too cold in the office? :-)
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Re:So the right wing is composed of two groups (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that what you are pointing at are just the dominant voices. It happens in any large group: the most extreme members make the most noise, and try to control the group or at least create the impression that everyone in the group agrees with their extremism. And, with sizeable groups, that is usually not the case. Most right-leaning people are moderates. Of course, I would say the same of most left-leaning people too. Most people aren't extremists.
I DO think that curated news results (such as delivered by Facebook) has a tendency to push moderates more towards whichever extreme they lean towards, and create an illusion of widespread agreement (with very little disagreement) with the extreme positions. And I think this is politically and socially harmful, and socially responsible people should abstain from such curated results and actively seek news sources from both sides, to try and see things from both sides. I suspect this is a bit too much to ask of most people, unfortunately.
Re:So the right wing is composed of two groups (Score:5, Interesting)
Religious extremists and wealthy businessmen who want lax regulations and low pay for their employees.
Actually, that second group is mostly Libertarian. They vote Republican and run as Republicans only because approximately no Libertarian candidates are ever popular enough to get elected.
The religious right is pretty much all that is left in the modern Republican Party, at least in terms of their candidates. The fiscal conservatives stopped voting a long time ago or started voting for conservative Democrats, because the Republicans stopped running actual conservative candidates some time around the Clinton administration (with the deterioration of the true conservative wing beginning right around the election of Nixon).
Want to prove me wrong? Show me a significant number of pro-choice Republicans. Go ahead. I'll wait. It's a single-digit percentage. Attitudes on religious issues have completely overshadowed all other factors in terms of who gets elected in the Republican Party. And as long as that is the case, the party is eventually doomed, because each generation gets more socially liberal than the last, statistically speaking.
What is eventually likely to happen is that the Democratic Party will split into a fiscally conservative but socially moderate party and a fiscally and socially progressive party, and the Republican Party will basically just implode at that point, because the moderate Republicans will realize that the first of those two is a better match for their viewpoints, and there aren't enough ultra-conservative Christians to sustain the Republican Party at the federal level, and their numbers are falling rapidly [americansurveycenter.org], down by a third in the last two decades [washingtonpost.com].
If a moderate party could snag the non-evangelical parts of the Republican Party, they would lose about 70% of their voters, and the result would be a more viable party, because such a party could also take votes from the Democratic Party, which the modern Republican Party cannot realistically do. At all.
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Whether or not that's possible depends mostly on your skill package and your expected compensation. I can demand quite a bit since I work for about half of what I could command while having a skill package that is, at least as far as I know, unique, and at the same time in very high demand.
That's not the case for everyone, though. And whether or not those demands are met or whether they lead to you being replaced by someone with fewer demands depends mostly on exactly that.
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But there are limits to what your employer can demand from you, otherwise we're back to slavery. Only part-time and with a salary, but still slavery.
Also, what is acceptable changes with generations. Asking people to commute so that they can work on their computer that's connected to the company servers is completely idiotic when they can do the exact same thing from home.
It's less time wasted by the office workers and less office space required by the company. It's a win-win for both sides but some manager
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But there are limits to what your employer can demand from you, otherwise we're back to slavery. Only part-time and with a salary, but still slavery.
You'd be surprised for how many people this is actual reality. Just with no whips, at least not physical ones, what's more in use is the mental/social/emotional kind.
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It's just a matter of who has negotiating leverage. "Social Contract" has nothing to do with it in this case.
People with rare and in-demand skills can individually make demands of their employer, and they will be met. More fungible people have to group up to make their demands as a collective.
There is nothing wrong with this. It is not anti-social or anti-competitive or socially improper. Negotiation is a totally normal thing that can and should happen any time two or more people find reason to interact
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The social contract was broken a long time ago. It’s best to approach your work accordingly.
When I exited the military I was given mandatory classes where disloyal employers and chain of command in the civilian world was a major theme. At the time I thought it was a ploy improve retention but they were correct on all counts. Which is something given how political the military can be.
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C'mon, dude. You, of all the people. Social contract? You can write that without your fingers exploding?
There's no social contract at work here. It's a work contract that I have with my employer. I do specific work under specific conditions and in return I get money and other specified remunerations. What either of them are should be open for negotiation (I know, it's not, depending on your country worker protection and decency laws butt in).
And part of that negotiation can of course be whether or not peopl
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A social contract exists between the individual and society as a whole. That's why it is called social contract. It is not explicit, it is implicit. The individual agrees to adhere to the rules of society, and the society in return agrees to protect the i
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Ah yes. That's why we don't have floggings at the grate anymore.
The reason it's called a "social contract" is because it's analogous to an actual contract. An agreement negotiated between two or more parties to reach terms acceptable to all.
Climate concerns...right! (Score:2)
I don't blame the office workers but climate change...right. I would be really curious to see all the data regarding energy usage between the WFH vs go to the office. Each worker at home is possibly doubling their power usage always being there, what with climate control all day.
You do save on not commuting, so less fuel burned. This is substantial but it's all relative to how far from the office.
All the same, give me a break on climate change. Worried about the world? Even if USA magically went net zero to
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Oh, and no food delivery either! All you are doing is shifting your carbon to someone else, as if THAT's helping anyone.
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You do make it sound as if all you said is very hard to achieve. But it is not, it just requires you to adapt. As you said yourself, "we're going to adapt to an ever changing world". Those of us who dont, like you apparently, will be living a life that gets worse and worse.
Just to give you an example of how not that hard it is to adapt:
- I chose my work so I work from home about 3 days out of 5
- I don't need AC as my home is well-insulated. If it really gets too hot... well, I just live with it for a few ho
Re: Climate concerns...right! (Score:2)
Re: Climate concerns...right! (Score:2)
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And most people don't have access to trains that go where they want to go. Canada doesn't even have a single line that goes east to west and the eastern and western lines dont meet in the middle.
Tough shit. Maybe you should start doing something about it. Better late than never.
At some point, it won't be a question of whether you want to take your car as much as you are taking it today. It will boil down (for you, or your kids) to:
- whether you travel less
- or whether you can afford to travel same as before with a) rising oil prices b) more expensive EVs, if your grid supports it
That's the good thing with "adaptation": you can either be passively subjected to it and suffer, or act and prepare for i
Re: Climate concerns...right! (Score:2)
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Well you keep breathing in exhaust fumes and pay top dollar for postage stamp sized lots and constant noise pollution.
I live in a cosy place too, thanks for your concern! Thus why I usually bike for ~30kms the 2 days a week I have to work on site.
I moved my family somewhere where the air is clean, people are happy and relaxed
Again, this is a good choice. But if this is the only thing you do, then it is very short-sighted. The real problems for your family (I guess kids) are:
- climate change, and how it will affect them locally
- climate change, and how it will affect them because of impacts on other parts of the world. For instance, political instabilities linked to climate change will have an impact,
Re: Climate concerns...right! (Score:2)
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So just relax and realize we're going to adapt to an ever changing world and get over your anxiety about climate change.
The anxiety comes from the idea that the change may this time be too great for our species to survive. If the runaway effects of methane escaping from permafrost continue to compound, there isn't going to be a world for us.
If you really care, maybe you should move to Tibet or parts of Africa and live in that fashion.
If you don't like it then leave is the cry of the complete dildo. What happens on this planet affects everyone. You just want more excuses to live like a shitheel.
don't let the door hit you on the way out... (Score:2)
"Boo hoo for them!", say all the Mom-and-Pop stores and American-made manufacturing who were put out of business by economic manipulation and IP theft dragonboating.
"Climate Change"...uh..fraction of a degree of heat...IF the "corrected" data, selective editing, hyperbole, and computer models are correct...means less death and more food. Maybe Gaia worship isn't all it's cracked up to be...
World population is shrinking. Resources always become "scarce." There was a time worldwide doom was predicted because
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Agreed. I worked for a large computer company and at times, I'd get a call from a person asking me to do their job or them at the plant because "it's my working from home day".
Screw 'em.
Office workers are easily replaced (Score:2)
Better tactic (Score:3)
Start a "bring your lunch" campaign, i.e. don't spend a single dime downtown.
Fire Them. (Score:1)
If they are only willing to work on their own terms they are not deserving of employment. Amazon is firing thousands now anyway. These people seem to deserve a spot at the top of the redundancy list.
duh (Score:2)
"employees need a say in the decisions that affect our lives."
You had a say, you took the job.
You were granted a kindness during the great insanity of covid. You enjoyed it. But the rules are going back now. The panic is over, no matter how much it would be convenient for you to pretend otherwise.
You have a choice: go back to work on the original terms, or fuck off.
Imo: fire all of them.
All new employment contracts will adjust. (Score:2)
I understand striking or walking out for poor work conditions, but because you don't want to show up for work? Come on.
Well, decide if you want to keep working there.... (Score:2)
And nothing of value was lost (Score:3)
I'd venture a guess and say that a whole lot of them are about to find out that they were of no value to the company in the first place. When Elon Musk can fire a huge chunk of Twitter's employees and the platform is still up and running and evolving, those former employees need to take a long look at themselves and not in a narcissistic way. They obviously weren't important and moreover, their political views weren't important either. Arrogance is no substitute for humility.
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You underestimate the ability of people to hold steadfastly to contradictory views when it benefits them. Kierkegaard noted that doing so is a fundamental aspect of religion.
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amazon vs seattle (Score:2)
A company like Amazon can't really survive drawing workers from today's Seattle. I know some of these people. They are loony. Amazon is going to be forced to move more and more of its operations away.
choosing whom to layoff is a hard decision (Score:2)
It sounds like the employees just made it a lot easier.