Amazon Makes It Harder for Disabled Employees to Work From Home (yahoo.com) 22
"Amazon is making it harder for disabled employees to get permission to work from home," reports Bloomberg, a move they say shows Amazon's "determination" to enforce a five-days-a-week return to the office.
The company recently told employees with disabilities that it was implementing a more rigorous vetting process, both for new requests to work from home and applications to extend existing arrangements. Affected workers must submit to a "multilevel leader review" and could be required to return to the office for monthlong trials to determine if accommodations meet their needs... Affected employees are receiving calls from "accommodation consultants" who explain how the new policy works. They review medical documentation and discuss how effective working from home has been for employees who've already received an accommodation as well as any previous attempts to help the person work in the office. If the consultant agrees that the person should be allowed to work from home, another Amazon manager must sign off. If they don't, the request goes to a third manager...
Some workers fear the process was designed to make requests less likely to be approved, two employees said. In internal chat rooms, according to one of them, employees have accused [Chief Executive Officer Andy] Jassy of hypocrisy because the bureaucratic process belies his stated determination to cut through red tape that he says is slowing Amazon down.
"Jassy says the return-to-office requirement will strengthen the company's culture, which he believes has suffered since the pandemic and become overly bureaucratic," the article points out. But it adds that down at the workforce level, the move "is seen by some employees as a way to get people to quit and shrink the workforce."
Some workers fear the process was designed to make requests less likely to be approved, two employees said. In internal chat rooms, according to one of them, employees have accused [Chief Executive Officer Andy] Jassy of hypocrisy because the bureaucratic process belies his stated determination to cut through red tape that he says is slowing Amazon down.
"Jassy says the return-to-office requirement will strengthen the company's culture, which he believes has suffered since the pandemic and become overly bureaucratic," the article points out. But it adds that down at the workforce level, the move "is seen by some employees as a way to get people to quit and shrink the workforce."
Company Culture (Score:4, Insightful)
Culture is something bacteria have.
All a company should care about is whether the work gets done. Does it? Fine, stop micromanaging until it doesn't.
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The culture is that morale is bad. Even bad culture is a culture.
Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
We're gonna fight this work-from-office stuff from every possible angle huh? How the heck did people do work before the Internet? If you don't want to work in the manner your boss tells you, then fucking quit! You can't demand to be paid while simultaneously dictating what your job should entail. Why would someone pay you to do something they don't want you to do? That doesn't seem fair. does it?
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't demand to be paid while simultaneously dictating what your job should entail.
Actually, you can. It's called "negotiation," and it happens all the time. There is nothing legally, morally, nor professionally wrong with insisting on what you want and seeing how your negotiation partner responds. It is a very common, human, behavior to say "this point is non-negotiable" when actually, it is very negotiable, and keeping that point on the table is how you win it.
Of course, it may very well turn out to be truly non-negotiable, at which point you determine whether or not the point is equally non-negotiable for you. If it is non-negotiable for both of you, then it makes sense to quit.
But the "up and quit" is the last resort. It should take place after negotiation has failed.
This is how the most powerful, and the most professional, people in the world manage their differences. It is absolutely how ordinary employees should do the same.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
The same thing was said when people stopped doing 7 day 12 hour factory shifts.
Change doesn’t happen without pushback from the ruling class. If you like wasting time and gasoline in your daily commute then good for you. The internet is here to stay and if the work is completed on time who the hell cares what physical chair my ass is occupying?
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This attitude is what caused your neighbors to vote for us to be ruled by a billionaire cartel. Going too far left caused a far right shift that we may not recover from.
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Re: Wow (Score:2)
Way to be sensitive of the disabled. Maybe you could also suggest they jump off a bridge after they âoefuckingâ quit their jobs.
Re: Wow (Score:3)
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We're gonna fight this work-from-office stuff from every possible angle huh? How the heck did people do work before the Internet? If you don't want to work in the manner your boss tells you, then fucking quit! You can't demand to be paid while simultaneously dictating what your job should entail. Why would someone pay you to do something they don't want you to do? That doesn't seem fair. does it?
All a matter of perspective, I guess. Jeez, such an easy way to accommodate someone, and you still won't do it?
Why would the manager need to sign off? (Score:2)
The entire point of getting an accomodation (aside from the obvious) is so a third party is making the decision, not the manager. If the manager has to sign off on the accomodation request, what's the point?
Also, I'm fairly certain there are a few federal laws about this which take precedence over any company policy, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act [ada.gov].
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But how will a parking space fix my crippling social anxiety disorder? The only thing that seems to help is my therapeutic visits to Starbucks.
Quit and become a barista, problem solved. :-)
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Well, okay... but you're gonna have to install the drive-thru yourself.
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Also, the requirement is to provide (sometimes subjectively) reasonable accommodations based on actual need, not want. Pretty sure that simply wanting to work from home doesn't fall under the accommodation requirements of the ADA. Outside that, and other legal limits, employers are free to set any conditions for employment they want, including having to work in the office. Why is this so hard for people to understand?
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If Amazon isn't willing to give reasonable accommodation to people with actual disabilities, they will get sued. That, and a torrent of "shame on Amazon" articles.
Bureaucracy (Score:2)
Jassy says the return-to-office requirement will strengthen the company's culture, which he believes has suffered since the pandemic and become overly bureaucratic
So too much bureaucracy is the result of employees working from home. It has nothing at all to do with Amazon enjoying a near monopoly in their line of business for decades with nearly impossible barriers to entry for any potential competitors?
Amazon's company culture (Score:3)
Many engineers certainly like feeling like they are not another cog in the wheel of the corporate machine. They like feeling like they have purpose and are doing something important.
You can't fix corporate culture with RTO because work from home wasn't the problem. It's the corporate grind that is the problem. You can pay people increasingly ridiculous sums to pretend like it's not the problem, but in reality you're asking them to sell a piece of their soul.
I'm sorry the handicap has suffered as a result of this foolish solution to corporate culture.