SUPER EXPLOITATION BY AMAZON – WORKERS FIGHT BACK (youtube.com)
A WIN Discussion December 2023. Amazon’s labour organisation has been defined by two Italian researchers as “digital taylor-fordism” – one of the biggest powers of world capitalism, Amazon has become a super exploiter with an army of over one million ‘soldiers’ and a budget amounting to billions of dollars. Its management techniques and use of artificial intelligence have produced a militaristic style system of exploitation, which squeezes out every last drop of surplus value. In this atomised vision of society technology, instead of it being used as a tool for social emancipation, it becomes an instrument of isolation and social control of workers. But, as we’ve seen in the US recently, that doesn’t mean that its drivers and warehouse workers cannot organise, fight back and reach some of their objectives.
Hear an explanation and analysis of these methods from Marco Veruggio (PuntoCritico, Italy), coordinator of the Amazon enquiry project launched by PuntoCritico in 2020.
The Project: https://www.puntocritico.info/amazon/ (ITA)
“MappiAmazon. Logistics and strategy: Amazon’s Italian in campaign in a map”: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/340857929f9748a28218dd4a0251c72c (ENG)
On the press: “How Amazon Workers Exploitation Looks in Small-Town Italy” (Worldcrunch): https://worldcrunch.com/business-finance/is-amazon-exploits-workers#toggle-gdpr (ENG)
Image – Larry Hogan tours Amazon warehouse in Maryland – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic