Monday, May 4, 2020

JEFF BEZOS - AMAZON'S MODERN SLAVER


Amazon VP Resigns in Protest over Treatment of Workers, Whistleblowers

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
2:54

Tim Bray, a vice president at Jeff Bezos’ e-commerce giant Amazon, has resigned in protest of the company’s treatment of workers who have criticized the company over inadequate protections against the Chinese virus.
In a blog post, Bray aired his dismay at the tech company’s treatment of employees who spoke out against the company’s handling of the coronavirus.
From Bray’s blog:
Stories surfaced of unrest in Amazon warehouses, workers raising alarms about being uninformed, unprotected, and frightened. Official statements claimed every possible safety precaution was being taken. Then a worker organizing for better safety conditions was fired, and brutally insensitive remarks appeared in leaked executive meeting notes where the focus was on defending Amazon “talking points”.
Warehouse workers reached out to AECJ for support. They responded by internally promoting a petition and organizing a video call for Thursday April 16 featuring warehouse workers from around the world, with guest activist Naomi Klein. An announcement sent to internal mailing lists on Friday April 10th was apparently the flashpoint. Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, two visible AECJ leaders, were fired on the spot that day. The justifications were laughable; it was clear to any reasonable observer that they were turfed for whistleblowing.
Management could have objected to the event, or demanded that outsiders be excluded, or that leadership be represented, or any number of other things; there was plenty of time. Instead, they just fired the activists. At that point I snapped.
Amazon is currently facing multiple inquiries from labor regulators over allegations that it unlawfully retaliated against employees who complained about the company’s failure to protect them from the virus.
One of the fired Amazon employees, Chris Smalls, spoke exclusively with Breitbart News last week, on a segment of SirusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with Rebecca Mansour.
“At the beginning of March, we were unprotected,” Smalls told Mansour. “We didn’t have any facial masks, we didn’t have any cleaning supplies. We didn’t have the right type of gloves that protect our skin. My associates, my employees that I supervised were falling ill in a domino effect, one by one [with] flu-like symptoms. Some of them were even vomiting at their stations.”
After airing his concerns, Smalls was fired before the end of March.
Are you an insider at Google, Facebook, Twitter, or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.


New York Times: We Should ‘Fear’ Big Tech’s Consolidating Power

Nigerian ISP's configuration error disrupted Google services
Ng Han Guan/AP
2:34
In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, Recode founder Kara Swisher outlines how the Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe will use the Chinese virus pandemic to further consolidate their power, a development we should all “fear.”
In a New York Times op-ed titled “The Power of Big Tech Just Keeps Growing,” tech journalist and Recode founder Kara Swisher questions what kind of power Big Tech will have after the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic ends.
Swisher writes in her column: “How about this: The tech giants could have all the power and absolutely none of the accountability — at least all the power that will truly matter.”
Swisher goes on to add that in a previous column she outlined a “problematic trend” that would develop after the pandemic began, writing:
“There will be a culling of most competitors of these giants that will only strengthen the power and reach of the behemoths, eliminating pesky roadblocks to their further domination,” I wrote about tech’s leading companies, who have the money and the means to wait out the storm. “This is obviously not a good thing in the long run.
But even if it is good that companies like Amazon and Google and Facebook and Apple have become an essential part of making it easier to shelter in place or to track the virus — thanks a bunch for food delivery, contact-tracing apps and lots of funny memes — there’s much that’s not good.
It’s not good that we have set up an epic system of have and have-nots that could become devastating for innovative ideas and start-ups trying to get off the ground. Not good because too much of our data is in the hands of fewer. Not good because these fewer are largely unaccountable to those they serve and hard to control by governments that are elected by the people.
Swisher further adds that following the pandemic, the Masters of the Universe will be even more free to act as they wish with even less government oversight, writing:
But when this crisis is over, I can say that we most certainly should fear Big Tech more because these companies will be freer than ever, with many fewer strictures on them from regulators and politicians. The effort to rein in tech companies had been building decent momentum before coronavirus outbreak, but it will be harder when focus needs to be on building up rather than breaking apart.

No comments: