When Biden took office, one of his first acts was the elimination of our border security. Like a power-hungry dictator, Biden simply decided to ignore our immigration laws. His catastrophic border policy resulted in untold millions of unidentified foreign citizens from around the world pouring into our country. Its impact is now being felt in cities across the country. The worst is yet to come. PETER LEMISKA - AND WE'RE ALREADY THERE!!!
Monday, May 29, 2017
THE INTERNATIONAL AMAZON WORKERS VOICE
Hundreds of Amazon workers havesigned upfor theInternational Amazon Workers Voicenewsletter in recent days.
AMERICA: No Damned Legal Need Apply!
While the declining job market in the United States may be
discouraging some would-be border crossers, a flow of illegal aliens continues
unabated, with many entering the United States as drug-smuggling “mules.”
SANCTUARY
CITIES = NO LAWS APPLY TO INVADING ILLEGALS…. But Legals still get the tax
bills for their welfare and crime tidal wave even if they voted Democrat!
JOE LEGAL v LA RAZA JOSE ILLEGAL
Here’s how it breaks down; will
make you want to be an illegal!
“The principal beneficiaries of our current immigration policy are
affluent Americans who hire immigrants at substandard wages for low-end work.
Harvard economist George Borjas estimates that American workers lose $190
billion annually (DATED FIGURES) in depressed wages caused by the constant
flooding of the labor market at the low-wage end.” --- Christian
Science Monitor
“The lifetime costs of Social Security and Medicare
benefits of illegal immigrant beneficiaries of President Obama’s executive amnesty
would be well over a trillion dollars, according to Heritage Foundation expert Robert
Rector’s prepared testimony for a House panel obtained in advance by Breitbart
News.”
AMERICA: NO LEGAL NEED APPLY
REPORT: The assault to finish off
the American middle-class is NOT over
“The report noted that many illegals don't have jobs or have
difficulty in landing good jobs because of local laws.”
“However, it identified several states that have begun easing
employment laws so that illegals can get a job.”
THE HORDES KEEP COMING!
While the declining job market in the United States may be
discouraging some would-be border crossers, a flow of illegal aliens continues
unabated, with many entering the United States as drug-smuggling “mules.”
SHOULD SHIT BILLIONAIRE JEFF BEZOS PAY WORKERS A LIVING WAGE?
BUT IF HE DID, HOW MANY BILLIONS WOULD HE MAKE THEN?
"Another Amazon worker added, “If something unexpected comes up, an illness or something needing repaired, then that’s it for you. The wages suffice to barely survive, if even for that, and even then it is difficult."
Striking Amazon workers in Germany support call for international cooperation
By our correspondents 27 May 2017
Workers at Amazon distribution centers in Bad Hersfeld went on strike yesterday. Workers have been resisting ruthless exploitation and low wages at the online sales giant for years.
Around 1,000 workers in Bad Hersfeld work at FRA1, the oldest distribution center in Germany, and an additional 2,000-2,200 work at FRA3, which is located on the so-called Amazon Road. Around 100 striking workers gathered at the entrance in the early morning, and 40 departed by bus to Frankfurt to participate in a day of action by retail workers in the state of Hesse, organized by the Verdi trade union.
Amazon is known for its brutal
methods of exploitation and workflow,
which is organized down to the last
detail. It is also notorious for the harsh
treatment of anyone who complains.
Many striking workers therefore did
not want to speak on camera about
their working conditions. “I am on the
verge of being fired,” was a common
refrain.
Thomas, is a “picker,” the name given by Amazon to workers who locate ordered goods in the huge storerooms. He said that he walks between 20 and 30 kilometers each day. “When I take goods from the lower shelf, I have to bend my knees, often go down on my knees,” he said. Even being in good physical fitness cannot assist in such a situation.
Andrea has worked for Amazon for nine years and earns about €2,000 per month before tax, “and that is only because I have been employed here longer than 24 months,” she said. New hires earn much less. “That is €24,000 per year!” said Andrea. By comparison, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos “is the second richest man in the world. He ‘earns’ $24,000 within a minute,” she said.
Andrea recalled how company management had previously said that there was no money for higher wages because the company would make a loss. “But what about now?” she asked. Profits are exploding today. “We do not participate in the profits,” she added.
Andrea also explained how Amazon “justified” the low wages. “Amazon hires us all as trainees. Yet many of us are trained professionals.” She had trained as a retail saleswoman, with a focus on storage and logistics. “But that is not required. So you run around here as a trainee for years.”
The massive pressure on workers was clear to see on Friday morning. It was barely possible for workers who were not striking to speak as they went to work. However, almost all took the WSWS flyer introducing the International Amazon Workers Voice. Some were reluctant at first, but took it after campaigners informed them that it was not associated with Verdi, which is known for organizing a series of one-day strikes that have no impact on company operations.
Carl was formerly a US soldier and stationed in Germany until 1992. He began to work at Amazon in 1999 when it opened its first storage and distribution center in Bad Hersfeld. Prior to that, he worked as a gardener and landscaper, and he also worked in arms manufacturing and security.
Since his health had been ruined by the decades of labor, Carl spoke out vehemently against the “health bonus” introduced by Amazon management at several German stores. Bad Hersfeld has not yet introduced this system. According to this system, part of the bonus payment is linked to the absentee rate of an entire department. If one worker is absent due to illness, all workers lose out.
The obvious goal of this measure is to encourage workers to check on their colleagues and put them under pressure. “I have to go to the hospital twice a year, sometimes for a long period,” Carl said. “Should the entire department lose out because of that?”
Dave, who has worked in the returns department since 2011, said that he is also opposed to the system. It is merely a “scheme to get workers to turn up to work,” he said. Workers drag themselves to work when they are ill, for example when they have a cold, and infect more workers. “It just makes the whole thing worse,” he said. He hoped that the works council would manage to block the “health bonus” in Bad Hersfeld.
Jens explained the perfidious system to us on the sidelines of the demonstration in Frankfurt. A trained retail salesman, Jens has worked for Amazon for seven years. The group bonus is designed to work so that “if five people are selected from the department, and one of them is ill, then the entire department gets no bonus, everyone suffers as a result. This is not only a lottery, but also makes a fool of the workers.”
Jens said he knew one worker who forced herself to come to work even though she was ill. “She had a breakdown at Amazon and later died. That shows exactly where this type of thing leads.”
Another Amazon worker added, “If something
unexpected comes up, an illness or something
needing repaired, then that’s it for you. The wages
suffice to barely survive, if even for that, and even
then it is difficult.”
Many workers from different retail and online companies took part in the demonstration at Frankfurt. They were very interested to learn of conditions at Amazon, and almost all took the flyer introducing the International Amazon Workers Voice. Many spoke about similar working conditions.
Raffaela, who works on the check-outs at Karstadt, has had experiences with several retail companies: “I think Amazon is terrible. But even at Real it can happen that a note is taken if someone doesn’t work fast enough. Then he is at risk of being taken into the office and cited.”
Elke K. works at Real in Wiesbaden. After being informed about the Amazon flyer, she said that international cooperation against such a company was extremely important. “These conditions are really unsustainable, it reminds me of Bangladesh,” she said. “What amount of pressure must it be when people have to walk 20 kilometres per day.” Elke explained how she knew many colleagues who still had to go to the welfare office, despite working full-time and overtime hours, to top up their income and pay rent. “What a perfidious system!”
Marco, a Karstadt salesman, was horrified to learn that workers in Scotland lived in tents because they could not afford the travel to their work or a nearby apartment. “Hard to believe that something like that is possible in a modern industrial state.”
Gabriele added, “The suggestion to cooperate internationally is interesting. Companies have long since acted internationally and outsource operations to the Czech Republic or Poland and play us off against each other. And the trade unions offer only recipes within the national framework.”
Meanwhile in Bad Hersfeld, Amazon workers at the midday shift change spoke to the WSWS. They have to deal with the fact that many colleagues are not participating in a strike called by Verdi. One reason for this is that there is no grounds for workers to believe that Verdi will represent and fight for their interests. Verdi has been organizing one-day, isolated strikes against Amazon for years.
The trade union is pursuing entirely different goals to the workers. The Verdi trade union is calling for an additional €1 per hour for workers in the retail and online sales sector. But at Amazon, the issue remains one of securing any kind of collective agreement. The world’s largest online sales company has refused to recognize any contract.
With its demand for a collective agreement, Verdi hopes to be recognized by Amazon and cooperate with the company as a partner. This ultimately amounts to jointly organizing the exploitation of workers. Verdi already sits on the supervisory boards of many companies, including Lufthansa, Karstadt and the rail company Deutsche Bahn.
Workers said they could only fight the company by being organized as an international force. Carl said, “We can all secure more if we are all united. Not only in a state or federally, but on an international level.” This is why the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei and its sister parties internationally have established the International Amazon Workers Voice. This newsletter will be international, both in its form and political content. It will link the struggles of workers around the world in a common struggle against the company and the capitalist system.
Ex-worker: I was close to heatstroke and Amazon forced me to keep working
By our reporters
29 May 2017
Hundreds of Amazon workers havesigned upfor theInternational Amazon Workers Voicenewsletter in recent days. Workers continue to send in their horror stories of exploitation, and workers in fulfillment centers in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa are discussing the need for an international strategy to fight back.
Here is what workers are saying:
Amazon to worker on verge of heatstroke: keep working
Amazon tries to keep the lid on scenes like this one, described by an ex-Amazon worker who feared he would die on the job.
“I worked there [for Amazon] for a year and I was treated like complete trash,” the young worker said. “One day I actually got really bad heat exhaustion from there when I was trying to keep myself hydrated. I was on water bottle number seven by lunchtime and that still wasn’t cutting it. Everyone agreed at my fulfillment center that it was hotter than usual, and the managers weren’t doing anything about it.”
The company only cared about shipping its goods and making profit.
The worker continued, “I almost passed out while rebinning. I was taken to Amcare [the company medical team] and was told I was only allowed there for 20 minutes because I had to get back on the floor when they knew I was getting very close to having a heat stroke. They even said I was very close to having a heat stroke. So I left Amazon that night and never returned because I felt like my life was more important than dying at the job. If I died there that night I would be number four on the list of people who died while working at my fulfillment center, and I didn’t want that.”
“Why not share the benefits of industrial progress, instead of accepting our fate as slaves for the rich?”
One former warehouse worker in the UK explained: “I worked in a warehouse in Manchester as a picker for XPO/Missguided under conditions very similar to those recounted by Amazon workers. Workers were demeaned with a barrage of dictatorial policies and pushed to the limit of physical and mental endurance. A few workers passed out due to overexertion.”
The worker continued, “Why shouldn’t society share equally the benefits of productive development? After all, it was the workers who built the warehouses, and the means of production and operations, not Bezos. Why not share the benefits of industrial progress, instead of accepting our fate as slaves for the rich? The social condition today is appalling and given the productive forces available, entirely medieval.”
No to nationalism! Unite Amazon workers across the world!
One worker in the UK messaged theInternational Amazon Workers Voiceto report stressful and dangerous conditions at their facility. The worker thanked the IAWV for exposing Bezos’ wealth, but said that part of the problem is that English workers are mistreated while Polish workers are favored.
TheInternational Amazon Workers Voiceresponded:
“The rich want you to compete with workers of different national origins so that all workers don’t unite and fight the real enemy: the rich. We are socialists, that means we’re for the international unity of the working class, regardless of national origin. English workers have much more in common with workers from Poland than they do with David Cameron, and the Polish workers have more in common with you than they do with Polish oligarchs, too.
“Imagine how much power Amazon workers would have if they united in the US, UK, Poland, Germany, Mexico, China, Germany, India, and all over, in a common struggle for social equality. Divided by nationality, the workers are powerless. But united across the world, the working class is a powerful force that can change the course of history.”
The worker responded with a “thumbs-up.”
Amazon workers, if you have stories to share, sign-up for ournewsletterand send them in the comments field. We keep all sources anonymous to protect from arbitrary firing.
Billionaire Bezos’s cash bonanza
Amazon
CEO makes $3.3 billion in a few hours
By
Evan Blake and Eric London
6 May 2017
Last Thursday evening, Amazon’s billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos made
$3.3 billion when the tech giant reported its eighth consecutive profitable
quarter, adding $50 a share to the value of its stock in after-hours trading.
To acquire $3.3 billion, a US Amazon worker making the average
$12.41/hour would have to work 133,064 years—roughly the length of time modern
humans have lived on Earth. It would take Amazon workers in China, Brazil,
India, and Mexico who are paid even lower wages much longer than that.
If the entire 200,000 person Amazon workforce in the US began
working on January 1 at this wage, they would make a collective $3.3 billion in
wages only at the end of August. A US warehouse worker would have to work
almost two weeks just to make enough to buy a single share of Amazon stock
(worth about $940)—and that’s before tax!
Bezos’s evening bonanza brings his net worth to $80.6 billion,
making him the third wealthiest person on Earth. Bezos is poised to become the
world's richest person by year's end.
Among the world's billionaires, Bezos has experienced the largest
growth in his personal wealth so far this year, adding $15.3 billion since
January 1, according to theBloomberg Billionaires Index.
Over the past year, Bezos has earned $22.4 billion, and in the last five years
he has earned an astounding $62.5 billion.
To put this in perspective, the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute estimates that it would cost roughly $51 billion—$11.5
billionlessthan Bezos has earned in five years—to
provide access to water and sanitation for the entire global population, which
would save millions of lives annually.
The average Amazon warehouse worker in the US makes roughly
$25,792 each year before tax. Thus, in the past year, Bezos earned 868,486
times the average Amazon worker, and over the past five years he has earned
nearly this same amount, $23,782,per minute.
Amazon and Bezos exercise an inordinate amount of control on the
political system. In 2016, Amazon’s Political Action Committee gave hundreds of
thousands of dollars to 129 congressmen—29.6 percent of the total—and 35
senators, both split almost evenly between both Democratic and Republican
representatives. Bezos also owns one of the country’s most influential
newspapers, theWashington Post.
Bezos’s billions and his influence come through the exploitation
of the hundreds of thousands of Amazon workers worldwide, who go to work each
day and produce far more value for the company than they receive in wages. This
is where the company’s profit comes from.
In all the countries in which it operates, Amazon is engaged in
efforts to suck its workers dry of every penny of profit. In Germany, Amazon
recently implemented a new policy of collective punishment for its workforce
aimed at dissuading workers from taking sick days that they have the right to
under German law.
The policy stipulates that workers are eligible for a group bonus
of 6-10 percent only if the entire group has used a minimum amount of sick
days. This pits workers against one another and places immense pressure on
individuals not to take time off to recover from illness for fear of being
blamed for taking away their coworkers’ bonuses.
Over the last five years, Amazon’s revenue has increased more than
the cost of revenue (which includes labor costs). That means that each year,
the level of exploitation at Amazon increases while workers receive a smaller
proportion of Amazon’s gross profit. From 2012 to 2016, the difference between
the company’s total revenue and the cost of revenue, including labor costs,
increased from $15.12 billion in 2012 to $47.72 billion in 2016. That’s tens of
billions of dollars of wealth that workers produce but will never see.
Behind the billions of dollars on the company’s balance sheets are
the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Amazon workers whose daily economic
struggles are funding Bezos’s lavish lifestyle.
Last October, he bought Washington DC’s largest house—a
27,000-square-foot former textile museum—for $23 million in cash. To purchase
just a single square foot of Bezos’ mansion, an Amazon worker making $12.40 an
hour would have to work 68.7 hours.
The house has 14 bathrooms, 10 bedrooms, and 11 fireplaces.
Bezos’s nearby neighbors include Barack Obama and Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson, as well as Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
Bezos’s wealth is not a product of individual “greed,” it is a
product of the capitalist system, which is based on the private ownership of
the means of production by a tiny sliver of the world’s population which
increases its wealth through the exploitation of the working class of the
world.
It is the working class, at Amazon and in all industries and
workplaces, which produces society’s wealth. The Socialist Equality Party calls
for the nationalization of Amazon and all major corporations, the seizure of
the wealth of the rich, and its redistribution to meet the needs of the human
race.
This requires apoliticalstruggle for the unity of the working
class of all nationalities against the corporations and the political parties
and governments they control, as well as against their wars for corporate
plunder. TheWorld Socialist Web Siteencourages all Amazon workers to share
this article as widely as possible on social media and to contact us to learn
more about the fight for socialism.
Amazon ordered employee to work despite heatstroke risk, sought to cover up incident
By Eric London 30 May 2017
A former Amazon worker who nearly suffered heatstroke and was ordered by the company to keep working told theInternational Amazon Workers Voicethat Amazon ignored reports of the incident to avoid blame and deny her access to medical attention.
On a sweltering hot summer day in 2016, a young “picker” named Nicole was working on the floor of Amazon’s fulfillment center in Chester, Virginia. Although workers requested that management turn up the air conditioning, Nicole said the company refused. When she nearly passed out, Amazon gave her just 20 minutes of rest and then ordered her back on the floor. The company knew that medical officials warned she could suffer potentially fatal heatstroke.
To this day, Nicole explained, she has been unable to seek medical attention because the corporation ignored a report she filed of the incident.
Amazon workers are familiar with this type of brutal treatment by a corporate giant that prioritizes private profit above the lives of its workers. This is the rule under capitalism: corporations like Amazon cut costs by sacrificing workers’ health to improve the profit margin and enrich the corporate leadership.
“When I made a report about my incident,” Nicole told the IAWV, “I found out they never did my report because they didn’t want to get into trouble. How I found out was I called the Amazon hotline for employees to see if there was a report made so I could go see a doctor about my current condition, and they said they had no report on my incident when I made one. I wanted to because it was a work place accident. And they didn’t want to help me.”
Because the company ignored her report, Nicole said she couldn’t file a workers’ compensation claim or bring a lawsuit against the company for the abuse she said she suffered.
After the incident, Nicole decided that the $12.50 an hour she made was not worth the risk of suffering from the intense heat on the shop floor. But instead of firing her, the company sent her a letter claiming she left the company through “voluntary resignation due to job abandonment.” Because of this, she was ineligible to collect unemployment benefits.
Out of a job and still feeling the effects of the incident, Nicole says she began to have difficulty being outside during the daytime for long periods of time. Though she has finally found new work, she hasn’t seen a doctor despite ongoing side effects because of the high cost of health care in the US. She fears her health will never be the same.
“Ever since I left Amazon I have been having problems with heat in general,” she said. “I haven’t gotten medical attention for it because I had no job and no health insurance. I loved being outside before, and now I can’t enjoy the summertime as I used to. I am basically cursed because of them.”
Nicole is not alone. She described horrific conditions at the Chester, Virginia fulfillment center, which was featured in a 2015 article, “The Life and Death of an Amazon Warehouse Temp.”
“From what I have heard,” Nicole said, “one person had died from a heart attack there. I also heard someone killed themselves by jumping from one of the floors, and not quite sure about the other [deaths at the facility]. We also had a lot of workplace injuries where ambulances were called.
“But no matter what circumstances we were under, management always told us to keep working even if we were hurting. They told us to take some painkillers and get back to work.”
Nicole said it is hard to find news articles of many of the deaths, since Amazon “keeps that under wraps because they don’t want people to know so they can get people to work for them.” She added, “They don’t like us talking about it.”
Despite these conditions, some workers drive from as far away as North Carolina to work at the Chester fulfillment center. Temporary workers make $10 an hour, and many other workers at the facility make $12.
Nicole expressed gratitude that theInternational Amazon Workers Voicewas exposing sweatshop conditions at Amazon fulfillment centers.
“I am for the cause,” she said. “I am all for uniting to show Amazon that they need to listen to how they are treating their people. We work far too hard. I want Amazon to do better or be shut down. I hate seeing my friends being worked to the very core to the point of almost disabling themselves. I don’t want anyone to go through what I am going through right now. I can’t even go to amusement parks which are my favorite places without having a threat of heatstroke.”
She said she would share theIAWVwith her friends who still work at the facility and encouraged other workers across the world to step forward and share their stories of abuse.
Amazon workers:contactthe IAWV today and help expose Amazon’s exploitation of the working class. We protect anonymity and don’t use names without your approval.Sign-upto receive updates, “like” the IAWV on Facebook,and share this article with your coworkers.
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon, the e-commerce giant that has changed how much of the world shops for books, toilet paper and TVs, hit a new milestone. Its stock topped $1,000 for the first time.
That price puts Amazon’s market value at about $478 billion, double that of rival Wal-Mart and more than 15 times the size of Target. And its four-digit stock price places it in rare company: Only four other U.S.-listed companies have shares that trade above $1,000.
Amazon.com Inc. has come a long way since its start in 1995, when it mostly sold books. The Seattle company now sells just about anything, from groceries to small appliances, and has been blamed for taking business away from department stores, supermarkets and clothing retailers.
Ted S. Warren/AP
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