“We are people, not slaves or robots!” Companies should honour the needs and desires of their workers or pay the price for not doing so!

If one wonders whatever circumstances started the Russian Revolution in 1917 – exactly hundred years ago – or roughly 130 years earlier the French Revolution, he should look at the lower class and middle class workers and impoverished people in his country. And first and foremost to the way they are treated by the wealthy people and (large) companies in this country. 

Then this person should realize that most revolutions start because these simple workers and the non-working poor are utterly fed up with their living circumstances and want to make a drastical change, even if that might cost them their life eventually.

If the lower class workers and the poor in a country are treated humanely and are given chances to work themselves up towards a better life, no revolution will ever break out. 

However, if such workers are treated like poor, talentless and useless people, who are only good for one thing – for which they are not appreciated at all and paid very poorly too – revolution could be looming when the humiliation reaches its peak.

To this respect it is good to look at the grim developments at one of the largest and most popular companies in the world: Amazon. This company is extremely successful in both sales of food and non-food articles to the general public and rendering cloud services (i.e. the rental of broad computer services) to companies. Its status in the digital world is iconic, just as the status of its founder, Jeff Bezos.

Yet, this company seems well on its way to become one of those companies that is hated and despised by their personnel for the inhumane treatment of their workers, if the following story is indeed true.

This story, which was based upon research done by a reporter of the British newspaper Daily Mirror, was printed in the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad a few weeks ago:

Personnel of a British distribution centre of webgiant Amazon is severely underpaid for the long, long working days they have to make around the holidays. Some employees make working weeks of 55 hours for a minimum hourly wage of around UKP 8.20 (roughly € 9,16). This became clear from undercover research of British newspaper Daily Mirror.

Journalist Alan Selby worked five weeks for a distribution centre in Tilbury, where he saw that the personnel was treated as ‘live stock’ and became so tired that they fell asleep standing. Some workers had to be treated by ambulance personnel. “The personnel receives a wage that is lower than the average cost of livelihood. One of them asked: ‘Why is it not allowed to sit for a moment when it is not busy? We are people, not slaves or robots’”, according to Selby.

The journalist, who runs marathons in his leisure time, experienced that himself: “The only times that I did not stand up, was during my breaks.  My body ached, I felt dizzy and was afraid that I would topple over. One of my colleagues told me she overstretched her hamstrings, but had to continue anyway”. Selby saw the managers screaming at those who dared to rest.

Also the daily targets would lie too high. It is expected from the packaging personnel that they prepare for shipment 120 products per hour. Those who did not make that number, were fired...

When asked, Amazon did not exactly experience the urgency behind the cause for this article. Again the Algemeen Dagblad:

Amazon informed us in a reaction that they ‘offered a safe and positive working place’. “We are proud upon having created thousands and thousands of job in the past years. The targets have been based upon earlier results of our personnel”.

“Nothing to see her, folks. Everything is cool! Carry on, as you were!”

There are roughly three possibilities with respect to this story:

• a. Alan Selby is a stargazer and a liar who makes something out of nothing. Amazon personnel should simply shut up, enjoy their work and be glad that they have a job.
• b. Amazon is a cynical club that doesn’t give a rat’s behind about the wellbeing of their personnel and only hunts for impossible targets and yet more efficiency on the way towards full robotization of their workforce.
• c. Amazon is not aware of treating its personnel badly and truly believes that they offer a good job to their personnel. 

The first possibility of the three is not very plausible, as at the same time of the publication of this article in the UK, the personnel of Amazon in Germany and Italy was on strike to get improvement of their labour circumstances too.

Remain the two possibilities in which Amazon is either extremely naive or cynical...

Both possibilities are not favourable for the company. And looking at Amazon’s reaction when confronted with the news in the Daily Mirror (see red and bold text), I tend to think that Amazon is just extremely cynical.

Probably the company cannot wait for the moment that they can either move most of their operations to the low wage countries, where workers are less critical and too much strapped for cash to complain about labour circumstances, or fully robotize their operations so they don’t need human workers at all. 

Anyway, the result is shocking, to these eyes!

And unfortunately the situation around Amazon is not unique. A few weeks later, an article appeared in the Dutch online magazine The Correspondent, in which the situation for the workers at Schiphol airport had been put under scrutiny. 

Also this article was written by an investigative reporter, Dick Wittenberg, who spoke with workers in the lowest qualified jobs at Schiphol.

The tendency in this article was very much akin to the situation at Amazon: long working hours without toilet breaks, poor payment and uncertain situations around the prolongation of contracts:

At Schiphol I stumble upon uncertain workers and working poor. Masses of workers are running around. Labour Union FNV estimates that at least a quarter of the 65,000 people, who work at the roughly 450 companies, does not have a steady job. At some companies or departments of companies, their share rises above 70 per cent.

They run from one temp job to another, or from one temporary contract to another. They hardly earn the minimum wage. A large share does hardly build up a pension or does not get paid at all during sickness. And in the meantime they can always be ‘written off’ and be exchanged for more productive workers.

Everything at Schiphol is aimed at keeping the tariffs for the aviation companies as low as possible. This means that insufficient demands are made towards the companies that work on Schiphol. And that goes at the expense of the personnel of these companies.

Take for instance the luggage and passenger handling companies. In the battle for the goodwill of the over hundred aviation companies that land on Schiphol, these companies feel forced to work as cheap as possible, according to a spokesman of the FNV union, Leen vander List. “This simply means more production with less personnel involved and - as a consequence of this modus operandi - also more poorly renumerated and very insecure labour contracts”. 

In order to prevend that now insecure workers can claim a fixed contract after having three sequential, temporary contracts within two years, companies at Schiphol use a trick, making use of temporary labour organizations. 

After a number of contracts at one company, the temp agency places the worker at another company for a certain amount of time. After a while, the temp worker starts again at square one at the first company. Annually, over 10,000 uncertain workers are pumped around this way. FNV spokesman Van der List calls this the ‘merry-go-round of uncertain workers’.  

Both articles are either based upon first-hand experiences of the journalist (in case of Alan Selby) or testimonies of direct witnesses at these companies in The United Kingdom and The Netherlands. However, the tendency of both articles is fiercely denied by the main corporate protagonists in it.

Hence, the credibility of both stories is based upon the credibility of the reporters in question, who state things that are 180 degrees opposite of the image that both involved companies Amazon and Schiphol want to spread to the general public: an image of happy and satisfied workers being part of one happy family at their respective companies.

I believe these aforementioned stories, however. Personally, I see a disturbing trend towards the further dehumanization of workers over the last number of years. These are workers, who increasingly have to act like robots, in their quest for their nearly impossible targets. 

People, who are denied the simplest things like toilet and smoke breaks and a few minutes to put their feet to rest, outside the bare minimum of work breaks they are granted. Because this could harm their ability to meet those aforementioned targets.

Besides that, people are suffering from (too) low wages and from lack of certainty in the form of fair contracts for a longer period of time or – even better – fixed contracts. Contracts, that build up a fair pension and fair sickness money.

The same has happened in health care and home care were nurses and other health care workers are fighting their impossible targets of having to give so much aide in only a few minutes per patient. No more room for talking with patients and giving aide beyond the bare minimum. They have to work like emotionless machines, if they want to meet their targets. Nothing else is possible.

Many healthcare and homecare workers are so sick and tired of these impossible targets and the accompanying pressure that they gave up their jobs, according to the local newspaper Eindhovens Dagblad:

This is exactly where institutes for homecare warned for for a long time: it is simply impossible to take new clients in, irrespective of the urgency of the demand. They are seriously short-handed. There is no influx of new workers. To put it even stronger: healthcare and homecare workers are leaving their job by the dozen. Only in Brabant [i.e. Dutch province in the south] already 10,000 workers left their job this year [2017 - EL].

Also in the cleaning industry this development is underway, as cleaners have to clean a class room or an office in roughly five to ten minutes. This leaves them only enough time to do a poor job, as thoroughly cleaning a class room would take at least 30 minutes. 

No good job can be done in this minimum amount of time and thus no job satisfaction can be reached, due to a job well done. Everything is arranged for meeting the nearly impossible targets, to be able for their employer to offer the cheapest price at their principals.  

The biggest problem, to these eyes, is the ongoing dehumanization of workers. 

Workers are not seen as the living, intelligent, hardworking and curious people that they are, but as durable means of production that are only appreciated for their possibilities to meet their targets. Nothing else!

When the targets are not met, the appreciation for the workers is gone at the spot and the workers must be replaced by better, quicker and more successful workers. Their opinions, worries and ideas are not important for their employers; just their sheer output.

One reinforcing effect to their misfortune is that workers, when not sufficiently unionized and represented on higher levels in society, are often extremely poor represented in the political arenas. The large, successful companies and the rich citizens on the other hand are overly represented there, because of their money and (thus) their influence on the leading politicians.

This means that the needs of the lower class workers and the poor are often neglected, in favour of measures that are aimed at the rich people and the large companies: lowering taxes and rising subsidies for investments. And preparing more building ground for expensive owner-occupied housing than cheap rental housing for the lower and middle classes. 

These groups have the money and the influence to “buy” their opinion and their interests into the political arenas.

Perhaps, the United States political arena is the most blatant example of this phenomenon, due to the nearly unlimited amounts of payments that can be made to the political parties and their representatives, as well as the extremely costly election campaigns that cause that all parties and all representatives are strapped for cash with respect to their (re-)elections. 

Paying money in The United States means buying direct influence, via the carrot (the money) and the stick (no more money for the next re-elections) clause.

Nevertheless, my gutfeeling says that the emotions of the lower class workers could come to a boiling point within a few years, when the working circumstances do not further improve and serious payment rises are made for everybody in the company, instead of the top management alone.

The only problem is, that a lot of the current, lower class anger in society is now aimed at immigrants and (religious) minority groups, instead of at the people who are behind their financial backwardedness and disdain for their position. This is expressed in the misunderstanding and sometimes sheer hatred against the religious minorities and the immigrants from Africa and Asia, that are looking for a safe refuge. This is a dangerous development, that has led to extremely bloody wars in the last century.

When this will turn around, however, and the anger of the lower classes and poor people WILL be aimed at the leading classes and the companies who treated them poorly, these leading politicians, (large) companies and rich citizens could be in for a rough ride, just like it happened more often in the past.

I personally hope it will not come this far, but the signs are not exactly promising, given the aforementioned widespread examples of antisocial, corporate behaviour.

Nevertheless, the recipe to solve this issue is fairly simple: forget the impossible targets and forget the fairytale that the robots are ready to take over most jobs. 

Start to give the workers in the simpler, but nevertheless extremely important jobs the respect and the remuneration that they deserve. Make sure that their targets are feasible and that they have enough backup to do their job in a normal way. 

Make also sure they live in decent houses in decent areas and make sure they enjoy their jobs and get satisfied by it. Don't take their efforts simply for granted, as if they are slaves or robots.

Frits Philips, one of the leading entrepreneurs behind the expansion of the now world-famous Philips brand, understood this lesson very well and he acted accordingly. He built and bought good houses for his workers and gave them sports and leisure time and the means to do so. By doing so, he earned their eternal respect and gratitude.

I wonder if Jeff Bezos of Amazon has this grandness in himself or that he is one of the infamous American entrepreneurs that treats people like slaves… or robots, as a matter of fact. 

Even robots need some maintenance every now and then; just like people do!