Speaker 1: I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon
Speaker 1: customer because you guys paid progress. You guys paid probs.
Speaker 1: This is megaco an investigative podcast exposing some of the
Speaker 1: world's most unethical corporations. This series is about Amazon. I'm
Speaker 1: Jake Hanrahan, journalists and documentary filmmaker. Megacorp is produced by
Speaker 1: H eleven for Cool Zone Media. So this is the
Speaker 1: final installment of Megacorp. For this series, at least over
Speaker 1: the past twelve episodes, we've dug into almost every Amazon scandal.
Speaker 1: There is dangerous working conditions, union busting, spin on customers,
Speaker 1: and much much more. This series has been very information dents.
Speaker 1: So for the final episode here, I'm going to recap
Speaker 1: everything we've learned and take a look at what people
Speaker 1: might want to do now they have all this information.
Speaker 1: You can maybe use this last episode as a primer
Speaker 1: to get people interested in listening to the whole of megacorps.
Speaker 1: Or you could use it as a too long, didn't
Speaker 1: read version. It's up to you anyway. Let's go back
Speaker 1: to episode one. We heard about the mistreatment of warehouse
Speaker 1: workers at Amazon, where they're worked off their feet. As
Speaker 1: we mentioned then, Amazon warehouse workers are paid around seventeen
Speaker 1: dollars an hour in the US and around fourteen pounds
Speaker 1: an hour in the UK. For these wages, employees will
Speaker 1: often work ten to twelve hour shifts, constantly on their feet,
Speaker 1: where they're expected to hit never ending targets. A package
Speaker 1: must be dealt with every thirty seconds. If you're working
Speaker 1: as a pick you're expected to process three hundred items
Speaker 1: per hour. You've given nine seconds to take each item
Speaker 1: from a robot that delivers shelf upon shelf of Amazon packages.
Speaker 1: Staff are constantly filmed in the warehouse as they work,
Speaker 1: and their toilet breaks are even time. Workers get two
Speaker 1: fifteen minute breaks, much of which can be taken up
Speaker 1: by just walking to the toilet through the vast expanse
Speaker 1: of the warehouse. People often fall asleep standing up will
Speaker 1: become injured at work. Leak documents revealed in the New
Speaker 1: York Staten Island Amazon Warehouse reported injuries over three times
Speaker 1: the industry average. To put that into context, the injury
Speaker 1: percentages at the Amazon warehouse will worse than its steel
Speaker 1: refineries and sawmills all over the world. Workers have voiced
Speaker 1: anger at these horrific working conditions, so as any of
Speaker 1: this changed in a few months we've been doing this series.
Speaker 1: The short answer is no. There have been some victories
Speaker 1: for unions here and there, but Amazon continues in its
Speaker 1: mission to crush them. Workers are exhausted, overworked, and in
Speaker 1: my opinion, are often treated like flesh robots on a
Speaker 1: warehouse floor. For that, Amazon managers now remember Bezos is
Speaker 1: worth an estimated one and seventy seven billion dollars, and
Speaker 1: on working conditions at Amazon, he has said quote, I'm
Speaker 1: very proud of our working conditions end quote. After twelve
Speaker 1: episodes of research for this that quote rings even more
Speaker 1: tone death for me than it did at episode one,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider how sinister some of Amazon's union
Speaker 1: busting techniques have been, which we covered in episode two.
Speaker 1: If you remember, we covered how in and internal and
Speaker 1: union Amazon video was leaked onto the internet. The video
Speaker 1: is essentially a training guide on how to stop workers unionizing.
Speaker 1: This video was sent to managers at the company Whole
Speaker 1: Foods amidst the initial stages of worker organization around June.
Speaker 1: Whole food was brought out by Amazon in seventeen for
Speaker 1: thirteen point seven billion dollars. The anti union video is
Speaker 1: forty five minutes long, and it's split up into six
Speaker 1: different parts. The whole thing is animated. It takes place
Speaker 1: in a two D Amazon warehouse, where the narrator says,
Speaker 1: the purpose of the video is quote specifically designed to
Speaker 1: give you the tools that you need for success when
Speaker 1: it comes to labor organizing end quote. Now there's something
Speaker 1: quite all well and in the way this video portrays itself.
Speaker 1: As we said before, it's essentially a guide that Amazon
Speaker 1: is created to help recognize when workers unions are beginning
Speaker 1: to form, but not so they can help them. It's
Speaker 1: so they can stop them. Yet the language used in
Speaker 1: the video acts as if it's somehow an ally of
Speaker 1: the workers. When they say they're helping give companies the
Speaker 1: tools they need for success when it comes to labor organizing,
Speaker 1: what they mean by success is basically crushing the unions.
Speaker 1: Amazon is training and encouraging workers to literally spy on
Speaker 1: each other. They suggest monitor in their behavior, their clothes,
Speaker 1: and even what words they use to try and work
Speaker 1: out if they're involved in union organizing or not. The
Speaker 1: video goes as farmers to suggest that managers second guess
Speaker 1: the motivations of the workers by watching to see if
Speaker 1: anything changes in their behavior, even if they have not
Speaker 1: said anything regarding unionizing. So I think it's safe to
Speaker 1: say that the Amazon warehouse and anyone unionize in there
Speaker 1: is not in the healthiest place to be working if
Speaker 1: you want some level of autonomy in the workplace. So
Speaker 1: what about the health and safety. Well in episode three
Speaker 1: we covered that too now. As we noted back then,
Speaker 1: in twenty the UK's GMB trade union obtained figures that
Speaker 1: showed injury rates weren't improving and we're perhaps getting worse.
Speaker 1: More than fifty of the country's Amazon warehouses. GMB used
Speaker 1: the Freedom of Information Act to get hold of the
Speaker 1: figures that showed the dire situation of warehouse safety. In fact,
Speaker 1: as cited in a Guardian article, in three years leading
Speaker 1: up to twenty, more than six hundred Amazon workers have
Speaker 1: been seriously injured at UK warehouses. That's an average of
Speaker 1: two hundred plus Amazon workers a year sustaining what's classed
Speaker 1: as quote serious injury in the workplace. In the UK,
Speaker 1: the annual total of Amazon warehouse injuries was one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty two. In the years twenty sixteen to twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: it went up to two hundred and thirty in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: and then up again to two hundred and forty in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. One study by the Strategic Organizing Center the
Speaker 1: s o C shows that workers more likely to be
Speaker 1: injured at Amazon warehouses than in any other warehouse in
Speaker 1: that industry. They're also more likely to be injured more
Speaker 1: frequently at Amazon warehouses, even more severely. So basically, if
Speaker 1: you work in warehouses for a living, you are way
Speaker 1: more likely to catch a severe injury working for Amazon
Speaker 1: than any other of their competitors. So Amazon's warehouse work
Speaker 1: is borderline oppressive and even dangerous. When workers want to
Speaker 1: unionize to try and change some of this, Amazon truly
Speaker 1: encourages other employees to spy on them in a bid
Speaker 1: to crush the union. So why is Amazon so underhanded? Honestly,
Speaker 1: at this stage, my best guess is quite simply because
Speaker 1: profit over everything. As we already know, Bezos is the
Speaker 1: richest man on earth. It's not like his business is
Speaker 1: struggling either. As we mentioned in episode four, in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: Amazon made forty four billion euros in sales income in Europe.
Speaker 1: That's thirty eight billion pounds and fifty billion dollars they
Speaker 1: didn't pay any corporation tax on this. Corporation tax is
Speaker 1: paid by businesses in the UK, and it's calculated on
Speaker 1: their annual profits in a similar way to income tax
Speaker 1: for individuals. The corporation tax rate has been for all
Speaker 1: limited companies since April. Prior to this, the rate very
Speaker 1: dependent on the company's profits. Unlike individuals, companies don't receive
Speaker 1: any kind of tax free allowance and therefore all profits
Speaker 1: are taxable. However, there are a number of expenses and
Speaker 1: deductions that can be claimed to reduce your bill. Either way,
Speaker 1: Amazon should pay their way like everyone else has to. Now,
Speaker 1: as I stated before, I am not a big fan
Speaker 1: of any state, and I'm certainly not a fan of
Speaker 1: my government here in the UK. But this is just
Speaker 1: the way things are. If you're a mega rich company
Speaker 1: making money under these conditions, you should have to pay
Speaker 1: the proper tax under these conditions. Why well, because if you,
Speaker 1: or me, or your average man and woman earning normal
Speaker 1: money on the street don't pay their taxes, we get
Speaker 1: sent to prison. Now, your average man or woman is
Speaker 1: not rich enough to hire top of the range accountants
Speaker 1: firms that help you dodge at tax Amazon is. I
Speaker 1: say this because what they're doing is actually perfectly legal. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but for me, that makes
Speaker 1: it all the more frustrating. Europe has become a playground
Speaker 1: for mega corporations. They're able to do acrobatics with their
Speaker 1: tax payments because they can afford to make it work
Speaker 1: for them. Meanwhile, companies like Amazon willingly abused their most
Speaker 1: important workers, whilst paying as little as possible back into
Speaker 1: the countries they make money off of. If all this
Speaker 1: wasn't bad enough, we went on to discover in episode
Speaker 1: five and six that Amazon is also spying on everybody too.
Speaker 1: So we asked the question, is Amazon spying on you?
Speaker 1: We took a look at several of their products and
Speaker 1: the answer was a resounding yes they are. First, we
Speaker 1: looked at their smart speakers. In nineteen, it emerged that
Speaker 1: Amazon employees have been listening to voice recordings captured via
Speaker 1: Amazon's Echo smart speaker in consumers homes and offices. This
Speaker 1: wasn't a couple of rogue employees either. Amazon literally hired
Speaker 1: thousands of people to do this. Their job was to
Speaker 1: not only listen to what you're saying, but to also
Speaker 1: transcribe and annotate it. They then feed it back into
Speaker 1: the software with the aim of apparently helping Alexa understand
Speaker 1: voice commands more effectively. Either way, they're listening to your
Speaker 1: conversations and they're writing them down. This raises extremely serious
Speaker 1: questions about a citizens personal privacy, and trust me, it
Speaker 1: gets a lot worse. Reported by Forbes, the people tasked
Speaker 1: with listening to your conversations quote required to record the data,
Speaker 1: whether the device has been activated on purpose or not.
Speaker 1: End quote. So by buying an Amazon Echo, you've essentially
Speaker 1: invited an employee of Amazon to listen into your private conversations,
Speaker 1: whether you've given Alexa a command or not. If Big
Speaker 1: Brother is always watching, it's clear now that Amazon is
Speaker 1: always listening. If the people hired to listen, in record,
Speaker 1: and annotate conversations in your home via the Amazon Echo
Speaker 1: here private data such as your bank details, they're told
Speaker 1: to just market down as quote critical data and move on.
Speaker 1: Let's just hope every single one of the thousands of
Speaker 1: people Amazon employed to do this honest and didn't steal
Speaker 1: anyone's details. Next, we looked at Amazon's home security devices. Specifically,
Speaker 1: Ring Ring is a home security company owned by Amazon.
Speaker 1: They bought it in eighteen for one billion dollars, and
Speaker 1: millions of people across the world used the technology. Ring
Speaker 1: provides a line of WiFi connected security cameras for your home.
Speaker 1: You've likely seen footage of Ring doorbell security systems online.
Speaker 1: Is basically you usually a little camera in the doorbell
Speaker 1: or wherever they put it in their house, and it
Speaker 1: allows the home owner to see what's going on outside
Speaker 1: before they open the door or inside. For example, if
Speaker 1: you want to keep an eye on your kids as
Speaker 1: they're playing through the WiFi, you can pull Ring up
Speaker 1: on your phone or your tablet, or your laptop or whatever.
Speaker 1: In nineteen it was reported that hackers had built themselves
Speaker 1: dedicated software for hacking into Amazon's Ring security cameras. It
Speaker 1: becomes clear how funked up this is when looking at
Speaker 1: a story from Mississippi in the US, where it was
Speaker 1: discovered that hackers had managed to get into a Ring
Speaker 1: security camera placed in the bedroom of three young girls,
Speaker 1: one of them was just eight years old. The hacker
Speaker 1: managed to take control of the Ring security camera, playing
Speaker 1: music through its speaker as the young girl has played
Speaker 1: in their room. The hacker played the song Tiptoe through
Speaker 1: the tulips, and when one of the young girls asked
Speaker 1: who was there, the hacker replied, quote, it's Santa, It's
Speaker 1: your best friend. End quote. If that wasn't bad enough,
Speaker 1: it was later discovered that rings own employees have been
Speaker 1: improperly accessing rings user video data. It doesn't stop with
Speaker 1: the home security systems either. We learned that Amazon had
Speaker 1: been allowing law enforcement to use customers home security systems,
Speaker 1: specifically the ring doorbells to access video footage in the
Speaker 1: wake of the George Floyd riots across the US. They've
Speaker 1: also been building huge systems for America's CIA of Britain's
Speaker 1: g C h Q After that. This brings us to
Speaker 1: episode seven, where we looked into Jeff bezos trips to
Speaker 1: near space aboard his Blue Origin projects. Blue Origin, the
Speaker 1: Bazos commercial space company, stresses that to keep costs down,
Speaker 1: their rockets are all about reusability. Well, actually, when we
Speaker 1: looked into it, according to the two World Inequality Report,
Speaker 1: one space flight amidst more carbon dioxide than most of
Speaker 1: the world's population creates in their entire lifetime. To me,
Speaker 1: knowing that, it seems a bit ironic for Blue Origin
Speaker 1: to be talking about paving the way to a brighter
Speaker 1: future for our kids, as they do when their very
Speaker 1: own m oh of regular commercial space flights will possibly
Speaker 1: destroy the Earth's environment quicker. Now, whilst Blue Origin says
Speaker 1: it wants to make commercial space travel cheap, they don't
Speaker 1: mean the same kind of cheap as the way most
Speaker 1: people understand it cheap to me, for example, is say
Speaker 1: thirty pence for a point of milk. My point is
Speaker 1: the people who will be taking these space flights will
Speaker 1: almost definitely already be very very rich. For their michere
Speaker 1: might be cheap, but for your average man and woman
Speaker 1: on the street, Blue Origins space trips will be completely
Speaker 1: and utterly unobtainable. So in theory, whilst these rich people
Speaker 1: are flying around like the Jetsons claiming to be advancing society,
Speaker 1: for us, your everyday man and woman are getting blasted
Speaker 1: in the long run with unprecedented levels of carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: build up in the atmosphere. Now why does that matter, Well,
Speaker 1: if there's too much carbon dioxide, the Earth gets too hot.
Speaker 1: If the Earth gets too hot, we are all completely fucked.
Speaker 1: The oceans will go toxic, food will become scarce, crops
Speaker 1: won't grow, and brutal climate wars will undoubtedly erupt. Carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide levels have been steadily rising on Earth for the
Speaker 1: past one hundred years now, hitting levels that scientists say
Speaker 1: have been unprecedented for hundreds of thousands over years. So
Speaker 1: we already reckoned the shop due to excessive pollution, and
Speaker 1: now the rich commercial space people want to save us
Speaker 1: by dumping out a load more carbon dioxide via space
Speaker 1: shuttles will never be able to afford a ride on.
Speaker 1: After taking a look at Blue Origin and Bezos is
Speaker 1: Early Life, we came back to Earth and the present
Speaker 1: day to learn about the Amazon Flex driver pyramid scheme,
Speaker 1: a scandal in which Amazon drivers had had their tips
Speaker 1: stolen from them by Amazon as a means to pay
Speaker 1: their daily rate. For this, Amazon got fined sixty one
Speaker 1: point seven billion dollars, and believe it or not, almost
Speaker 1: immediately they became even richer. Listen to episode eleven to
Speaker 1: find out how. Now, that was all a very long
Speaker 1: way of summing up the key points of what we've
Speaker 1: already gone into in this series. But as I said,
Speaker 1: you can use this as a means to draw people
Speaker 1: into learning more about the mistreatment, corruption, and on stop
Speaker 1: scandal inside Amazon. Now, if you've got to the end
Speaker 1: of this series, you've listened to every episode, you might
Speaker 1: be thinking, should I boycott Amazon or not? Well, maybe
Speaker 1: you shouldn't, Maybe you shouldn't. I don't know that. It's
Speaker 1: entirely up to you. I didn't make this series to
Speaker 1: preach or tell anybody what they have to do. Let's
Speaker 1: be honest, Amazon has become so intrinsic in our lives
Speaker 1: and so useful that it's hard to totally detach from it.
Speaker 1: Spending money with Amazon obviously doesn't make you a bad person,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't mean you have no ethics, And if
Speaker 1: anyone tells you that, honestly, just tell them to mind
Speaker 1: their own fucking business. Saying that, at the very least,
Speaker 1: I do think if you're purchasing from a company as
Speaker 1: soulless and as ruthless as Amazon often is, the very
Speaker 1: least you should be aware of what they're really up to.
Speaker 1: With this series, I've tried my best to cover all
Speaker 1: of that with as much detail as possible. Outside of
Speaker 1: being aware of Amazon's theft, spying, worker mistreatment, and tax dodging,
Speaker 1: I'd suggest supporting any Amazon workers union you can. Don't
Speaker 1: worry too much about are you represented politically within it.
Speaker 1: These are workers that are coming together and they want
Speaker 1: a better future and a better working environment. That is
Speaker 1: definitely worth supporting in my opinion. Also, I would say this,
Speaker 1: but also spread this series far and wide. I didn't
Speaker 1: make this for other reporters. I didn't make this specifically
Speaker 1: for people that want to be outraged. I made this
Speaker 1: for everybody. If you are shopping at Amazon As, millions
Speaker 1: and millions and millions of people do, I think again,
Speaker 1: the very least you should do is be aware of
Speaker 1: their bad practices. Also, I would suggest checking out the
Speaker 1: works of the many reporters I've cited by name throughout
Speaker 1: this series. If you ever happened to be in contact
Speaker 1: with Jeff Bezos for any reason, tell him to look
Speaker 1: after his workers. They're the most important facet of his empire.
Speaker 1: Without them, he is fucked. This has been mega core
Speaker 1: with me. Jake Hanrahan, thank you for listening. Mega Corp
Speaker 1: Is made by my production company H eleven for Cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. It's written, researched, and produced by myself, Jake Hanrahan.
Speaker 1: It was also produced by Sophie Lichtmant. Music is by
Speaker 1: some Black Graphics by Adam Doyle and sound engineering by
Speaker 1: splicing block. If you want to get in touch, follow
Speaker 1: me on social media at Jake Underscool, Hanrahan. That's h
Speaker 1: a n a A h a n The Break