Speaker 1: I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon
Speaker 1: customer because you guys paid progress. You guys paid problems.
Speaker 1: This is Megacorp, 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 in this series
Speaker 1: we've gone from the Amazon warehouse, to the Amazon picket line,
Speaker 1: to the Amazon accounts office, to the Amazon Spine operations,
Speaker 1: and then to the Amazon sort of space mission. Now,
Speaker 1: in between all of that there are several various scandals
Speaker 1: that haven't quite fit into their own episode. So today
Speaker 1: this is a sort of amalgamation of various Amazon madness,
Speaker 1: a patchwork quilt of disgrace if you like. So, first
Speaker 1: let's take a look at Amazon in Germany, where in
Speaker 1: they were accused of hiring security guards with neo Nazi
Speaker 1: connections in a bid to intimidate foreign workers. Amazon punk
Speaker 1: endersty effect Senans Can Diets in Dudgeland, Germany's a r
Speaker 1: D t V channel made a documentary allegend the Amazon
Speaker 1: hired security personnel from Germany's Hess Security. It claimed that
Speaker 1: the guards were tasked with keeping order at the hostels
Speaker 1: and budget hotels where foreign Amazon workers stayed. The documentary
Speaker 1: showed guards in all black with military boots, searching the
Speaker 1: bedrooms and the kitchens of the foreign staff. One of
Speaker 1: the foreign workers said that the security men lie to them,
Speaker 1: telling them that they were actually the police. Another said
Speaker 1: she was thrown out of her hostel by the security
Speaker 1: for drying her wet clothes on a wall eater. The
Speaker 1: security men were apparently aggressive and intimidating. So what is
Speaker 1: HESS Security well? A r D said that Hess Security
Speaker 1: was run by a man named U E. L and
Speaker 1: apparently he has ties to football hooligan firms in Germany
Speaker 1: and convicted neo Nazis who are quote known to police.
Speaker 1: A I D says the name of HESS Security is
Speaker 1: even a slight noder to a leading member of the
Speaker 1: World War two Iran Nazi Party, Rudolph Hess. They say
Speaker 1: it stands for Hencell European Security Services. From an independent
Speaker 1: article about the HES security situation. In regards to the
Speaker 1: treatment of Amazon workers, A r D said the following quote.
Speaker 1: Amazon's temporary staff worked eight hour shifts packing goods at
Speaker 1: the company's logistics centers in bad Hrstfeld, Constants and Augsburg.
Speaker 1: Many walked up to seventeen kilometers per shift, and all
Speaker 1: those taken on could be fired at will. On arrival
Speaker 1: in Germany, most were told their pay had been cut
Speaker 1: to below the rate promised when they applied for the
Speaker 1: jobs at Amazon. End quote. Amazon denied that they directly
Speaker 1: hired hair security, saying quote, although the security firm was
Speaker 1: not contracted by Amazon, we are of course currently examining
Speaker 1: the allegations concerning the behavior of security guards and will
Speaker 1: take the appropriate measures immediately. We do not tolerate discrimination
Speaker 1: or intimidation. End quote. Just as a side note here,
Speaker 1: I would argue that they do kind of tolerate intimidation
Speaker 1: because they literally trained people on how to act like
Speaker 1: spies in a bid to union bust. But anyway, according
Speaker 1: to d W News, the security firm was contracted by
Speaker 1: an employment agency, not Amazon directly. However, the accommodation where
Speaker 1: they were was full of temporary Amazon workers from outside
Speaker 1: of Germany, brought in to deal with the Christmas rush.
Speaker 1: Most of them were brought in from Spain. One of
Speaker 1: these workers, a woman named Sylvia, said quote, it's like
Speaker 1: being in a machine, and we are just a small
Speaker 1: part of this machine. End quote. A spokesman for the
Speaker 1: German United Services Union said, quote, they don't see any
Speaker 1: way of complaining. They're all too frightened of being sent
Speaker 1: home without a job end quote. Now, you could argue
Speaker 1: that Amazon has some responsibility for the security seen as
Speaker 1: they asked the employment agency to provide them with workers
Speaker 1: and their workers were staying at the place where this
Speaker 1: security was. Also, you could say, to be fair to Amazon,
Speaker 1: they said they would investigate and they didn't personally contact
Speaker 1: has security. But this is just another example of what
Speaker 1: can happen when human beings are treated. There's nothing more
Speaker 1: than flesh robots for the warehouse floor. Proper checks were
Speaker 1: clearly not carried out, likely simply due to the fact
Speaker 1: that profit was all that mattered, and as we've learned
Speaker 1: in this series, Amazon often doesn't look out for its workers.
Speaker 1: This is reflected on the ground in Germany more recently also,
Speaker 1: as workers there went on strike in November one to
Speaker 1: protest wages and work conditions. Unions They're said Amazon has
Speaker 1: failed to meet industry standards when it comes to the
Speaker 1: wage rights. A union rep there said, quote is unacceptable
Speaker 1: that a multinational corporation worth billions earns itself silly and
Speaker 1: yet refuses to give its employees the wage increases the
Speaker 1: other companies in the industry repay their colleagues. End quote. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree with that guy. That's kind of what this
Speaker 1: whole series is trying to get at. Amazon employees almost
Speaker 1: thirty thou people in Germany and plans to build more
Speaker 1: warehouses there in the future. In November, there was a
Speaker 1: staff walk out in Leipzig and at two sides in
Speaker 1: Bad Hersfeld, which is also where the foreign workers harassed
Speaker 1: by her security were working. This was yet another account
Speaker 1: of workers being mistreated directly by Amazon or via proxy
Speaker 1: of the people that employed them to work for them,
Speaker 1: as we've seen many such cases. Now we're going to
Speaker 1: go from foreign Amazon workers harassed in Germany the mysterious
Speaker 1: Amazon workers on Twitter. This is actually kind of mad
Speaker 1: and it really shows how potentially devious Amazon is. So Basically,
Speaker 1: in March one, as many Amazon workers in the US
Speaker 1: state of Alabama voted to form a union, some Amazon
Speaker 1: workers took to Twitter to say how much they loved Amazon.
Speaker 1: They were a group of so called Amazon FC ambassadors
Speaker 1: Fulfillment Center ambassadors. They were generally starting off by tweeting
Speaker 1: what was a template sort of message with an image
Speaker 1: of themselves, saying things like this, quote my name is Leo,
Speaker 1: I'm an Amazon ambassador and rebin at Jack's two. Any
Speaker 1: questions about the FC, just ask. I'm also into riding motorcycles,
Speaker 1: the beach and slash or pool. I'm retired public service Newark,
Speaker 1: n J c R seven support Portugal National Soccer Club
Speaker 1: and Sporting Football Club end quote. Or there's Michelle, the
Speaker 1: Amazon FC ambassador. She tweeted, quote, I I am Michelle.
Speaker 1: I am a Pick ambassador and trainer at b F
Speaker 1: I four in Kent, Washington. If you have any questions
Speaker 1: about what it is like to work at an FC,
Speaker 1: feel free to ask me. I am passionate about my
Speaker 1: family and love to cook, bake, and garden. It gives
Speaker 1: me peace. End quote. Then it led to things like this.
Speaker 1: One user named FC Dalla began to speak out against
Speaker 1: the Amazon unions. She said, quote what bothers me most
Speaker 1: about unions is there's no ability to opt out of jews.
Speaker 1: Amazon takes great care of me. End quote. That was
Speaker 1: quite weird to say. Is seen as Dalla claimed to
Speaker 1: be based in Alabama, where reported by the BBC, it's
Speaker 1: actually illegal to have a union without a jew's opt
Speaker 1: out option. Another user named Burt, who said he worked
Speaker 1: at the Okay for Amazon warehouse, tweeted, quote unions are
Speaker 1: good for some companies, but I don't want to have
Speaker 1: to shell out hundreds a month just for lawyers. End quote. Now,
Speaker 1: it just so happened that Burt's display picture on Twitter
Speaker 1: was actually a guy from a YouTube comedy group called
Speaker 1: Dude Perfect. They have almost sixty million subscribers. A short
Speaker 1: while after these anti union tweets were sent out, it
Speaker 1: was noticed online that some of the Amazon FC ambassadors
Speaker 1: suddenly changed their names. So the quote we just read
Speaker 1: about Michelle was actually now from an account called Sarah
Speaker 1: at Amazon FC. Sarah, as first reported by a journalist
Speaker 1: Karen Weiss, Rick, became James, Leo became Sierra, and Michelle
Speaker 1: became Sarah. So what's going on? Well, as you've probably
Speaker 1: clocked by and now, these were not real people. These
Speaker 1: were fake accounts set up to smear unions, made to
Speaker 1: look as if they were the opinions of genuine workers
Speaker 1: at Amazon. The BBC wrote about this and they contacted
Speaker 1: Amazon to ask about these fake accounts, of which there
Speaker 1: were many, but Amazon didn't respond. Now, I don't think
Speaker 1: it takes a genius to realize who the most probable
Speaker 1: company behind them is fake accounts. Aside, Amazon actually pays
Speaker 1: real workers to do this online. These workers are paid
Speaker 1: to promote and defend Amazon on Twitter, these name changing
Speaker 1: accounts I just mentioned, though they weren't even real in
Speaker 1: the end that Twitter had to suspend many of these
Speaker 1: fake accounts as they broke the spam and platform manipulation rules. Now,
Speaker 1: if it was Amazon who was behind these fake accounts,
Speaker 1: which personally I believe it almost definitely was, everything points
Speaker 1: towards them. They even actually pay workers to do this
Speaker 1: without them being fake accounts. If it was them, I
Speaker 1: think this really shows how unbelievably dishonest and devious Amazon
Speaker 1: can be when it comes to busting unions. They do
Speaker 1: not want their workers organized, and they don't want them
Speaker 1: to make a better working environment for themselves. That much
Speaker 1: is clear to me. At least. A way to play
Speaker 1: the long game to stop workers organizing unions could be
Speaker 1: to basically coach people from young that unions are no good. Now,
Speaker 1: how could Amazon. Do that you ask, We'll have to
Speaker 1: listen to this. In Could John High School in the
Speaker 1: US state of California began offering a Amazon Logistics and
Speaker 1: Business Management pathway courts. This was reported first by Vice's
Speaker 1: motherboard writers Aaron Gordon and Lauren Kori Girley. They described
Speaker 1: the course as quotes, a first of its kind series
Speaker 1: of courses intended to help students get a head start
Speaker 1: in a career. In the gistics end quote, Amazon donated
Speaker 1: fifty dollars to kick start the course. You could argue
Speaker 1: that that's not a donation and simply a payment or
Speaker 1: a bribe provided to the school to get them teaching
Speaker 1: and Amazon business syllabus, but I'm not saying that now.
Speaker 1: If you didn't think this was starting to sound a
Speaker 1: bit weird before, get this. The classroom where this Amazon
Speaker 1: Business courses being taught was redecorated, painted in Amazon's signature
Speaker 1: yellow branding and with Amazon's Leader principles written on the walls.
Speaker 1: Those are customer obsession bias for action deliver results. So
Speaker 1: you go into class in an Amazon colored room with
Speaker 1: their odd catchphrases written all over the walls. Customer obsession
Speaker 1: bias for action deliver results. Sounds like a really weird
Speaker 1: business cult. To get a better idea of what's going
Speaker 1: on with the Amazon Logistics and business management pathway, course,
Speaker 1: I spoke to Lauren Cotory Gurley about the article that
Speaker 1: she co wrote about this. You had this scoop recently.
Speaker 1: I can only describe it as like an Amazon indoctrination
Speaker 1: kind of course in a school. Maybe you can explain
Speaker 1: to us all about this article, you know you recently wrote,
Speaker 1: and the kind of ins and outs of it what
Speaker 1: it actually is. Sure so. UM About a year ago,
Speaker 1: I came across, UM, of course, a program that Amazon
Speaker 1: was launching at a high school in southern California in
Speaker 1: the Inland Empire, which we can talk about later, but
Speaker 1: it's near Los Angeles. Uh, there's a big Amazon presence,
Speaker 1: UM and in the program was specifically to prepare students
Speaker 1: to UM for work in the logistics industry, so for
Speaker 1: warehouse work. UM. You know, we know knew Amazon sort
Speaker 1: of had STEM sponsorship programs and high schools and middle
Speaker 1: schools around the country, but this is the first time
Speaker 1: UM there had been sort of a program specifically about
Speaker 1: preparing a very young workforce for warehouse work. UM. And
Speaker 1: this is in an area where there is a ton
Speaker 1: of warehouse jobs. UM. And so we ended up floying
Speaker 1: UM the school district and this is where this high
Speaker 1: school is located. It's called cohone High School UM to
Speaker 1: see sort of what we could get about the class
Speaker 1: UM and we got a couple of uh, what would
Speaker 1: we call like syllabi um for two courses that are
Speaker 1: currently going on at this high school. The program is
Speaker 1: called Amazon Logistics and Business Management Pathway. And the two
Speaker 1: courses that we got ahold of the syllabi for were
Speaker 1: Business Management and Entrepreneurship and Global Logistics and Concepts. And
Speaker 1: I guess I would just start off by saying that
Speaker 1: Amazon did not design these courses. We talked to the
Speaker 1: school district, and the school district told us that they
Speaker 1: did not play a role in designing it. But they
Speaker 1: are sort of a partner in this, uh in this program,
Speaker 1: and they are sort of oversee it. So they provided
Speaker 1: a load of money though right, like fifty grand I
Speaker 1: think it would, yeah, fifty grand. They donated fifty grand UM.
Speaker 1: And this this is all going on in a in
Speaker 1: a classroom that is um painted with Amazon's leadership principle.
Speaker 1: So we have some photos in the article if you
Speaker 1: look at it, but UH it says customer session bias
Speaker 1: for action deliver results like on the classroom walls. UM.
Speaker 1: Amazon UH is very UM customer centric, as your listeners
Speaker 1: probably already know. But sort of the models like do
Speaker 1: anything for the customer, UM. And so yeah, the students
Speaker 1: I learn in a classroom with UH these UM these
Speaker 1: things written on the walls, right, So so tell us
Speaker 1: about the syllabus of the courses. So the first course,
Speaker 1: the Management and Entrepreneurship course UM has is just like
Speaker 1: sort of pretty standard I think for what you would
Speaker 1: get in like a class like this in high school.
Speaker 1: But UM, there's a there's a section on motivating employees,
Speaker 1: a very large section motivating employees where they talk about
Speaker 1: UM Frederick Taylor and scientific management, which is sort of
Speaker 1: like Frederick Taylor was an industrialist UM and during the
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution who sort of developed ways of streamlining work
Speaker 1: processes in order to maximize the productivity of workers with
Speaker 1: a stopwatch. This is very similar to sort of Amazon's
Speaker 1: practices today where they're just constantly trying to find new
Speaker 1: ways to squeeze productivity and and and and you know,
Speaker 1: profit in other words, out of out of their workers.
Speaker 1: UM students are also learning about Maslow those hierarchy of needs,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because Muzzle's hierarchy needs like sort of
Speaker 1: teaches you that people will UM sort of sacrifice like
Speaker 1: I don't know, their own personal fulfillment or mental health
Speaker 1: for basic physical needs if they need to. UM. There's
Speaker 1: a section on mergers and acquisitions where they ask students
Speaker 1: why our mergers and acquisitions important to a company's overall growth?
Speaker 1: UM sort of a section on Uber actually where UM
Speaker 1: they talk about like sort of things that Uber has
Speaker 1: done wrong and they say what can Uber do to
Speaker 1: ensure its competitors are not chipping away at its dominant
Speaker 1: market share as a result of such bad press. So
Speaker 1: it's very much like UM a course that was designed
Speaker 1: for from the perspective of someone wants to go into business. UM.
Speaker 1: There's another course that UM that we had the curriculum
Speaker 1: for which goes on to have called about global supply chains,
Speaker 1: and there's a large section on Amazon. UM. It goes
Speaker 1: through Amazon's history, it's vision um sort of its impact
Speaker 1: on e commerce globally, and it's just found the language
Speaker 1: that they're using you can tell that this is very
Speaker 1: pro Amazon. Um, it's described as exciting and why people
Speaker 1: should be excited to join these industry. Oh and then
Speaker 1: as both as part of this entire program, the stab
Speaker 1: I say that like students have to take a participate
Speaker 1: in an internship and the place they suggest the internship
Speaker 1: being is at an Amazon warehouse. Um so um, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's it's not like Amazon played a central
Speaker 1: role in designing the course, but clearly they are very much,
Speaker 1: you know, involved in this because they're trying to prepare
Speaker 1: the future generations of their warehouse workers sort of give
Speaker 1: them a tay east of or like have their first
Speaker 1: experiences with Amazon b ones like these. Um, and just
Speaker 1: want to note that, yeah, your listeners probably know, but
Speaker 1: Amazon has a long record of of union besting and
Speaker 1: being anti union and so it's it's ironic too, and
Speaker 1: it's it's very warring to a lot of people to
Speaker 1: have young people have their first you know experience of
Speaker 1: like what is a labor union coming from a company
Speaker 1: that is extremely anti labor. I think it raises a
Speaker 1: lot of questions for for the community and for people
Speaker 1: who are um, you know, activists in this area. Roughly
Speaker 1: like what kind of age group the students that were
Speaker 1: in this class. Currently there are ninety four students who
Speaker 1: are in this class and they're um, I think mostly
Speaker 1: uh sophomores, juniors, and seniors, so they're like sixty and
Speaker 1: eighteen years old. Um. And it's unclear this course was
Speaker 1: designed in partnership with a with a state college and
Speaker 1: a community college is unclear whether Like I asked the
Speaker 1: school and as district, it was like, do a lot
Speaker 1: of students go on how many of your students go
Speaker 1: on to work in Amazon warehouses it? Or do they
Speaker 1: go off to college or sort of what? Um, where
Speaker 1: are a student? Like are they preparing students directly warehouse
Speaker 1: work or what? And they didn't. I couldn't provide any statistics,
Speaker 1: but I do know in in the Inland Empire, a
Speaker 1: lot of people working in Amazon warehouses are college students
Speaker 1: trying to get through college. To me, if it was
Speaker 1: like kind of like subversive feudalism, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like putting the seed in there from really early, like
Speaker 1: everybody should be a part of Amazon, Like it does
Speaker 1: feel kind of creepy to me. I mean, what do
Speaker 1: you work? Oh yeah, I mean I think that's totally
Speaker 1: a part of it. Like companies, and this is not
Speaker 1: just true of Amazon, like companies want to I mean,
Speaker 1: like look at like Instagram trying to make Instagram for
Speaker 1: like babies or like children or something like they want to, um,
Speaker 1: create a relationship, or like banks wanting young people to
Speaker 1: open up bank accounts, they want to create relationship with you,
Speaker 1: like as early as possible. Um. There's actually and I
Speaker 1: don't know a ton about this either, but there are
Speaker 1: these things called Bezos Academies, which are preschools that are
Speaker 1: popping up all over the country over the past few months.
Speaker 1: There's some in Florida, Texas, Washington State. UM. Besas Academy
Speaker 1: starting when you can't even read yet. So we've got
Speaker 1: the ironically named Amazon principles being taught in the warehouse,
Speaker 1: on social media and now even in some schools. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying rich business people shouldn't invest in education. I
Speaker 1: think the opposite is true. They definitely should if they
Speaker 1: want to. However, when you look at who Bezos is,
Speaker 1: what he believes in, and how his company treats its workers,
Speaker 1: I think we need to take a step back and
Speaker 1: consider what the Amazon long game is in the next
Speaker 1: episode of Megacorp, we're going to be digging into who
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos actually is. Is the richest man on earth,
Speaker 1: the founder of Amazon, and much much more. Megacorp is
Speaker 1: made by my production company H eleven for Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: It's written, researched, and produced by myself, Jake Hanrahan. It
Speaker 1: was also produced by Sophie Lichtman. Music is by Some Black,
Speaker 1: graphics by Adam Doyle and sound engineering by Splicing Block.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch, follow me on
Speaker 1: social media at Jake Underscore Hanrahan. That's h A N
Speaker 1: A A h A n