Amazon Paying Employees To Report Positive Working Experience

Amazon, after a slew of bad press regarding poor working conditions and mistreatment of workers,has reportedly paid staff to post positive messages about their work environment.

It was TechCrunch that found and headlined the ‘Trolls’ (as they call them) and in all fairness it seemed quite obvious they were on an official Amazon campaign.  This is because their usernames included “Amazon FC Ambassador” although otherwise it wouldn’t be so obvious.  The exchanges appear polite as RT shows in their article.

However it is not a common or socially accepted practice that I know of to pay employees to post positive comments about your work experience.  I would imagine the Ambassadors would be expressly forbidden to post or agree with any negative comments about their employer even if they were true.

This is probably ‘damage control’ from all the negative press Amazon has had over the past years over worker treatment, pay and even unfair working conditions. Bernie Sanders revealed his plan to get workers a fair and livable pay and Amazon did meet that by increasing all employees who were under payed, $15 minimum pay.  But despite the pay increase, some workers complain that losing stock options and bonuses will mean they make less and aren’t happy with the $15 minimum. But pay isn’t the only complaint. We have workers urinating in cups, being nagged for taking sick days, or not coming in when they are sick, to even taking bathroom breaks, and constant threat of losing their job if they do not comply.

It seems like the solution will have to be with 2 different layers: The pay and the working conditions. Amazon is a giant, and has the money to pay livable wages and give good working conditions to their employees. And I don’t think Jeff Bezos intends to screw workers, there are levels of mismanagement here. Jeff came from humble beginnings and he doesn’t seem like the type of person to not make things right. With all this bad press, it’s very possible that Jeff will take a more engaged position in his company and right any wrongs- if he doesn’t he’s going to give room to a ‘Amazon wannabe’ the edge to take over very fast.

Consider this: There have been numerous complaints from Amazon shop owners who had their accounts shut down or funds held, and sometimes for no explanation. Small business owners should still have their own ecommerce site that they control and can cross advertise. It’s also important to rethink Amazon’s hosting and cloud services. Amazon is a big corporation and it has legal obligations to numerous government agencies that require to give up data on their customers and their clients- that’s not an option and they don’t have to tell you.

So when you think of Amazon, think of opportunity, but think of the people behind that opportunity.

This is a good example of how hard it is to rebuild an image if your company has been identified as one that mistreats its employees.  The combined damage and effort could be more costly than any savings Amazon may have initially realized.

Will this tank Amazon? I don’t think so, they have several avenues they are working with. But this should tell businesses how much employees mean to the overall success of a business.

If you have your business with Amazon, with no ecommerce site of your own, you are basically giving them all your control over your business. If you decided to host with them on their insecure cloud, think of what your customers think of your lack of care in their data. It’s not Amazon’s fault, this is just how US laws work. Jeff Bezos has tried to fight in the past collecting and giving out data.

Yes, this is all bad press, but this is also a great opportunity for companies like Amazon to weed out bad management and policies and revamp the company to be bigger and better. It’s also a less to all companies about how much employees mean to your business and how their negative or positive feedback can affect your image.

I’m not trying to discourage you from purchasing from Amazon, it’s been a great tool in helping thousands of people made passive and even full time income from a online business they might not have started otherwise. Nor am I trying to tell you to stop buying from them, don’t. It’s important to be angry at the mess but also keep in mind those are normal people who run their online stores on Amazon and they didn’t do anything wrong.

Amazon I’m sure will make this right.

Cheers,
A.Yasir

https://www.businessinsider.com/brutal-conditions-in-amazons-warehouses-2013-8

https://www.rt.com/business/436760-amazon-paying-people-tweet/