If any business was designed for today’s pandemic it is Amazon. The US ecommerce giant has seen demand for its delivery services soar as shoppers were forced to stay home to stop the spread of coronavirus. A former manager has dubbed the company the “new Red Cross” for its essential role in delivering goods and services. The crisis, however, is also bringing greater scrutiny of a business model that even before Covid-19 struck had attracted the attention of regulators around the world.
The recent resignation of a senior Amazon software engineer over the firing of employees who had raised concerns over safety at its warehouses is a reminder that behind the high-tech facade is a company that has prospered thanks in large part to the casualisation of labour. Amazon and other technology companies have created millions of new jobs but many of these offer insecure employment in the form of seasonal or easily replaceable warehouse workers. The lockdowns are highlighting the divergence between professionals — generally on long-term, well-paid contracts — and those in low-paid, less secure forms of work. It is, as Tim Bray, the Amazon engineer, wrote in a blog post after his resignation, all about “power balances”.
Amazon and others are not alone in creating the conditions that allowed these new precarious jobs to flourish — they have myriad roots including the decline of the old mass-employment manufacturing industries, the steady erosion of union power and deeper inequalities in education and wealth. It is also understandable that in the first weeks of today’s emergency, Amazon struggled to put in place the right safety conditions at its warehouses to meet the soaring demand. It is spending money to address these issues. It said it expects to pay $1bn to create an in-house coronavirus testing capability.