Amazon worker chat app to ban words such as “union”, “pay raise”, “slave labor”
&gt; The major goal of the program, Amazon’s head of worldwide consumer business, Dave Clark, said, was to reduce employee attrition by fostering happiness among workers — and also productivity. Shout-Outs would be part of a gamified rewards system in which employees are awarded virtual stars and badges for activities that “add direct business value,” documents state. At the meeting, Clark remarked that “some people are insane star collectors.”<p>Truly insane, there is nothing stranger (or more dystopian) than fiction after all. Rather than fix the system of working their employees to death (literally in the case of the tornado) or improving their conditions, Amazon tries to use virtual gold stars (not even physical stickers like kindergarten) as a band-aid. That list of banned words is right out of 1984 (as cliché as it is to reference at this point): ethics, fairness, freedom.<p>I cannot imagine anyone here seriously defending this unless you’re just looking to be a contrarian. This is not “par for the course” for manual labor jobs as some people are claiming. Most manual labor jobs do not restrict you from talking about ethics or justice with your coworkers or have even a need for some virtual gold stars beyond a little whiteboard in the building with number of sales, employee of the month, etc. The fact that these techniques won’t work for Amazon just shows that their laborers are really over-worked compared to the norm. Unfortunately, Amazon is able to use their massive resources and capital to pay just more than the local factory, packing gig, etc. so they have a stream of desperate people willing to take it.