Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has hooked millions of Americans with its remarkable skills in fusing product availability, technology and customer experience. The nation’s growing dependence on Amazon ignores, or overpowers, socioeconomic issues surrounding the company that might otherwise be front and center in national conversations. That may be the central message of Alec MacGillis’ critically acclaimed book: “Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America.”
MacGillis, a reporter at investigative journalism platform ProPublica and a freelance journalist for other publications, is the first author to defragment the many moving parts that make Amazon such a complex creature and that conflict many consumers who know how the company operates but spend their money on its site anyway.
MacGillis discussed Amazon’s hold on America, how its strategy may determine the future of work and whether consumers who make Amazon part of their daily lives are getting more than they bargained for. The interview was edited for clarity and length. (Note: The interview was conducted before Amazon’s warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama voted decisively to reject unionization).
FREIGHTWAVES: How did you get interested in the project, and how cooperative — or uncooperative — was Amazon?
MacGILLIS: “I started out wanting to write a book about regional inequality in America, and arrived at Amazon secondarily as a good frame to tell that story. It works as a frame because of Amazon’s sheer ubiquity, which makes it a handy thread to take you around what we’re becoming as a country, and because it has itself contributed to regional inequality, which is tied to the growing concentration of our economy in a handful of tech giants.
“I reached out to Amazon in the spring of 2020 and had many discussions with the company in the months following about various aspects of my reporting.”
FREIGHTWAVES: You have said that the vote in Bessemer could be a defining moment in the future of middle-class work in America. What do you mean by that?
MacGILLIS: “With Amazon growing as fast as it is — 400,000 more employees added over the past year — warehouse work is becoming an increasingly dominant form of entry-level, low-skilled labor in the U.S., not unlike the factories or shopping malls of yore. So what that work looks like — how well it’s paid, how much voice workers have on the job — will increasingly define labor in the U.S. for years to come — whether or not warehouse work can be transformed into a sort of job that can sustain a middle-class family existence the way that unionized manufacturing jobs did last century.”
FREIGHTWAVES: There are fewer than 6,000 workers at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse. Given the enormous and growing size of Amazon’s warehouse network and its workforce, why do you believe this vote will move the needle in such a meaningful way?
MacGILLIS: “It’s just one warehouse, but it would set a huge precedent if workers were able to organize an Amazon facility for the first time ever, in the Deep South of all places.”
FREIGHTWAVES: How do you expect Amazon to react should the workers vote in favor of union representation?
MacGILLIS: “I really can’t say. There’s been speculation that the company might shut the warehouse down in retribution to send a warning to workers elsewhere. However, that move would bring such public opprobrium, not least because of the racial demographics of the Bessemer workforce, that it seems unlikely Amazon would go that route.”
FREIGHTWAVES: Over the past 10 years, Amazon has morphed from an online retailer to a logistics company that sells stuff. Based on your research, how will goods delivery, and by extension, commerce be transformed by what Amazon is doing, and what it will do?
MacGILLIS: “It sure seems as if the company’s effect on goods delivery and commerce will grow only larger as time goes on. Its push to build its own delivery network — now including planes, trucks, vans and container ships — and its pressure on third-party sellers to use this network instead of other delivery companies’ suggest an ambition to dominate shipping even beyond its own delivery needs.”
FREIGHTWAVES: Is there an argument to be made that, given its ability to supply mass quantities of jobs that are decent-paying for the skill set, and that offer benefits and opportunities for advancements, Amazon is assuming the role of the “benevolent dictator”?
MacGILLIS: “That is, essentially, the argument that the company offers in defense of the status quo — that these jobs are better than nothing and that they are the best many workers can hope for in this day and age. The question for the country is whether a democracy can sustain such dominance by a corporate ‘dictator,’ benevolent or otherwise.”
FREIGHTWAVES: A consumer would laud Amazon for its wide and affordable selection, user-friendly technology, and solid customer service. However, retailers and logistics companies would say it enters into partnerships only to learn about a business before it ends the partnership and goes into competition with them. Which one is closer to the mark?
MacGILLIS: “Both can be true at the same time. The consumer just isn’t often aware of the second part, of the pressures and costs that lie behind the easy one-click. That is in part what the book aspires to show, what the true cost of the convenience really is for the broader economy and country.”
FREIGHTWAVES: It has been said that Amazon’s ultimate objective is to be the only intermediary between a manufacturer/producer and the end consumer. Do you agree, and is that even a feasible goal?
MacGILLIS: “I’m not sure I’d agree. Amazon has actually been heading in the opposite direction, shifting much more of their retail business to third-party sellers rather than selling wholesale goods directly on the site, since the third-party sales are so much more lucrative for the company.
FREIGHTWAVES: Organizing warehouse workers has been a challenging task for labor unions. In addition, warehouse wages, benefits and working conditions are much improved than 10-20 years ago. This, in theory, would moot the need for labor unions. Given those factors, how do you expect unions to make inroads in organizing?
MacGILLIS: “Organizing Amazon warehouses will be enormously difficult, given the transience of the workforce and the company’s well-honed tactics for discouraging unions. But Amazon warehouse employees are company employees. That’s unlike the company’s delivery drivers, who are mostly still independent contractors. So organizers do at least have that going for them with the warehouses.”
FREIGHTWAVES: If you had to summarize your takeaway of Amazon’s mindset in one sentence, what would it be?
MacGILLIS: “Growth and dominance at all costs, with little regard for the broader effects on society.”
Amsale Michael
I am one of those 400,000 that Amazon hired and hard work, follow all the policy that comes with the job will save you from their harassment think again. Amazon boasts 90 percent of its employees have positive attitude or response about the company’s policy if you don’t you will pay the price. Let me explain, from day one, as soon as you log in the survey follows. Questions vary from the company’s COVID-19 response, to how you will tell your friends and family great thing about your employment with Amazon or the name of a manager will pop up asking you if he/she treats you as a number or with respect, mind you never seen or don’t know the manager. You have to answer all positively otherwise you will have hard time. For example, you will get a very difficult robotic pods to count or to pick, you will be moving from one floor to another climbing those notorious sixty forty sometimes 90 staires. And sometimes you will get dirty (tight, overflowing) robotic pods you will spend your shift struggling. Then, they will be back with the picture of a pod an item overhanging and you will punished for something you may or may not done. These are few things they do to break you. It’s an evil empire. I can’t imagine a company will slow the employees productivity just to mess with the person, but, that’s what Amazon does. The whole goal is to frustrate you so you can leave. No wonder turnover is 100 percent. Who structured this practice? It’s a daily struggle and I don’t know how long I will suffer, but I still work there. Tried to get in touch with HR, no use. They are all the same. All jobs have downside but in my over thirty years of employment I have never seen anything like this. Employers usually avoid turnover, with this company it’s part of the plan. I pray for those courageous individuals in Alabama who spoke out about the brutal policy and I can’t imagine what they will deal after the loss. I don’t know how to continue, I am not young or have higher education, where will I go? Please, please if you post my comment don’t show my name or my address.