Amazon and the Squeezing of the Middle Class
Source: Gawker
Huffpo reporter Dave Jamieson wondered why so many of his Amazon Prime packages were being delivered not by UPS or Fedex, but by "independent" courier drivers. The answer says a lot about the dark side of our delivery-dependent future.
... As Jamieson discovered, Amazon is doing that in part by moving away from normal delivery services like UPS—which provide "jobs" to "employees"—in favor of smaller delivery services that use "independent contractors." This is what corporations call "efficiency." It also amounts to a massive, ongoing process of lowering the wages of working Americans by shifting many of the traditional costs of employment from the company and onto the shoulders of the individual worker.
For example, Jamieson interviewed employees of LaserShip, a delivery service that often drops off his Amazon packages. The drivers are "independent contractors." They pay for their own gas. They pay for their own car repairs. They even pay the company for their insurance, paperwork, and equipment rental. On top of that, since they aren't employees, they have a hard time unionizing, they get slammed on their taxes, and they don't get benefits. All of these costs—which have traditionally been borne by employers—take a serious toll on worker earnings.
... This is not an isolated case. This is a broad trend in American labor. And, quite simply, it is not healthy. Companies have discovered that they can wring extra points of profit by soaking workers for a significant part of their earnings, paying a portion of that to middlemen contractors, and pocketing the rest. It's not a sustainable system.
Read more: http://gawker.com/amazon-and-the-squeezing-of-the-middle-class-1567079028
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