The problems workers face are much larger than any single corporation
Photo: Little, Brown Back in 1980, Dolly Parton had it all figured out. “Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living!” she sang. “Barely gettin’ by, it’s all taking, and no giving. They just use your mind, and they never give you credit. It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it.” Work hasn’t changed much since Parton wrote the words of what would later become Senator Elizabeth Warren’s campaign song.
We’ve gotten so good at technology that can quantify workers’ job performance with metrics. And since it’s pretty much the same everywhere, it’s difficult, especially for unskilled workers, to vote with their feet the way they used to be able to, and the way that classical economics says that they should be able to. You know, if you don’t like your job, you go find another job, and then the previous job can’t find workers and it goes out of business.
I was a music theory major, I went to Oberlin, and I did a lot of singing stuff in college. Especially weird, 13th-century chant stuff. So I probably weirded a lot of people out doing some Hildegard von Bingen bangers out there. I definitely sang all the time so that I wouldn’t go crazy. I snuck in headphones at one point, and I’m sure other people do that too. But you can get in real trouble for doing that.
Speaking of Amazon, it suffered another wave of bad press recently because of these Twitter accounts from people from people saying that they were fulfillment-center employees. Even though Fight for 15 is becoming a major force in American politics, some politicians are still afraid to alienate companies like Amazon because they want to be able to say they’ve brought in jobs. And you make it clear we’re talking about a company that’s extremely hostile to unionization or to anything that makes the jobs more hospitable for people.
Oh yes. It’s bad for both. There’s a chapter that I had to cut out: I actually managed to get ahold of the guy who as a 20-year-old, well-meaning Silicon Valley kid had actually written one of the first programs that ran a type of call center that used computers to constantly monitor everything. I found him through his posts online, where he was talking about how he deeply regretted having made this software, which was now being used to time bathroom breaks and drive people insane.
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