As a self-respecting environmentalist, I #boycottAmazon (rationale; ¶6 covers relevant environmental problems with Amazon and thus why boycotting Amazon is a useful individual action).
I just read about Amazon entering the healthcare sector (in the bottom of the linked article), and that employers are subscribing to offer employees health benefits through that. Naturally, I find this despicable. IIUC, if you rightfully boycott Amazon then by extension you lose employment opportunities at employers who limit healthcare benefits to those of Amazon. Correct? Or am I missing something?
The most effective way to fight back against this dystopian crap is to unionize so that the union can reject sub-par health care plans.
I don’t think I could fault an individual person for accepting a job that uses Amazon as a healthcare provider. Hopefully, you could channel the same principles that would lead one to boycott Amazon into unionizing your workplace so that you can actually have a say in the healthcare plan.
Unionizing is a collective action. Not that there’s anything wrong with collective actions. But a boycott on Amazon is not the sort of thing that I would expect to gain momentum on across a workforce unless Amazon Care were to actually offer a quite poor quality health plan. Don’t workers’ unions tend to just advocate for the worker’s own personal benefits? I imagine someone showing up to a union meeting to propose prioritizing the environment would likely get marginalized and pushed out. The best they could probably get away with is motivate the union to compel an employer to offer more plans to compete with Amazon Care.
The beauty of individual actions is that you can make a snap change with instant effect (however small) without interference. It seems in this case it requires an organized collective effort to merely reach a position by which some people can make their drop in the ocean individual action.
Although I have to wonder if it could work as simply as my Coca-Cola boycott, where I simply asked for more options with no support. Maybe I would make that a condition of hiring me. “I’ll accept your job offer as-is except I require a non-Amazon health plan as a precondition”.
For anyone curious about how this might play out, take a look at Telus Health. Telus is a Canadian telecom company that has branched out into several health care businesses, from clinics to building and hosting¹ electronic healthcare records. There are currently battles over whether it is legal to force prescription fulfillment through Telus providers.
That’s right, a telecom company, that most reviled, least trusted sector of the economy, is trying to take over healthcare in a country with a (mostly) single-payer, tax-funded, (mostly) free at the point of delivery, public healthcare system. And they’re doing so successfully.
Amazon is actually late to the game.
(1) I don’t know for sure that they are hosting the records, but the fact that the word “Telus” shows up in the url makes it seem like like a reasonable conclusion.
God I fucking hate telus
And bell, and rogers too.
… and the people in a position to bring them heel that just turn a blind eye.
The CRTC is a fucking joke and those in charge deserve to be dragged over hot coals and then a field of razor blades
From an environmental perspective, Amazon is much better than most big box stores due to efficiency.
Did you read ¶6 of the linked page? E.g.
“Amazon is destroying millions of items of unsold stock every year, products that are often new and unused, ITV News can reveal. (That article covers the UK, but an insider tells me it’s happening in the US too)”
Amazon overstocks their warehouse and then has to prioritize the space for the most profitable stock. They destroy everything that does not make the cut. That strikes me as very inefficient. I think any perceived efficiency draws from the sort of work environment that causes employees to pee in jars. That’s not really the kind of efficiency that benefits the environment.
That’s fairly normal in retail, both online and bricks-and-mortar. That doesn’t make it better, but it’s perhaps not an outstanding black mark against Amazon alone.
I suppose it would be interesting to know what extent the various retailers go to in order to assure destruction of the stock. Amazon does not tolerate stuff being tossed in the dumpster, and then someone popping by the dumpster after their shift ends – in fear that they would sell the stuff on eBay (their competitor). So the excess stock area is secured with only approved people getting access and Amazon somehow ensures that the select few who get access are likely to comply with the destruction. I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon recorded the destruction on video. (and if they do, would be very nice if someone would leak that)
I’ve seen staff, from at least one retailer, in the middle if summer, putting working fans in the dumpster and then beating them with hammers until destroyed. They needed more shelf space for AC units. The staff weren’t happy doing it, but weren’t given much choice about it.
Ultimately, what should retailers do with overstock? You’d hope they could sell it off cheap or donate it to a suitable charity, and I’m sure some percentage is, but it works against them as customers buy the discounted items rather than the higher profit ones. The retailers don’t want to destroy stock as it’s lost profit, but it’s the most economical path for them to take in that situation. I suspect it’ll take a change in regulations to change that arithmetic.
Ultimately, what should retailers do with overstock?
Some companies in the US offer mail-in rebates, and sometimes the rebates go as far as making the product gratis. So if they overproduced product X, they will price it at $50 but then offer a rebate for $50. Consumers have to go through some hoops to get the reimbursement (fill out a form, copy the receipt, cut out a UPC code from the package, and mail it before an aggressive deadline). This obviously boosts sales and gets stuff out of stock quick. Some customers are lazy or incompetent, so they are enticed by the rebate, they buy, but then fail to follow all the rules or fail to meet the rigid schedule. So the seller gets some revenue from consumer failures, as opposed to zero revenue by trashing. They also outsource the rebate effort to a rebate company, and they are often a bit nefarious and (IMO) pretend to lose mail. The amount of mail that gets lost with those mail-in rebates statistically disproportionate to other mail. In any case, that’s an approach that apparently gets shareholder approval. Both manufacturers and big merchants do that. They also have a big window of time to decide when to mail out the refunds. They can choose which fiscal quarter they want to take that hit in for tax purposes.
Amazon is surely quite calculated in what the do, so it’s unclear to me why they don’t use MIRs to dump stuff. As consumers, we can influence that calculation by boycotting. So us doing our job can control this.
I suspect it’ll take a change in regulations to change that arithmetic.
I’m not generally a fan of overly micro-controlled interventionalism but I would support a hard and fast ban on destruction and disposal of non-defective goods. They should be forced to contact the city waste management and say “we have 1000 smartphones new in box to dump”, and the city should manage it in a way that the phones do not get wasted. If Amazon doesn’t like their own products competing against them, they will reorganize their stock situation to be more optimal for profits in a non-destructive way, which might mean not overstocking in the first place.
¶
Dedication
