Since no one at Powerline can think of anything useful to write about (the boys are still mired in wacko conspiracy theories about… Twitter, and separately… about… balloons…) And yes, the video at the bottom is a reply to Hinderaker’s of last night….
So, we will return to a regular series of ours, at another property of mine, post the “Rihanna Baby Bump No. 2” night. [Personally, I wanted the Eagles and young Jalen Hurt to prevail, but I enjoyed probably the best back and forth, in a Super Bowl… ever. Patrick Mahomes has great heart. So it goes.]
Yep — this is my mid-monthly report on labor-related “tings” (ref. Rihanna’s second bump, last night!), at bad old Amazon. For its part, Amazon thinks it is doing well, by paying a max of about £11.45 — or just one about pound, over minimum wage in England. The newest workers at the facility make just 11 pence over UK minimum wage (at today’s exchange rates, that’s only about $12.62 an hour). Damn — and no one can really live on that, there — on even a fifty hour work week.
And so this fight is with already unionized warehouse workers — in a large distribution facility that serves most of the London exurbs. The workers are seeking a true living wage, and fairer benefits. A series of day long walk outs will be staged, between now and St. Patrick’s Day — each timed to disrupt speedy deliveries on these alloted days. Here’s the latest, from Reuters (UK bureau):
…Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Britain will walk out for seven further days in an escalation of a dispute over pay, their trade union said on Monday.
Last month GMB union members at the warehouse in Coventry, central England, staged the first ever strike at the U.S. e-commerce giant’s operations in Britain.
GMB said more than 350 staff at Coventry warehouse would now take further industrial action on February 28, March 2 and March 13-17….
That placard is pitch-perfect: human line workers are indeed… not robots. Mr. Bezos would do well to take that to heart here, and across the pond.
[And that legacy graphic at immediate left commemorates a would-be non-profit partnership that never got off the ground… again, Mr. Bezos backed out.]
Smile… Coventry (UK) has new, deeper meaning for us here, in my house now, as well… through my eldest daughter…. Onward!
नमस्ते
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