An Amazon Education
25th July 2012
“It can be difficult in this economy to have the flexibility and financial resources to teach yourself new skills,” Mr. Bezos writes. Under a new program, Amazon warehouse workers can receive tuition assistance as long as it is in an Amazon-specified field. Aircraft mechanics, computer-aided design, machine tool technologies, medical lab technologies and nursing meet the criteria.
In the old days, lots of companies had training programs designed to take people with a high school education and make them useful technical workers. Then those programs went away as management gurus saw them as a cost rather than as an investment. It’s all about next quarter’s results! And of course modern technical companies don’t train you; it is to laugh! They expect you to get an expensive college education on your own, going massively into debt if necessary, and then with that and the right semi-autistic personality type, they might deign to give you a job (but only if you’re a ‘ninja’ or ‘rock star’).
Sometimes the old ways are best.
Putting this announcement on the home page seemed to direct it less to potential employees than current customers, some of whom may have vaguely heard about difficult working conditions in Amazon warehouses through newspaper series in Pennsylvania and Seattle.
‘Vaguely heard’? I don’t live in Pennsylvania and Seattle, and I heard about it. How about ‘getting beaten up in the activist media for keeping their workers in Foxconn-like conditions’ as being a bit more accurate.
Sucharita Mulpuru, the retail analyst for Forrester Research, was unimpressed. “It seemed self-congratulatory,” she said in an interview. “Most companies, when they treat their workers well, that’s just what they do. They don’t say, ‘This is a reason you should do business with us.’ ”
And I, in turn, am not impressed with Sucharita Mulpuru — I guess the new rule is that other people can publicize accusations of treating your employees badly and shout ‘This is a reason not to do business with Amazon’, but you’re not allowed to publicize where you treat your employees well and say ‘This is a reason to do business with Amazon’. Perhaps I need a new Category, Einbahnstrasse.
July 25th, 2012 at 11:44
Dare I point out that Bezos is (ahem) a Democrat? And a liberal?
I wonder when we’ll hear anything about a similar program at Walmart, or Mars, or Koch Industries?