As Americans prepare their festive – or aggressive – holiday shopping plans, hundreds of thousands of temporary workers around the country are counting on two months of long hours and few rights in warehouses or checkout lines, in what has become the norm for seasonal workers in the country.



Amazon has announced that it will hire 80,000 workers this holiday season to meet their demand for labour when sales go up. The online retailer joins others such as Walmart, Gap, UPS and FedEx who are recruiting similar numbers of workers for the spike in year-end sales.

The US supreme court heard a case with employees suing a staffing agency for Amazon, asking to be compensated for the times they spent on security checks.

Workers at Amazon slog gruelling 10-12 hour shifts, which keep them on their feet and walking 5-10 miles a day with two timed 15-minute breaks besides a 30-minute lunch break. While staffing agency advertisements promise “up to $14 an hour”, Amazon pays its workers an average rate of $11 an hour. Workers also have to spend nearly 30 minutes every day queueing for the post-shift security check, in place to ensure no items from Amazon’s inventory have been stolen. Amazon does not pay employees for this time.

The supreme court will probably rule against the workers thanks to an employer-friendly technicality. According to federal law, the security checks are considered “preliminary” activity that are not “integral” and “indispensable” to the actual work that Amazon’s employees perform, even if Amazon has made them mandatory, to protect their own interests.

The seasonal workers, many of whom are homeless campers and senior citizens with no retirement investments, will not find recourse through the law. The “employment at will” legal nature of jobs leaves the worker with no presumptive job protection.

How the employee is treated, therefore, comes down to the perceived value of the worker. “It puts them in a tough position” says Paul DeCamp of Washington law firm Jackson Lewis PC, referring to seasonal workers who are often low-skilled and without high educational qualifications.

The good news? Permanent employees don’t have it any better. The protections offered for seasonal employees by labour laws in the US are the same as those of full-time permanent employees, explains DeCamp.

While he agrees that seasonal employees may be particularly vulnerable, the law can’t offer higher protections to temp workers. Permanent employees who have worked with organisations for longer terms would argue that they ought to have higher privileges. “Where you stand on the issue depends on where you sit,” says DeCamp.

This seeming equivalence in laws for seasonal and permanent workers is not balance. It is hard to picture how low-pay and long hours will allow for these workers to move up the professional chain, staying on in a cyclical assortment of seasonal jobs.

President Barack Obama speaks about raising the minimum wage during a visit to a Costco store in Maryland. Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP

The US has developed an environment where workers can’t expect many protections, says labour economist Mark Price. He says the current situation has been 30 years in the making. The rights of workers are not high priority when the labour market freely offers surplus temps. Seasonal workers are considered dispensable and replaceable. But Price points that the problem may be larger.

“It’s part of American culture,” concedes Price disappointedly, referring to generations of managers taught to disregard the needs of individual workers.

With no special protections from the law, a supreme court that may rule against them, seasonal employers have no unions doing their bidding.

But it’s not unreasonable to expect employers to improve the pay and treatment of workers, says Price. Costco has been relatively better in investing in their workers, he says. The wholesale retailer pays its new employees a starting wage of $11.50 an hour, and the average cashier’s pay is $20 an hour. The Container Store pays its cashiers $50,000 a year.



Costco pays its employees more than Sam’s Club, its Walmart-owned competitor, and manages to remain competitive and profitable. Investing in worker wellbeing results in higher productivity and is in a company’s own best interests, said Price.

Several retail CEOs including Costco’s Craig Jelinek went out in support of raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10. Even as Walmart workers protested outside Alice Walton’s New York apartment, CEO Douglas McMillon promised to abandon the minimum wage. Walmart pays its workers an average hourly wage $12.92.

“Maybe the answer to a lot of these questions are less about the law and more about what do we as a country want to do,” DeCamp concludes.