WORKERS PERSPECTIVE I was assigned to sort packages in a tight space between rows of shelves, called “cells.”



I had been in the cell for barely five minutes, and was trying to figure out how to get my equipment to work, when I heard a voice come on a nearby radio: “You have someone two cells down that isn’t working.”



A supervisor poked her head into my cell and asked what was wrong. I explained that my equipment was broken. The radio crackled again: “Are they going to scan 250 packages an hour today? No more excuses. Get them back to work.” This is a common response from managers when they have issues with our work. Frequently they do not provide any helpful or rational solutions—they simply yell at us to work faster and harder.



While walking from the cell to get functioning equipment, I looked up and saw where the radio voice had originated: an elevated platform 30 feet off the ground where a manager stood scanning the entire warehouse floor, radioing down to supervisors on the ground to yell at us to make us work faster.



The “plantation overseer” effect is intensified by the fact that over 90 percent of the workers at this warehouse are Black and Latino, while most of the top managers are white.



We workers are the ones who make these warehouses function to get all the Amazon customers their packages in two days or less. We know what we need in order to do this work with dignity and without hurting ourselves, and we know what we deserve.



Amazon tries to placate us with the occasional pizza party, candy, popsicles, “swag bucks” that can only be used for Amazon-branded apparel, little contests for prizes, and juvenile antics like “wear wacky socks day.” But we are not children to be manipulated with token prizes and activities. We have our own children to feed and bills to pay.