• One Woman’s Attempt to Unionize #Amazon - Vanessa Veselka - Technology - The Atlantic
    http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/12/in-the-wake-of-protest-one-womans-attempt-to-unionize-amazon/249853

    Inspired by the WTO protests, a demonstrator took a job in an Amazon warehouse to try and unionize the workers there

    (excellent) #syndicalisme #mécanisation via @opironet

    Amazon wasn’t the kind of place where you just asked to work somewhere else, not in that union-phobic environment. I had to come up with a reason that was believable yet utterly harmless. So I told them I was into river rafting and wanted to build my upper body strength. It was exactly the kind of innocuous self-expression Amazon supported. I was moved immediately.

    Amazon’s success didn’t just come from predatory buying and selling practices. Nor did it come from of simple ingenuity. It was a combination of these elements and deals struck by one generation with itself regarding personal identity, worker’s rights, and the value of stock speculation. Was the right to have green hair and torn t-shirts worth it? Was our need to be understood more important than a living wage? Were these even the choices we faced?

    (...) The brilliance of their approach was that they let you belong. They wanted your ideas. They took them and made money off them and paid you $9.50 if you put in some years. But for a generation of latchkey kids, many of whom craved that tribal sense of belonging more than anything, it really was a family.