What Is CamperForce ? Amazon’s Nomadic Retiree Army | WIRED
▻https://www.wired.com/story/meet-camperforce-amazons-nomadic-retiree-army
Cet article décrit comment des centaines de miliers d’étatsuniens ayant atteint l’age de la retraite sont obligés à vivre dans les camps de travail d’Amazon. L’exploitation du prolétariat US est totale et continue jusqu’au moment de partir dans un cerceuil. Voilà ce qui arrive dans une société sans régime de retraite solidaire. #grave
Chuck still remembers the call from Wells Fargo that brought the 2008 financial crisis crashing down on his head. He had invested his $250,000 nest egg in a fund that supposedly guaranteed him $4,000 a month to live on. “You have no more money,” he recalls his banker saying flatly. “What do you want us to do?” Unable to think of a better answer, Chuck told him, “Well, shove your foot up your ass.” Then he hung up.
Barb had lost her savings too, some $200,000 in investments. And with the travel industry flattened by the Great Recession, bookings at Carolina Adventure Tours dwindled. By the time Barb and Chuck got married in 2009, they were upside down on their mortgage and grappling with credit card debt.
The couple was facing bankruptcy, which scared Chuck to death. It brought back the terror of growing up poor—the pervasive insecurity he’d stamped out by going to work at 16. But by 2012, they had run out of options.
After filing their papers, Chuck and Barb began liquidating their lives. They shuttered Carolina Adventure Tours and handed their 2009 Chrysler Town & Country over to the bank. They sold most of their possessions, including all of their appliances and furniture. What didn’t sell on Craigslist went to an auctioneer. Barb let go of her record collection and two pianos. Chuck surrendered his golf clubs. Objects they couldn’t bear to part with—including Chuck’s letter from Ray Kroc, framed and hanging on the wall—went to one of Barb’s daughters for safekeeping. (Barb and Chuck each have three kids.)
Whatever survived the purge had to fit in their new dwelling: a 29-foot 1996 National RV Sea Breeze motor home, which Barb’s brother sold to them for $500. The rig had dry-rotted tires, a dead generator, and a leak in the gas line. Back when the Stouts had money, they’d idly fantasized about becoming carefree vagabonds in a nice RV. Their current situation didn’t quite align with that dream, but they embraced it anyway. Perhaps, Barb reflected, this was destiny—the universe pushing them toward the lifestyle they’d wanted all along. She decided to call their next move “Barb and Chuck’s Great Adventure.”
#USA #travail #économie #social #disruption