Tornados Can Kill. So Can Amazon’s Business Model.

To deliver quality fast and cheap, Amazon sacrificed the good that should have been a safe workplace for Craig Yost and his fellow warehouse workers. And Amazon is doing its best to make sure that this sacrificing — by workers — continues. The company has been actively exercising its considerable corporate power to prevent the one turn of events that could reliably keep Amazon on its safety toes: an active union presence at every Amazon worksite.

Earlier this year, Amazon quashed a landmark union organizing drive at its Bessemer, Alabama warehouse via assorted subterfuges that the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union’s national president would later describe as “intimidation and interference” that “prevented workers from having a fair say in whether they wanted a union.” A National Labor Relations Board regional office last month agreed and ordered a do-over on the election.

But let’s be careful not to pick only

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Could This Be Amazon’s Next Big Business?

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is known for its diversified business model and penchant for breaking into industries and seizing market share. In this segment of Backstage Pass, recorded on Nov. 29, Fool contributors Jason Hall, Rachel Warren, and Toby Bordelon discuss the company’s latest move as an industry disruptor. 

Jason Hall: Amazon says that they are on track to become the largest delivery service in the United States by early next year or even by the end of this year. There’s part of me that’s just blown away with that. They’re going to be bigger than UPS or FedEx, the U.S. Postal Service. But I’m not sure. The same as the last one, that’s just still a little bit of a free-for-all here. Rachel, share your thoughts on it.

Rachel Warren: Yes, I thought this was exciting news, actually, as an Amazon shareholder and also someone who just

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Minnesota legislators must respond to Amazon’s business model

If you see a package from Amazon this holiday season, I hope you’ll take a minute to think about all the Minnesota workers who had a hand in delivering it. When Amazon arrived in Minnesota six years ago, it promised to provide our state with safe, reliable jobs with dignified wages. Instead, it delivered our communities quite the opposite. Amazon isn’t living up to its promises or the values we hold in Minnesota.

At the warehouses of one of the world’s most profitable companies, Minnesotans are forced to work at a frenetic pace under intense electronic surveillance and the threat of discipline. Workers report pushing themselves to the brink to meet quotas that Amazon changes constantly and sometimes doesn’t even disclose. If they can’t meet their high quotas, workers are penalized or fired. They’re replaced with new employees, and the cycle starts all over again.

Amazon uses this model to

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Amazon’s purchaser chief states employing continues to be a “challenge” in “incredibly tight” labor marketplace

Washington — Dave Clark, the CEO of Amazon’s Globally Shopper small business, claimed Sunday that the “incredibly tight” labor sector poses a “challenge” for the world’s major on the net retailer, despite thousands of new hires becoming a member of the enterprise in the course of the vacation year.

In an interview with “Confront the Country,” Clark claimed Amazon has even so experienced “excellent accomplishment” in latest using the services of, with 45,000 new personnel onboarded in the last 7 days, but he observed that in some areas of the nation, “especially in metropolitan spots,” it has been additional hard to fill positions. 

Clark said he is listening to from several small firms in specific about the issues they deal with in employing workers. Requested what he believes is the cause for this challenge, Clark explained workers are “seeking at their lives so in different ways” because of to the

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Amazon’s $4-billion vacation fix: 50 percent-empty trucks, $3,000 bonuses

Most cargo ships putting into the port of Everett, Wash., brim with cement and lumber. So when the Olive Bay docked in early November, it was obvious this was no common cargo.

Beneath decks was rolled metal sure for Vancouver, British Columbia, and piled on major were 181 containers emblazoned with the Amazon brand. Some have been vacant and straight away employed to shuffle inventory amongst the company’s warehouses. The rest, in accordance to customs info, have been stuffed with notebook sleeves, hearth pits, Radio Flyer wagons, Peppa Pig puppets, artificial Xmas trees and dozens of other products shipped in directly from China — products and solutions Amazon.com Inc. needs to keep consumers happy for the duration of a holiday break season when many retailers are scrambling to keep their cabinets full.

By chartering the Olive Bay and dispatching it to a rather sleepy port a number of miles north

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