How Amazon Is Disrupting Workers Rights

FEATURING JESSICA BRUDER – The online retail giant and now film and TV production company Amazon, has teamed up with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to come up with a plan to offer healthcare for their hundreds of thousands of workers. The plan was announced as one that would be, “free from profit-making incentives and constraints.”

Amazon has grown so spectacularly that the company’s search for a location for it’s second headquarters has triggered a massive bidding war among dozens of US cities, many of which are offering overly generous subsidies to the corporation. But the quality of jobs that the headquarters would bring is likely not very good.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has boasted about “disrupting” the economy with his innovative thinking. But, the corporation’s treatment of workers suggests he is also interested in disrupting traditional notions of workers rights and dignity.

NOTE: Excerpts of the film played on our show have been edited for radio broadcast. Watch the full documentary ‘Camperforce’ HERE. And, visit www.jessicabruder.com for more information about her book ‘Nomadland’.

Jessica Bruder, award winning journalist whose work focuses on subcultures and the dark corners of the economy. She teaches at Columbia School of Journalism and her books include Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man, and Nomadland: Surviving America In the Twenty First Century. A short film based on Nomadland was recently released called ‘CamperForce’.

**This segment was originally broadcast on February 2, 2018.