On Friday, workers at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse voted to create a union — a first in the super-sized company. The news no doubt riled its union-hating, outer space-frequenting founder, who stepped down as CEO last July. They already seem to be trying to tighten the leash on their nearly one million U.S. employees. The Intercept obtained internal company records that revealed a planned internal messaging app will ban words like “union,” “slave labor,” “plantation,” even “restrooms.”
The full list of words Amazon has banned its workers from using is worth a read https://t.co/gyas1kWZEP pic.twitter.com/aBMgaGrAtG
— Dan Price (@DanPriceSeattle) April 4, 2022
The app was first conceived in November of 2021, with the idea of encouraging employees to speak to each other using posts they call “Shout-Outs.” The idea is to improve morale — and, of course, productivity — by adding to an already in-place game-like rewards system, in which dutiful employees are awarded virtual stars and badges.
But some officials were reportedly worried that the app could succumb to “the dark side of social media.” As such, they created an “auto bad word monitor,” which would block messages that feature certain flagged language. It’s a long list. Along with the aforementioned terms, there’s “pay raise,” living wage,” “compensation,” “ethics,” “unfair,” “diversity,” “injustice,” “fairness,” even “stupid.” (“Restrooms” is on there surely due to the many claims that employees often have no time to relieve themselves and have to find, shall we say, creative alternatives.)
The app is still in the works, and details, a spokesperson told The Intercept, had “not been approved yet and may change significantly or even never launch at all.”
In the meantime, founder Jeff Bezos — who stepped down as CEO last July, giving him more free time to either hang with celebrities or send them jokey threats — saw his already unimaginable wealthy grow by $24 billion during the pandemic.
(Via The Intercept)