The Dynamics of Amazon’s Workforce Management

Amazon Business Organization Research Paper

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Workforce Challenges at Amazon Research Paper

Huge business entities and firms depend on the working relationship among workers, how the firm or an entity is organized, the capacity of the labor workforce and the effect that the business has. Other factors affect the running of these business firms, but the above mentioned are core factors and paramount. This research paper tries to examine and unravel various factors that affects bigger business organizations specifically Amazon. Amazon is the world’s largest online marketplace, serving countries all over the world. It contains marketplaces dedicated to the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Canada, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, Japan, China, India, and Mexico, with more being incorporated all the time. The goal of good labor relations in Amazon is to build and strengthen the relationship between the employee and the employer. This can be accomplished through assessing employee satisfaction, detecting and resolving workplace concerns, and contributing to the company’s performance management system (Pottenger, 2020).

It’s difficult to fathom the size of Amazon’s holdings. However, consider the following: The biggest casino in Las Vegas (the Wynn and Encore complex) is 186,000 square feet, or less than.06 percent of Amazon’s total real estate assets. The largest Wal-Mart Supercenter anyone has ever seen is around 260,000 square feet; in the last three years, Amazon has constructed facilities comparable to 590 of that shop. When Amazon Supply originally began in 2012, no one knew what influence the company would have on the B2B supply market as a whole (“Amazon Commits $2.1 Billion to Affordable Housing Programs,” 2021). When it changed (rebranded) and launched as Amazon Business in April 2015, the same could be stated. But when the B2B marketplace declared in September 2018 that it had already crossed $10 billion in sales yearly (Blount, 2020).

Workforce Staffing (WFS) is a component of Worldwide Operations assists in bringing together the Amazon Associate workforce, which is responsible for Amazon’s capacity to satisfy consumers. WFS serves our retail and Prime brands by recruiting, hiring, and developing the best talent for our fulfillment centers, sortation centers, delivery stations, shopping sites, Prime Air locations, and more, with over 100,000 global jobs per year. WFS are made up of corporate, field-based, and remote employees from a variety of disciplines, including Operations, IT, Marketing, Human Resources, Business Intelligence, and more.

According to the research by Kane & Newman (2017), the biggest asset that amazon have is the labor force. Unions are well-represented at Amazon in Europe, but the business has successfully resisted labor organizing efforts in the United States for years. A tiny group of maintenance and repair professionals at a Delaware warehouse voted against joining the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in 2014, the company’s last vote on unionization. The amazon labor workforce provides the required skills to the premise, and this keeps the company making a profit. Any effort to join the union has significantly been thwarted as this will affect the working and organization of the labor force in amazon.

Since 2009, Amazon has hired hundreds of new employees each year. To better staff its growing network of Warehouses; Amazon began conducting Amazon Job Day events across the country in 2017. Amazon does not include seasonal employees or independent contractors in its personnel estimates, according to the company’s Securities Exchange Commission filings. Amazon is known for being one of the most technologically advanced companies in the world. The corporation frequently makes news for the cutting-edge new technologies it employs to keep ahead of the competition. However, the brand’s usage of innovations has a flip side. Many critics claim that Amazon employs technology to govern its workplaces, particularly its warehouses, in harmful ways to employee health and morale (Sodré & Brasileiro, 2017).

Amazon hires people from various sectors and backgrounds to work in their offices and operations centers all over the world. People who succeed at Amazon have three characteristics in common: they are customer-centric, leaders, and innovators. . For years, Amazon warehouse workers have been voicing their dissatisfaction with the firm, citing harsh rules, limited breaks, and a workplace culture that favors productivity over nearly anything else. Every month, new reports emerge from Amazon warehouses detailing how technology is being utilized to boost production at the expense of worker health and morale. Their managers do not write up employees. Instead, an automated program monitors and records when employees fall short of their productivity goals (Skorobogatova, 2017).

Every day, Amazon management prioritizes the safety of its employees, as they are their most crucial profit-generating instrument. Although there is technology used in Amazon, most of the tasks in the premise are performed by the people .However, technology has been used tentatively to aid or help in most tedious tasks in the company (Skorobogatova, 2017). While Amazon uses technology that may make employment easier — such as robots that handle tedious chores like moving big boxes — it is frequently used to put extra pressure on employees. The brand expects worker efficiency to improve as a result of the changes. Workers have been pushed to the brink of tiredness or injury as a result of this need for high output in some occasions. While workers compensation is available in many jurisdictions, Amazon has a history of discouraging employees from filing claims.

When introducing new workplace innovations, businesses and firms should be sure to strike a balance between employee requirements and productivity development. Improving workplace quality may not necessarily result in immediate advantages. For example, technology that makes worker movements more ergonomic will not necessarily speed up or improve the efficiency of processes. In the long run, however, this technology will reduce injuries. While Amazon is frequently lauded for its innovative use of modern technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), in digital commerce and logistics, not every facet of their operations sets a good example. Workers in Amazon facilities frequently express dissatisfaction with the company’s impersonal culture, which appears to be encouraged by algorithmic management (Maisano, 2020). Businesses that want to avoid problems like this should keep a line of communication open between management and employees. Regular audits, particularly ones that include interviews with employees who are using the innovations, can help companies determine whether a new solution is improving their workplace or increasing productivity at a cost.

Higher profit-making and improved production levels in amazon have been hailed for years now. The amazon management effortlessly made it to these facelifts and this way they make big profits each and every year. Despite all these efforts and improvements, their labor relations has been questionable and in scrutiny. For years, Amazon warehouse workers have been voicing their dissatisfaction with the firm, citing harsh rules, limited breaks, and a workplace culture that favors productivity over nearly anything else. For years, Amazon warehouse workers have been voicing their dissatisfaction with the firm, citing harsh rules, limited breaks, and a workplace culture that favors productivity over nearly anything else. This way, management may think to be working almost perfectly, but labor/management relations have to be strengthened to change the employee’s perception towards the amazon firm. By doing this, the management will have made a bigger step in multi-production in various amazon firms around the world.

Every aspect of employee’s compensation, benefits, and working circumstances are dictated by Amazon. Despite the fact that it their hard work and dedication that makes the company successful, employees have no authority to resolve these issues. The Amazon Labor Union’s mission and purpose is to improve the relationship between Amazon and its employees so that we can negotiate a better, safer, and more egalitarian workplace. Union has also bestowed unfair labor charges and this has greatly let to amazon blocking an attempt by the workers to join it (“Union Charges Amazon with Unfair Labor Practice,” 2019)

Employees must file for an election with the National Labor Relations Board in order to form a union (NLRB). To formally form the union, more than 50% of the votes must be YES in the election. The ALU will subsequently be recognized by the federal government, and the corporation will be required to negotiate with the employees. Every employee in the plant becomes a member of the bargaining unit after a successful vote. Union dues will be deducted from each paycheck, with the cost determined democratically by union members but expected to be a few dollars per week. Union dues are the organization’s membership payments, which are offset by the wage increases and other benefits that our union negotiates on our behalf. Dues are essential for keeping the union strong and well-funded so that employees can afford the fair working conditions they negotiate for.

Employees have the legal right to join a union, talk about unions, pass out union information, sign union petitions, and organize their coworkers for the goal of creating a union under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) (Pratap, 2015). Amazon cannot infringe on employee’s rights, threaten or coerce them, discriminate or retaliate against them because of their union affiliation, or refuse to deal with employee’s union once it has been formed. It’s not just salary that’s at stake at Amazon. The corporation has set a starting wage of $15 per hour. The issue is a dehumanizing workplace culture that involves tracking bathroom breaks throughout 11-hour shifts, pitting workers against one another while sorting and picking through hundreds of things every hour, and firing workers for minor insubordination. It’s also risky (Himmelstein & Venkataramani, 2019).

It would be an uphill battle to organize Amazon’s staff. Since its inception in 1994, the corporation has avoided major labor unions. Some of Amazon’s European employees have joined labor unions, but no Amazon plant in the United States has done so.In the research by Kochan and Riordan (2016), it is clearly understood that Unions have the potential to disrupt Amazon’s level of control over its warehouse and delivery personnel, such as its ability to dictate the tempo of work and hourly earnings unilaterally. No effort by the union has ever been fruitful against the amazon.

Amazon has been regarded as one of the biggest business empires for many years now. Managements have always put much effort in this premise to make profits each year and improve the production of the company. Despite this fact, the company management has always been on the spot for treating workers indecently. Management /employee relations are divided despite the company making big profits each year. Any attempt to join a union by the amazon workers has been greatly thwarted as management believes that this will affect company working and profits making. Workers have always complained of the poor working conditions and long working hours. Amicable solution to these issues should be sought to bring attention to the employee’s grievances. This will lead to double profit figures if these problems are solved in Amazon.

References

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