On Monday , Amazon ’s PR department touted the story of a char who allegedly recede a ton of weight crop for its Flex rescue avail . In the company ’s framing , Flex is n’t a dystopian project to keep down shipping costs by letting an army of expendable , plainclothes contractorscompete to score “ last - mile ” delivery gigs . It ’s a merriment exercise !
“ Amazon Flex allowed this woman to lose 100 lb in 18 month by make a workout while delivery packages,”Amazon News wrote .
Amazon Flex allowed this woman to lose 100 lbs in 18 months by produce a exercising while delivery packages.https://t.co/uBk49fYzFi
— Amazon News ( @amazonnews)December 3 , 2018
From thelinked article on Kansas City ’s KSHB :
Jackie Crow trot and smiles when she delivers Amazon packages from her car to front porches .
Jackie calls it her at - work , physical exertion .
She fare up with the conception of making her job a workout because three year ago , she librate 300 punt and decided it was time to lose system of weights .
“ I fag long sleeves in the hot sun and sometimes I ’ll park a retentive distance from a house so I can jog a longer distance , ” explain Crow .
Using Flex as a workout chance is actually Crow ’s second occupation :
Amazon Flex allows drivers like Crow the flexibility of pick their own study schedules . Crow said that flexibility helped her have time for family , exercise and help with the family business organisation , Wilson ’s Pizza and Grille .
Crow , who told KSHB she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis three long time ago , said the Flex lance was part of an “ active ” procedure contrive to facilitate her negociate the condition and lose weight . That ’s all really well and good ! Lasting lifestyle changes are not soft to pull off , and this seems to be an arrangement that works well for her , and to her credit . But it does n’t change that other people work for Flex or like Amazon program who depend on it for income in an historic period of growing economicinequality and insecurityare being ask to perform the same manual labor , and many of them do n’t seem to think as highly of the term under which they do it .
AsGizmodo documented last year , declarer for Flex — as well as staff at job courier companionship in a virtually superposable course of study — allege the program declare oneself few labor protections , manoeuver on confusing rule , offers work on arbitrary schedule , and does n’t always pay out harmonize to expectation .
Shannon Liss - Riordan , an lawyer who hasrepresented couriersfor service let in , Lyft , Grubhub , Uber , and Flex , told Gizmodo she think the programme number to a massive scheme to misclassify labour that should be perform by employees as contractors “ in a pretty far-flung style . ” National Employment Law Project general counsellor and program film director Catherine Ruckelshaus concord , telling Gizmodo that the degree of control Amazon exercises over the declarer is “ very powerful , stiff grounds ” of misclassification . Ruckelshaus add that Amazon ’s arbitration agreements for Flex couriers are a “ very efficient ” dick to prevent them from contribute a class action against the ship’s company .
Workers for other share of Amazon ’s supply strand ( in particular warehouses)have also allegedthat the company bid miserable wage in substitution for unrealistic performance expectations that take them to do backbreaking amounts of physical labor :
“ My doctor differentiate me we are doing the equivalent weight of a battle of Marathon a day for five days straight at work . Not even professional athlete work that hard , ” Eduardo Hernandez , an Amazon worker dissent at a readiness outside of Madrid , said in a statement . “ I used to like to act soccer on the weekend and go hiking . I do n’t have the vitality to do that any longer . My knees hurt . My back hurts . ”
Hmm . A tonic workout , you say .
Amazon ’s PR section may as well have borrow this narrative out of the kingdom of comedy . blow for - profit manual labor as a playfulness exercising body process is literally a vignette from Nathan for You , a show in which comedian Nathan Fielder poses as a business expert to give clients outlandishly spoiled advice .
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1069699700599767047
In any casing , the all - meter tech industry award for bragging about how hard your gig economy staff are working still go to Lyft , which touted the story of a significant driver who picked up a passenger while stimulate contractions on the way to the hospitalas a success storyin 2016 .
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