We now have another organization that will enhance the wage pollution for the wage slaves. Walmart started the wage pollution and then temporary agencies, which offer no healthcare or pensions, just temporary low wages. Now we have the online U.S. retail business, which did $197 billion in 2011. The workforce that does the work in these hundreds of warehouses are called “workampers.”
Amalgamated advertises positions on websites that workampers frequent. This is just a modern version of what the old Wobblies had to do in the 1920s and ‘30s; only then, instead, of traveling from place to place living in trailers and motorhomes they rode railroad freight cars and camped in hobo camps called the Jungle, which we still have.
The reason that the warehouse owners like workampers is they are temporary and will not stay year round that way by not staying in one place the workers do not have time to make friends, which could start unions. This is an old way to keep unions out for if people work long hours and are so tired after work that they cannot socialize with other workers. They cannot organize for better working conditions. This is just how the corporations fought the Wobblies, and like the old days the working people are still treated like a piece of crap and left with lasting physical damage. With temp work you cannot receive unemployment, which creates an economic instability.
The sad thing is that the business clients of these so-called fulfillment centers (warehouses) have not a clue what workers endure and lots of these workampers are Social Security recipients who have no choice but to keep working. You think this might be what you might like to do when you are 55 to 70 years old you might ought to check out warehouse work first for Amazon fulfillment centers.
As of today 1 in 3 people are poor or just about poor. This has to get better and the only thing we have going for us are the 99%/OWS and unions for they are the only organizations that can take on the oligarchy and their corporations who think nothing of the wage slaves speed walking 15-20 miles a day for $7.25 per hour. The online retailers expect to make $279 billion by 2015 off our modern-day proletariats-Wobblies-fruit tramps-workampers.
