I am a progressive, and I identify with leftist politics. I want Medicare for all, free higher education for everyone, Social Security caps lifted and payments doubled. I want a peace economy rather than a war economy. I believe in high taxes, strong labor laws and I want money banned from the political process. But I don\u2019t live in Europe. I live in the United States\u2014the land of opportunity, Amazon and Walmart.<\/p>\n
Intellectually I am against consumerism as a basis for our economuy, but, in real life, I\u2019m an American, and the desire to consume is encoded in my DNA. I love ordering online because I get a good deal, and if I order enough, I get free shipping! I\u2019m a socialist who loves not paying sales tax.<\/p>\n
Like most Americans, I want my stuff cheap and I want it fast\u2014and I haven\u2019t wanted to think about the human cost of online buying. Sure, I know much of the stuff I buy is made in sweatshops in Asia, but I don\u2019t have a choice because, you know, practically everything<\/em> is made there. I tell myself that those countries will eventually catch up with us on human rights and worker rights. The human rights problems are \u201cover there,\u201c not here.<\/p>\n Then, I read Mac MacClelland\u2019s jaw-dropping story in Mother Jones<\/em>, \u201cI Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine. \u201c<\/a>\u00a0In a brilliant piece of reporting, McClelland simultaneously rips the mask off online retail and the reality of the \u201ceconomic recovery\u201d in America. She writes about small towns in the Midwest where vast warehouses employ thousands of workers under horrendous working conditions so that you and I can get all that stuff we buy online cheap and fast. The large online retail outlets we all know and love, either own and operate these warehouses themselves, or they contract with other companies to provide storage and shipping services for them. McClelland has a gripping, compelling and important story to tell about work in these warehouses and human rights abuses in America today.<\/p>\n The standard shift in these warehouses is 8 hours, but “working more than eight hours is mandatory,” explains McClelland, who takes an undercover job in one of them where she ends up working mandatory 12-hour days during the peak pre-Christmas season. During that 12-hour day she gets two fifteen-minute breaks, and a 29 minute and 59 second lunch break. Like other workers, McClelland takes some of this precious time for anxiety filled pee breaks because she has to wait in long lines to use one of the smelly, dirty bathrooms.<\/p>\n McClelland reports that sometimes the backbreaking pace and unrealistic demands on warehouse workers cause them to break down and cry. “Well, what if I do start crying?” McClelland asked a seasoned worker. “Are they really going to fire me for that?”\u00a0“Yes,” she says. “There are sixteen other people who want your job. Why would they keep a person who gets emotional, especially in this economy?”\u00a0MeClelland further reports, if a worker manages to perform well enough to keep the job, there probably won\u2019t be a promotion in his or her future. Workers stay temporary for years.<\/p>\n As a new hire, here’s what McClelland learned during training: “People lose fingers. Or parts of fingers. And about once a year, they tell us, someone in an Amalgamated warehouse gets caught by the hair, and when a conveyor belt catches you by the hair, it doesn’t just take your hair with it. It rips out a piece of scalp as well.”<\/p>\n McClelland on why people take these jobs: \u201cThe American job market isn’t great, people will take what they can get. \u2018How’s the job market?’ a supervisor says, laughing, as several of us newbies run by. ‘Just kidding!’ Ha ha! ‘I know why you guys are here. That’s why I’m here, too!'”<\/p>\n