Amazon spreads its roots across the platform economy, becoming foundational to it and making it increasingly difficult not to encounter Amazon in one way or another while using the Internet. Essentially, it constitutes an example “of a corporation thriving under the current organization of capitalism which, in absence of regulatory frameworks, favours market concentration and dominance” ( Brevini, 2021 : 65). I trace in this chapter Amazon’s development within the larger platform economy from its establishment in the 1990s to the monopoly it has grown into
PART III Workers on the (Digital) Amazon Shop Floor
The meteoric rise of the Amazon corporation, which accelerated during the pandemic, represents a significant shift in the global political economy, that we have previously identified as Amazon capitalism ( Alimahomed-Wilson et al, 2020 ). By naming this phenomenon, we draw attention to the concentration of corporate power manifest in the scale and magnitude of Amazon’s influence over the world’s economy and to highlight the true costs of its ‘free shipping’ for workers. Although not omnipresent around the globe, Amazon capitalism remains important not only
When looking at the two Amazon platforms, it appears that the platform economy may contain some peculiarities, but ultimately (re)produces current capitalist trends towards algorithmic management of labor processes, hypertaylorization of work, fragmentation of the workforce and precarization of the labor market. The Amazon warehouses illustrate, on the one hand, the historical continuation of traditional time-wage laboring, in which the workforce is assembled in the same physical space within the platform economy, sharing similarities to other platforms such as
While platforms systematically organize work and workers in ways that alienate them, the different Amazon workforces demonstrate that such alienation, while it has implications for the larger fragmentation of workers, is not all-encompassing. In some cases, Amazon warehouse workers may indeed show no interest in collective organization, identify with Amazon and perceive the workplace surveillance as legitimate and labor organization in fact as illegitimate. Meanwhile, MTurk workers celebrate their flexibility and freedoms, some not even perceiving their labor
“I am not a robot.” Warehouse worker Warehouse workers of Amazon’s e-commerce platform occupy a complex role: they are manual workers reminiscent of those inside factory walls in the industrial era, now transported into the technological conditions of the 21st century. Whereas factories produce, Amazon circulates. The organization of these warehouses reflects Taylorist techniques of scientific management. These monitor and control every step of the labor process to ensure a docile and (algorithmically) disciplined workforce to keep up with massive
Key messages The agency of workers is dialectically related to the nature of platform and material conditions. The pandemic further weakened the marketplace power of Amazon warehouse workers and MTurk workers. The workplace power of the former shows additional potentialities (see Amazon’s growth) and ability to disrupt. The latter cannot disrupt per se but continues to digitally organise for their interests. Introduction It has become increasingly clear that the platform economy has provided capital with new ways to (re)organise the economy and
fundamental relation of alienation, it is important to begin with the triangular relationship between Amazon, requesters and workers ( Figure 8.1 ). Figure 8.1: Mediation between Amazon, requesters and workers While requesters and workers access MTurk through two different interfaces (one for posting tasks and one for laboring), their relationship is facilitated by accepting MTurk’s “Participation Agreement”, which functions like a contractual agreement. In a seemingly contradictory manner, MTurk extracts itself from capital–labor relations yet lays out its
Once hidden behind the veils of entrepreneurship, it is now clear that platforms are reshaping the world of work, and Amazon has been a forerunner in setting the trend.
This book examines two key and contrasting Amazon platforms that differ in how they organize workers: its e-commerce platform and digital labor platform (Mechanical Turk). With access to the people who are working at the heart of these platforms, it explores how different working conditions alienate workers, and how, despite these conditions, workers organize within their political-economic contexts to express their agency in traditional and alternative ways.
Written for social scientists, studying and researching the platform economy, this is a timely and important analysis of work and workers on the (digital) shop floor.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence
As the US contends with issues of populism and de-democratization, this timely study considers the impacts of digital technologies on the country’s politics and society.
Timcke provides a Marxist analysis of the rise of digital media, social networks and technology giants like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft. He looks at the impact of these new platforms and technologies on their users who have made them among the most valuable firms in the world.
Offering bold new thinking across data politics and digital and economic sociology, this is a powerful demonstration of how algorithms have come to shape everyday life and political legitimacy in the US and beyond.
