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+4 +1
Amazon is taking away paid COVID-19 leave for unvaccinated workers, reports say
Amazon workers who catch COVID-19 and are not fully vaccinated against the virus will not be eligible for paid leave after March 18, according to a staff memo shared with Insider by Amazon. Thursday's memo also told workers they will no longer have to wear masks inside warehouses from Friday if they have been fully vaccinated and local regulations allow.
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+11 +1
Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Series Rises: Inside ‘The Rings of Power’
One show to rule them all—the first look at a billion-dollar saga set thousands of years before J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendary trilogy.
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+4 +1
Amazon Has Received $4.7 Billion in Subsidies Globally, Watchdog Says
Amazon has received at least $4.7 billion in tax breaks globally during the past 10 years for warehouses, data centers, offices, call centers, and film production projects, according to a new report by a watchdog group and a global labor federation.
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+17 +3
Amazon raises base pay cap for corporate and tech workers to $350,000
Amazon will raise its maximum base pay for corporate and tech workers to $350,000 from $160,000, Geekwire reports. Why it matters: The move is intended to bring Amazon in line with competitors like Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, and to help ensure the company retains employees and recruits top talent.
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+24 +2
Amazon has disbanded the Twitter army it paid to tweet about how great Amazon is
Amazon has shuttered a controversial influence campaign in which it paid workers to tweet about how much they love working at Amazon, reports The Financial Times. Employees at the retailer’s warehouses (which it calls fulfillment centers) were paid to share positive impressions about the company and to deny widely-reported workplace failings — like employees being forced to urinate in bottles in order to meet performance targets.
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+26 +4
A former Amazon delivery contractor is suing the tech giant, saying its performance metrics made it impossible for her to turn a profit
A former Amazon delivery contractor is accusing the tech giant of squeezing her with performance metrics to the point where she couldn't turn a profit. Ahaji Amos is suing Amazon, claiming among other things that it misrepresented how much money she could make as an Amazon Delivery Service Partner, according to a lawsuit filed in a North Carolina court Monday and first reported by Protocol.
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+15 +2
Amazon shut down its program that paid warehouse 'ambassadors' to tweet positively about the company, report says
Amazon is no longer paying warehouse workers to tweet nice things about the company, The Financial Times reports. The company shuttered its Ambassador Program at the end of last year, sources with knowledge of the matter told the outlet. The sources said that senior executives felt the program's reach wasn't good enough,
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+4 +1
US labor board says Amazon illegally fired union organizer in New York
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has determined that Amazon illegally fired former worker Daequan Smith for trying to unionize its warehouses in Staten Island, New York. Smith, who was one of the organizers for the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), was fired in October 2021. The group filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the NLRB after his dismissal, accusing the company of illegal retaliatory firing over Smith's outspoken support for unionization.
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+17 +2
Amazon Delivery Vans Keep Getting Stuck in the Snow
On January 14, the owner of an Amazon delivery fleet in the Midwest spent more than $1,000 towing four Amazon delivery vans from the snow during a nasty winter blizzard. “When there are winter storms, we have a lot of vans that get stuck, which is not paid for by Amazon,” the owner told Motherboard, noting that he’s had vans get stuck in dirt roads, driveways, and once a cornfield that Amazon’s GPS system marked as a road.
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+10 +4
‘Lord of the Rings’ Amazon Series Reveals Full Title in New Video
The “Lord of the Rings” series at Amazon has unveiled its full title in a new video. In the video (see below), molten metal is seen filling in grooves in a piece of wood while a woman…
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+18 +4
Amazon worker says he received daily texts about losing paid time off while he was sick with COVID-19
Amazon's automated HR systems led to at least one worker being pestered with messages while he was off sick with COVID-19, NBC reports. Illinois Amazon warehouse worker Drew Duzinskas told NBC he tested positive for COVID-19 over the holidays. He said he notified Amazon, but that for days afterwards he received automated texts from the company telling him his balance of paid time off was going down because he was missing shifts.
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+19 +3
A former Amazon drone engineer who quit over the company's opaque employee ranking system is working with lawmakers to crack it open
A former Amazon drone engineer who quit the company after being told he was among the worst-performing members of his team is working with lawmakers who want to force companies to open up their employee-ranking systems. Pat McGah told Bloomberg that in February last year, managers told him he was one of the "least effective" members of his team. When McGah asked managers why he was ranked so low, they didn't provide details, he said.
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+22 +1
NASA will test Alexa voice control aboard the Artemis I mission
Alexa will be the first voice assistant available beyond Earth. Amazon and Lockheed Martin have revealed NASA will carry Alexa to space aboard the Artemis I mission launching later in 2022. While that flight is uncrewed, the companies are planning a "virtual crew experience" at NASA's Johnson Space Center that will let people in Mission Control (including students and special guests) simulate conversations between the digital helper and astronauts.
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+22 +4
Amazon Alexa Devices Take Voiceprints, Misuse Biometric Data, Says Class Action
Amazon improperly collects and stores consumers’ biometric data through its Alexa voice-based virtual assistant devices, a new class action lawsuit alleges. Lead plaintiff April Schaeffer claims Amazon uses devices equipped with the Alexa virtual assistant, such as its Amazon Echo smart speaker and Fire tablet — in addition to many other company’s products — to capture and store voiceprints and create transcriptions. She wants to represent an Illinois Class of consumers who own an Alexa-enabled device.
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+14 +1
Amazon's plastic packaging waste could encircle the globe 500 times
The plastic packaging of the products we buy online is actually hiding a major environmental problem, a new report showed. Amazon, considered the world’s largest retailer, was responsible for 211,000 metric tons (465 million pounds) of plastic packaging waste last year, 10,000 tons (22 million pounds) of which ended up in the world’s freshwater and marine ecosystems.
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+29 +2
Alexa tells 10-year-old girl to put penny in plug socket
Amazon has updated its Alexa voice assistant after it "challenged" a 10-year-old girl to touch a coin to the prongs of a half-inserted plug. The suggestion came after the girl asked Alexa for a "challenge to do". "Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs," the smart speaker said.
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+35 +3
Amazon Web Services Outages Reported For Third Time This Month
Users of Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud-service network, reported another round of outages on Wednesday, marking the third such event after the network’s widespread outage that disrupted access to many popular sites earlier this month.
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+3 +1
An Amazon driver was told she would be fired if she stopped delivering packages during tornado warnings: report
An Amazon driver was told by her supervisor that she would lose her job if she stopped delivering packages, despite warnings of tornadoes in the area, according to a Bloomberg report. The delivery driver told Bloomberg that her base was located in Edwardsville, Illinois — the same location where six Amazon employees died after a tornado struck a warehouse last week.
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+20 +2
Amazon Workers Say They’re Pressured to Work in Dangerous Weather
At 8:35pm last Friday, a tornado swept through Edwardsville, Illinois that caused the walls of an Amazon warehouse to fall inward and the roof to collapse, killing six workers. Minutes before he died, Larry Virden, one of those workers texted his girlfriend to say “Amazon won’t let us leave.”
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+19 +2
Amazon is making its own containers and bypassing supply chain chaos with chartered ships and long-haul planes
For years, Amazon has been quietly chartering private cargo ships, making its own containers, and leasing planes to better control the complicated shipping journey of an online order. Now, as many retailers panic over supply chain chaos, Amazon’s costly early moves are helping it avoid the long wait times for available dock space and workers at the country’s busiest ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
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