++A conversation with Alec MacGillis about his new book on Amazon and the hidden costs of its dominance. +
++Bill Bodani Jr.Ā spent most of his adult life working at Bethlehem Steel, just outside Baltimore. +
++Around the year 2000, an injury on the job forced him into early retirement in his mid-50s. Not too long after that, Bethlehem Steel went bankrupt and was finally dissolved in 2003. Bodaniās pension was eventually slashed from $3,000 to $1,600 a month. At 69 years old he was forced to take a job as a forklift driver at an Amazon warehouse, located in the same place the old steel mill used to sit, where he was paid roughly $12 an hour, a steep drop from his previous wage of $35 an hour. +
++These are the kinds of stories you encounter in Alec MacGillisās new book about Amazon called Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America. Itās not a book about the inner workings of the company or the peculiarities of its mega-billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos. Instead, itās a book about what Amazon has done to the country, about the many ways it has transformed our economy and accelerated its most destructive tendencies. +
++I reached out to MacGillis, whoās also a veteran reporter at ProPublica, to talk about the rise of Amazon and how itās altered the geography of the country, how Amazon bullies employees and strong-arms local governments, and if heās encouraged by the recent efforts of Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, to unionize. (The vote was held last Monday, and the results could come as early as this week, but possibly much later.) +
++This is a conversation about the consequences of Amazonās dominance, but itās also a conversation about my complicity and yours. Many of us use Amazon every day, and weāre content to look the other way in exchange for what MacGillis calls āone-click satisfaction.ā If nothing else, this exchange is a chance to reflect on what that says about our world and what we might do to improve it. (Amazon hasnāt responded to MacGillisās book, but the company has consistently defended its working conditions and emphasized its role as a job creator ā although it was forced to apologize last week after falsely denying allegations that workers are occasionally made to urinate in bottles.) +
++A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows. +
++Sean Illing +
++Your book is about how Amazon has essentially altered the geography of the country in terms of both wealth and power. So Iāll start there: Which parts of the country have gained, and which parts have lost? +
++Alec MacGillis +
++This book didnāt start as a book about Amazon. It started as a book about our growing regional disparities. Weāve always had richer and poorer places, but the gaps have gotten so much bigger. We used to have wealth and prosperity spread out much more evenly across the country. In the mid-1960s, for instance, the 25 wealthiest cities in the country by median income included Cleveland, Milwaukee, Des Moines, and my favorite, Rockford, Illinois. And then a whole bunch of other Midwestern cities. Today, there are just a handful of non-coastal cities on that list of 25. +
++As recently as 1980, there were only a few parts of the country ā mostly in Appalachia and the Deep South ā that had median incomes more than 20 percent below the average, and then you had a small number of places that were 20 percent above the average, like DC and the New York suburbs, for example. But now whole swathes of the country are 20 percent below the average and it includes basically the entire Midwest, while huge strips of the coast are now above the 20 percent above the average. +
++So the goal was to write about this massive shift. We talk a ton about income inequality, but not enough about regional inequalities. And I settled on Amazon as the perfect frame for this story. +
++Sean Illing +
++Is Amazon to blame for this, or did larger forces, like globalization, make this redistribution inevitable? +
++Alec MacGillis +
++Amazon is both a symptom and a cause. Itās a good frame for the book partly because Amazon is everywhere and everything is in its shadow. So itās a metaphor in that sense. But then itās also a cause because regional inequality is tied to the concentration of so many sectors of our economy in certain places and in certain companies. +
++I like to explain this by pointing to what has happened to media. It used to be that media revenue was spread all around the country ā among local newspapers, TV, radio, etc. But now with the shift to digital, we have a situation in which 60 percent of all digital ad revenue is flowing to two tech companies [Facebook and Google], both of which are based in the Bay Area. +
++The same thing has happened in the retail world, where the money and business activity used to be spread all around the country, but now it flows to a single company thatās based in Seattle, a town thatās now experiencing incredible levels of inequality. +
++So to your question, would this be happening regardless of Amazon? Itās a big question, and my answer is twofold. Yeah, there are structural changes in the economy that definitely encourage agglomeration and a winner-take-all dynamic. But at the same time, Amazon has absolutely made things worse. +
++Amazon might say, āWe just happen to be the company in this slot right now, but it could have easily been someone else.ā But that overlooks the fact that this particular company, with this particular leadership, made specific decisions over the years that have made things worse, with a particularly aggressive pursuit of tax avoidance at all levels, with particularly high-pressured demands on workers at warehouses, with a particular decision to put its second headquarters in the DC area, one of the richest in the country, instead of trying to rebalance things. +
++Sean Illing +
++Thereās a lot going on there, but first I want to be super clear about the way Amazon moves into some of these communities. You describe a two-step process: Amazon upends all of these brick-and-mortar retail businesses and then swoops into the areas where the laid-off employees live and hires them as underpaid bodies in their warehouses. +
++Is that basically right? +
++Alec MacGillis +
++It is. And thatās whatās confounding about the response I got from them, which is, āWell, at least weāre providing jobs in these places. Weāre not like Google and Facebook. We actually have a physical presence, and weāre hiring thousands of people in these communities that lack jobs.ā +
++And thatās true to a certain extent. They absolutely are employing people in numbers way beyond the other tech giants. Theyāre now second only to Walmart, gaining fast for biggest employer in America. But what that overlooks is that there has been this massive wipeout of brick-and-mortar retail. We talk about coal miners getting laid off, but countless more retail workers have been laid off. The professional retail clerk took more losses than any other in recent years. +
++To put it simply, what you have now are the sort of jobs that once allowed a 55-year-old woman in Elmira, New York, to manage a jewelry counter at a department store being replaced by a warehouse job that pays less, involves much more strenuous working conditions, is far more socially isolating, and that same 55-year-old woman will have a much harder time hacking it. +
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++Sean Illing +
++You called these new Amazon jobs āstrenuousā and āsocially isolatingā just now, but that doesnāt adequately capture it like you do in the book. Weāre talking about intensely rote and inhuman work. Weāre talking about a company that uses algorithms to track productivity and bathroom breaks. +
++Alec MacGillis +
++These are really grueling jobs. Thereās a reason why the turnover is so high. And if anything, the jobs have only gotten more rote and more repetitive and more isolated as the robots at the warehouses have gotten more automated. It used to be the iconic Amazon job was the picker who roamed the corridors looking for items, looking for the dildos. And there was a whole literature around that job. You walked so many miles a day that you wore out your shoes. But there was at least some level of autonomy and a bit of a hunt to the enterprise. +
++Now the warehouses have these incredible robots that zoom around and do a lot of the legwork, and the human pickers are standing in fixed locations for their entire 10-hour shift, pulling things out of the shelves as they come to them. And itās actually a much more rote kind of activity. And there are other jobs that are even more mechanical, where you have employees essentially standing at one conveyor belt and taking things off of it so they can put them on another belt. Over and over and over again. For basically the entire shift. +
++Sean Illing +
++There are reports of Amazon workers peeing in bottles because they donāt want to be caught taking an extra bathroom break ā +
++Alec MacGillis +
++Yeah, the core chapter of my book is titled āDignity.ā Itās about a man named Bill Bodani, who had to go work at an Amazon warehouse for half the wage he made at the steel mill in the exact same location. And he doesnāt have enough time to get to the bathroom often. Heās an older man, so he has to go a lot. He uses up his two short breaks over the 10-hour shift and, once in a while, he goes off in the corner with his forklift, tries to get out of view of the cameras, and takes a quick leak. Itās incredibly undignified. +
++Sean Illing +
++So Amazon only gives warehouse workers two bathroom breaks per 10-hour shift? +
++Alec MacGillis +
++Right. The way it generally works is you have a short meal break halfway through your shift, and then youāre allowed two short bathroom breaks. And he just needed more. And it takes so long to get across the floor of these massive warehouses to get to the bathroom. So often, by the time you get there, youāve all but used it up. +
++Sean Illing +
++A big part of your book details how Amazon is able to strong-arm local governments, often forcing obscene concessions. What sorts of demands does the company make from local officials? +
++Alec MacGillis +
++The companyās demands of local governments are extraordinarily aggressive. It seeks large reductions on its future tax bills, on the property taxes owed for the warehouse or data center, and sometimes also on the payroll taxes owed on the workers. +
++For one data center outside Columbus, Ohio, it even got the town to give it the land for it essentially for free. And it demands secrecy from the local officials. They agree to call the projects by code names and not reveal Amazonās identity until the very last second, and to disclose no more than the bare minimum of documentation required by public information requests. +
++One county official in southwest Ohio apologized to the company when a quote of hers surfaced in a local news report. She assured them that she hadnāt granted the reporter an interview, that it was just something that she had let slip out in a public meeting. And she assured them it wouldnāt happen again. +
++Sean Illing +
++Why is Amazon consistently able to bend state and local governments to its will, even at the expense of the people who live in these places? +
++Alec MacGillis +
++Itās mostly the belief that they have no choice, that this is the only option on the table for their community. So if youāve had your manufacturing base wiped out in Baltimore or southwest Ohio or wherever it might be, and then along comes this company thatās going to hire 2,000 people at a warehouse, itās hard to say no. +
++Whatās so confounding is that itās clear the companyās going to come there anyway. They have to fulfill their promise of one- or two-day delivery. And in order to do that, they have to be in a lot of different places. And so itās not like Amazon can just decide to not be in Maryland and go to Alabama instead if theyāre not absurdly generous with their tax subsidies, because they have to be everywhere. +
++What I find striking isnāt just the obsequiousness when it came to offering the subsidies to Amazon, but also the obsequiousness when it came to promising secrecy, to the point of apologizing to Amazon when they had to occasionally give information to a reporter who asked. +
++Sean Illing +
++I want to deal with the elephant in the room, which is the role weāre all playing in Amazonās dominance. +
++However destructive Amazon becomes, the one-click satisfaction it offers is probably too enticing for most people to give a shit about anything else. And the human costs of this are purely abstract for most people, just as the iPhone labor camps in China are. But I suppose this is partly what makes global capitalism so powerful: it separates us from the costs of our conveniences. Iām not sure any company in human history has ever distilled this as neatly as Amazon does. +
++Alec MacGillis +
++I think thatās exactly right. Amazon has perfected that seamlessness. Itās just pure instant gratification. Iām holding out hope that, coming out of this year, we can jolt ourselves out of this situation weāve been in. Whatever reservations we may have had about going all-in on the one-click satisfaction went totally out the window during the pandemic. We felt like we had permission to fully embrace it, and not just with Amazon but with other forms of our daily life and consumption. +
++I hope we can snap out of this on the other side of the pandemic. And Iām not an absolutist. Iām not calling for boycotts. Itās not about just full renunciation. I use Amazon if I have to, if I canāt find what Iām looking for elsewhere. +
++But the scale of the embrace has driven the enormous growth and power of Amazon, and I think itās so important for us to re-engage with the physical world around us in the places we live. Both in terms of going back to our local shops and also maybe not zonking out on Netflix so much. Otherwise, thereās not going to be much of a town or city or neighborhood for us to go back to. +
++Sean Illing +
++Do the recents efforts of Amazon employees ā in Alabama especially ā to unionize give you much hope? +
++Alec MacGillis +
++Well, I wonāt try to guess how things will turn out in Alabama. Itās going to be tough because Amazon has set the bar incredibly high in terms of expanding the pool of the electorate, which is something employers often do. They expand the pool beyond the likeliest yes voters, so that itās tougher to get a majority. So itāll be tough. But the fact that there is an election at all in Alabama is extraordinary. +
++I tend to see all this in grand, historic terms. These Amazon warehouses are like the mass workplaces of our time. This is the place you now go if you just need a job at a given time, in a given place. You can probably get a job at Amazon. And itās not going to pay all that much and itās going to be really tough work, but itās just what a lot of people now do, by the hundreds of thousands. And itāll just keep growing and growing. +
++And so the question is, can Amazon be the Bethlehem Steel of our time? Those steel jobs were incredibly low-paying and grueling in the early 20th century, but then the conditions greatly improved, largely through unionization, and they were transformed into middle-class careers. +
++My hope is that the arc of history can turn one more notch, and that these warehouse workers can enjoy their own 1950s moment. +
++Democrats just got an unprecedented Senate blessing. +
++Senate Democrats just got some wonky procedural news that has some pretty big implications for President Joe Bidenās agenda. +
++On Monday night, the Senate parliamentarian ā an in-house rules expert ā determined that Democrats would be able to do a third budget reconciliation bill this year, a massive development that gives lawmakers more room to pass legislation without Republican support. +
++Already, Democrats had the ability to do two budget reconciliation bills: one focused on fiscal year 2021 and one focused on fiscal year 2022. Unlike most other bills, budget measures can pass with just 51 votes, instead of 60, which means Democrats are able to usher through the legislation they want if all 50 members of their caucus are onboard. (With the American Rescue Plan, for instance, 50 Democrats were able to approve the $1.9 trillion package as part of the FY2021 budget bill, even though no Republicans backed it.) +
++āThe Parliamentarian has advised that a revised budget resolution may contain budget reconciliation instructions,ā said a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a statement. āThis confirms the Leaderās interpretation of the Budget Act and allows Democrats additional tools to improve the lives of Americans if Republican obstruction continues.ā +
++With the new decision from the parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, Democrats can now do a third budget reconciliation bill, which means they can push through more ambitious measures as long as they are related to taxing and spending. The decision is based on MacDonoughās interpretation of Section 304 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, which allows lawmakers to revise a budget resolution before the end of the fiscal year that it covers. Given her decision, Democrats can now edit the 2021 budget resolution they already passed, and include instructions for another bill. +
++Schumerās spokesperson also noted that āno decisions have been made on a legislative path forward using Section 304 and some parameters still need to be worked out.ā +
++Budget reconciliation has its limits: It canāt be used for policies like voting rights reforms or gun control, but itās still a helpful tool that Democrats have already leveraged to pass a huge expansion of the child tax credit, enhanced unemployment aid, and another round of stimulus checks. +
++Democrats now have another opportunity to advance parts of their agenda that Republicans would otherwise block. And the decision to push for a workaround shows how limited Democratsā other options are to pass their agenda. +
++Democrats are leaning on budget reconciliation amid disagreements over the filibuster +
++Democratsā efforts to get the most they can out of budget reconciliation underscores the political context they are operating in: namely, that they have dwindling options for passing ambitious legislation. +
++If Democrats eliminated the legislative filibuster, all bills could then pass with 51 votes, instead of 60, removing the need to rely so heavily on budget reconciliation. But although an increasing number of Democrats appear open to at least modifying how the filibuster works, the caucus doesnāt have the votes it needs to eliminate it. Since moderate Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have been staunch in their opposition to ending the rule, it seems unlikely to change in the near term, meaning most bills will need 60 votes to pass. +
++To hit that threshold, Democrats will need to convince 10 Republicans to join them on most measures, an outcome thatās become increasingly unlikely for many of the partyās more ambitious bills. (On coronavirus relief, for example, Republicansā opening bid was roughly a third of what President Joe Biden had proposed.) +
++By pushing for a reinterpretation of Section 304, Democrats seemed to be looking for other outlets for passing legislation if those in the caucus who are against eliminating the filibuster donāt budge. +
++Now they have one extra shot. +
++Infrastructure could be Democratsā next budget reconciliation bill +
++Democratsā attempts to clear the way for another budget bill also coincide with Biden unveiling a $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs package, along with a proposal to raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent to pay for it. +
++The administration is pitching to Democrats and Republicans in Congress alike, but the prospects of getting a bipartisan bill done appear dim. In particular, Republicans are opposed to the tax increases, as well as some of the provisions of Bidenās plan that go beyond roads and bridges. +
++The parliamentarianās decision gives more options and chances to use reconciliation to pass their priorities with 51 votes. Biden is expected to soon announce yet another package that deals with child care and health care. Though no final decisions have been made on the process, and how these plans will merge into a budget bill, Democrats could theoretically break Bidenās infrastructure plan and his forthcoming child care and health care plan into two different reconciliation bills ā sticking one in the amended 2021 resolution and putting the rest in the 2022 resolution. +
++Thereās another option: Democrats and Republicans could pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill that deals more narrowly with roads and bridges, and then Democrats and the Biden administration put their remaining priorities into a budget reconciliation bill. Relevant House and Senate committees are currently working on a surface transportation reauthorization bill, which comes up every five years. +
++The five-year reauthorization bills deal pretty narrowly with fixing up roads and bridges, and Republicans on the committees think the reauthorization bill should be worked on and passed in a bipartisan way. +
++āOur committee unanimously reported legislation to rebuild our nationās water systems. This proves that infrastructure can and should be done on a bipartisan basis,ā Sen.Ā Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Health, said in a recent statement. +
++However, the White House views its plan as a supplement to whatever Congress does on infrastructure on its own. Biden has proposed $621 billion for spending on the nationās roads and bridges, rail and public transit, and airports and ports. +
++āAll elements of the plan reflect additional investment on top of existing programs and authorities,ā an administration official told Vox. āOn transportation infrastructure, the plan includes an additional roughly $600B above the five-year budget baseline, assuming a straight extension of FAST-Act funding levels for surface transportation programs.ā +
++The next few months of negotiations between the White House and Congress will decide a lot about just how big and bold an infrastructure bill will be. But no matter what, budget reconciliation will factor in prominently. +
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++The Derek Chauvin trial is retraumatizing Black Americans. +
++Itās been more than 300 days since Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pinned down George Floydās neck ā but time hasnāt dampened the mental anguish of seeing a Black man die under the weight of a white man sworn to protect the public. +
++Instead, Chauvinās criminal trial, which began on March 29 and is expected to continue for weeks, has only heightened the emotional toll of the disturbing event. +
++Chauvin faces charges of manslaughter and murder, and to make their case ā that Floyd died because Chauvin used excessive force ā prosecutors have been relying heavily on the 9-minute, 29-second video that captured Floydās final moments. Theyāve replayed it over and over to the courtroom, and to all those watching the proceedings live on television. The videoās been slowed down, itās been rewound, and witnesses have been repeatedly asked to identify themselves in the footage. +
++Jerry Blackwell, a lawyer for the prosecution and founder of the Minnesota Association of Black Lawyers, issued a warning before he played the video for the first time: āI need to tell you, the video is graphic and can be difficult to watch. Itās simply the nature of what weāre dealing with in this trial.ā +
++But the warning was too late, a futile attempt to preserve decency. Floydās death and the impending trial against Chauvin loomed over the country for almost a year, amid a pandemic thatās only magnified injustice. The palpable effects of this trauma have been visible in the mental health of Black Americans, and in the witnesses taking the stand. +
++Charles McMillian, 61, sobbed as he listened to himself tell Floyd, āYou canāt win!ā as Floyd struggled under Chauvinās knee. Donald Williams II, a 33-year-old mixed martial artist with a background in security, eventually broke down as he testified about the āblood chokeā that he saw Chauvin use on Floyd. Firefighter Genevieve Hansen, 27, fought back tears as she described feeling helpless at being unable to act in her capacity as an EMT to save Floydās life. +
++Darnella Frazier, 18, who recorded the viral video while accompanied by her 9-year-old cousin ā who also testified ā explained how the incident has irreparably changed her life, from the way she sees Floyd in the Black men in her life to her repeated, prayer-like apologies to Floyd for not doing more. +
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++For the public who watched Floydās death on their screens, the trial has been similarly retraumatizing, particularly for the Black Americans who have grown familiar with how casually America handles Black death, and who are well aware of the countryās long history of brutalizing Black people. On Twitter, some users have resorted to muting any news about the trial, in an effort to shut out more pain. +
+++Iāve watched some of the most upsetting footage from stories around the world for years, but every time the George Floyd video is played during the Chauvin trial, I now mute my computer. The cries of a dying man can be too much to bear sometimes and itās ok to admit that. +
+ā Hala Gorani (@HalaGorani) March 31, 2021 +
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