{"id":178717,"date":"2018-09-08T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-09T00:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/09\/08\/not-a-surprise-10\/"},"modified":"2018-09-08T19:30:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-09T00:30:00","slug":"not-a-surprise-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/09\/08\/not-a-surprise-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Not a Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Since Amazon&#8217;s takeover of Whole Foods, the lot of its employees has deteriorated.<\/div>\n<p>There have been benefit cuts, layoffs, and the implementation of a new centralized inventory system that has led to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/how-whole-foods-uses-scorecards-to-punish-employees-2018-1\">empty shelves and crushed worker morale<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Think of it as the, &#8220;Amazon Way,&#8221; transferred from their hellhole warehouses to the local grocery store.<\/p>\n<p>Now there is <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/09\/06\/whole-foods-workers-seek-to-unionize-says-amazon-is-exploiting-our-dedication\/\">an aggressive effort to unionize<\/a>, which is not a suprise<\/p>\n<p>From the moment that Whole Foods sold out to Amazon, it was clear that the lip service that the grocer had paid to treating its employees well was, to quote Ron Zeigler, &#8220;Inoperative&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A group of workers at Whole Foods Market is leading an effort to establish a union for the Amazon-owned company\u2019s 85,000+ workforce.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">In a <a href=\"https:\/\/newfoodeconomy.org\/whole-foods-workers-union-letter-amazon\/\">letter<\/a> addressed to Whole Foods employees, the group \u2014 members of Whole Foods\u2019 cross-regional committee \u2014 wrote that they are \u201cconcerned about the direction\u201d of Whole Foods in an Amazon era. The letter outlines several demands, including a $15 minimum wage for all employees, 401k matching, paid maternity leave, lower health insurance deductibles and more.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cWe cannot let Amazon remake the entire North American retail landscape without embracing the full value of its team members. The success of Amazon and [Whole Foods] should not come at the cost of exploiting our dedication and threatening our economic stability,\u201d they wrote.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The letter, which calls out both Jeff Bezos and Whole Foods\u2019 CEO John Mackey directly, says there will \u201ccontinue to be layoffs in 2019 and beyond as Amazon aims to aggressively trim our labor force before it expands with new technology and labor models.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Since the Amazon acquisition, several hundred Whole Foods workers have been laid-off as Amazon infuses \u201cWhole Foods with its efficient, data-driven ethos,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/new-era-at-amazons-whole-foods-grates-on-some-suppliers-employees-1530526964\">per The Wall Street Journal<\/a>. Shoppers, however, <a href=\"https:\/\/media.wholefoodsmarket.com\/news\/just-one-year-since-joining-the-amazon-family-whole-foods-market-customers#When:04:01:00Z\">have saved millions<\/a> as a result of the shake-up. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Here\u2019s the full letter, obtained by New Food Economy. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/2q8G62g.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/2q8G62g.jpg\" width=\"475\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since Amazon&#8217;s takeover of Whole Foods, the lot of its employees has deteriorated. There have been benefit cuts, layoffs, and the implementation of a new centralized inventory system that has led to empty shelves and crushed worker morale. Think of it as the, &#8220;Amazon Way,&#8221; transferred from their hellhole warehouses to the local grocery store. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,465,442],"class_list":["post-178717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-labor","tag-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}