Amazon's take-no-prisoners business
model made founder Jeff Bezos staggeringly rich while stranding thousands of
warehouse workers on the borderline of poverty.
Amazon’s
bezillionaire CEO is buying The Washington Post, America’s second-most prestigious daily
newspaper. Jeff Bezos only had to pay $250 million, less than 1 percent of
his $28 billion personal fortune.
Has
plutocracy finally overwhelmed our press? Some veteran journalists fear the
worst. Another grand old family of American journalism, the lament goes, has
stepped away. Who can we now count on to protect the public interest?
Let’s
cut this gauzy sentimentalizing.
Yes,
the Graham family that owned the Post for the past 80 years
did perform a notable public service after the 1972 Watergate break-in. But the
Grahams may have performed an even greater service — for plutocracy — three
years later when they hired “replacement workers” to grab away the jobs of
striking Post pressmen.
That move broke the unwritten rule that had held sway among “respectable” employers for the entire mid-20th century and set a precedent that President Ronald Reagan would exploit, to the fullest, six years later. Reagan replaced striking air traffic controllers and busted their union, a two-step that would help shove the American labor movement on a three-decade-long slide.
Organized
labor’s descent has left the modern American workplace virtually “union-free.”
Less than 7 percent of America’s private-sector workers now carry union cards.
None
of these union workers, at last count, labor in Amazon’s vast and often
contracted-out warehouses. Exhausted after 12-hour shifts, these employees
regularly wait, unpaid and for nearly a half-hour, at security
checkpoints meant to detect pilfering.
A class action lawsuit against a contractor for the mammoth
online retailer that runs many of its warehouses is pending. The plaintiffs
accuse the warehouse operator of systematic wage theft.
Amazon
has, to be sure, started making nice on some fronts. Last year, after a barrage
of negative publicity, the company did install air-conditioning in its brutally hot warehouse workplaces.
But
the company’s basic, take-no-prisoners business model is still roaring along.
That formula has made Jeff Bezos staggeringly rich and denied middle-class
status to tens of thousands of American families.
Workers at Amazon’s distribution-center warehouses, CNN reports, take home about $24,300 a year. That’s barely more than the official poverty line for a family of four and far less than what Wal-Mart pays.
Workers at Amazon’s distribution-center warehouses, CNN reports, take home about $24,300 a year. That’s barely more than the official poverty line for a family of four and far less than what Wal-Mart pays.
We
don’t know what exactly Bezos has in store for The Washington
Post. His PR people declined to make him available for interviews following
the announcement of last week’s sale, which included the mogul’s official promise to not interfere in the newspaper’s daily operations.
No
surprise there. The Post editorial line already meshes quite
smoothly with the Bezos worldview, liberal-ish on cultural issues, dependably conservative on
anything — like the labor movement — that poses any serious potential threat to
America’s deep pockets.
In
other words, working families will find in the new Washington Post no
more crusading zeal on their behalf than they found in the old Washington
Post.
So
what’s new? America’s most powerful newspaper publishers have always been
partial to the privileged.
But
we’ve had exceptions, publishers who remind us how great newspapers could and
should be wielding their power. The most eloquent of these public-spirited
publishers? That may well have been Joseph Pulitzer, the idiosyncratic
and widely
revered force behind
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and New York World.
In
his 1907 retirement address, Pulitzer urged his successors to “always oppose privileged classes and
public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to
the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be
drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory
plutocracy or predatory poverty.”
Don’t
expect any credo like that to appear on the Washington Post’s masthead
anytime soon. In his home state of Washington three years ago, Jeff Bezos
played the predatory plutocrat to the hilt. He helped bankroll the defeat of a ballot initiative that
would have cut taxes on average families and modestly raised taxes on the rich
— like himself.
OtherWords columnist Sam Pizzigati is an Institute for Policy Studies
associate fellow. His latest book is The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over
Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class. OtherWords.org