The Great Resignation vs. The Amazon Edwardsville Disaster (Update)

“I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this.” - the wages of American Capitalism are death...

It's been 110 years since the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory disaster.  After revising initial fears of hundreds of trapped employees it appears the Edwardsville Amazon disaster will thankfully not reach that level of tragedy.  Of course, this is scant comfort to the families of the 6 thus far confirmed killed.

I know everyone loves Amazon but, it certainly seems like Jeff Bezos' new fangled Fulfillment Wage Slavery is just a retread of the old 19th century sweatshop variety.  Hopefully Jeff Bezos can eventually get around to addressing the families of his dead employees, whom he so recently thanked, instead of wistfully staring off into space.

Unbelievable. Amazon unable to account for Employees trapped inside.  Employees denied cell phones to ensure they don't take 5 minutes out of their time fulfilling orders to waste scrolling twitter or Facebook. Did Amazon have a nice carve-out on building regulations which allow their "warehouse" to be regulated under different building codes and safety regulations (h/t Naked Capitalism) than an office buildings or retail space?

Walls on both sides of the building collapsed inward and the roof fell down. Officials say the concrete walls were 40 feet tall and about the length of a football field.

Now Republicans hate Bezos because he doesn't do what Rich people are supposed to do; i.e. aid the Republicans in enforcing oppression and intolerance.  However, Bezos does believe in enshackling the American People into perpetual, unending Corporate Bondage so that is a saving grace for Amazon.

I don't know what the future of work for Amazon or in general will look like nor the fate of cities.  But, the Great Resignation coupled with the abandonment of office work looks to entail a massive restructuring of American work life.  Would it be on par with the Industrialization and the creation of metropolis?  Or the near doubling of the workforce post-World War 2 with women entering the workplace en masse?  I don't know and I don't think anyone else does.

Updated:

"I can hire half the working class to kill the other half, " low level warehouse managers were instructed to threaten workers with being fired if they left their jobs during the deadly tornadoes.  Company owners defend themselves by saying company policy is to not let workers leave during a tornado.  Of course, it is not company policy to have a hardened tornado shelter at their facilities because "human capital" is easily replaced.

Trump set to institute Wage Slavery via the NLRB and his Department of Forced Labor

The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

More people getting paid for overtime work sounds great, but... Speaker Paul Ryan illustrates how more money for American Workers is bad because when Americans are financially secure they vote for a Democratic Socialist Government but, when reduced to penury by Republican policies they elect reactionary Republicans.

One of the most pernicious lies promulgated about President Obama's tenure was he did nothing for the working class. President Obama's National Labor Relations Board and head of the Department of Labor Tom Perez, increased protections and aggressively defended workers while punishing employers who conducted wage theft.

President Obama and his Labor Department passed regulations changing the ceiling mandating overtime pay but, a Federal Judge in Texas held up the overtime rule back in December. Now, traitor Trump and his Department of Forced Labor will undo it completely as well as undercutting American workers on several other avenues.

Under the President Obama's Department of Labor rules, salaried employees earning less than $47,476 annually would have automatically received overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week, double the current $23,660 ceiling. More than 4 million workers would have earned an estimated extra $12 billion over the next decade. As Vice President Joe Biden correctly noted last year, "It is based on a simple proposition. If you work overtime, you should actually get paid for working overtime."

This, of course, enraged Republicans, who responded with predictable Pavlovian frothing at the mouth fury. Actually, paying workers is antithetical to the Republican Party.  Trump especially doesn't pay people who work for him, as thousands of contractors and former FBI head James Comey found out.

In many ways Traitor Trump, is a bog standard Republican, he hates paying workers and uses the awesome power of the Federal Government to ensure he doesn't have to. The Republican Plan to screw over workers works like this; an employee works 60 hours (20 hours overtime) but instead of being paid time-and-a-half, the 20 hours goes into a bank of compensated time (CT), which theoretically the worker could use as paid time off or as pay at the end of the fiscal year. What really happens is the CT builds up for years and the employee never gets time off and never gets paid.

But, Trump and his Forced Labor Department are just getting started.  In addition, to making overtime an unpaid "benefit" of working in the U.S.  The Department of Forced Labor is also set to do the following:

• Trump's proposed budget includes a 20 percent cut to Labor Department funding, but not all areas as the Office of Labor-Management Standards, which investigates conducts witch hunts against in private-sector unions is set to receive a 22 percent increase.
• Eliminating the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, which barred companies from receiving federal contracts if they had a history of violating wage, labor or workplace safety laws. 
• Rescinding the Persuader rule, which would have required law firms to publicly disclose any work they do for employers surrounding union busting and anti-union organization efforts.
• Curtailing OSHA efforts to improve worker safety by delaying tightened exposure standards for silica, which is often breathed in by certain construction workers and linked to lung disease; and lower workplace exposure limits for beryllium, an industrial mineral linked to lung cancer.

And they are just getting started.  Traitor Trump and the Respublikanskaya Partiya have a message to 99% of Americans; You have No Friend in Government.  Welcome back to the Era of Forced Labor and Slavery.

Joe Biden was right as usual when, in 2012,  he stated, "We got a real clear picture of what they all value. Every Republican's voted for it.  They're going to put y'all back in chains."