How Amazon Is Laying Off Some Workers While Spying on Others
As the company lays off thousands workers, a new DAIR report reveals how Amazon surveills and punishes its delivery drivers
As the company lays off thousands workers, a new DAIR report reveals how Amazon surveills and punishes its delivery drivers
By Decca Muldowney and Alex Hanna
It was revealed this week that Amazon is planning to lay off anywhere between 14,000 to 30,000 staff -- up to 10% of their corporate workforce, even as they continue to pour money into AI and develop technologies to surveil their logistics and warehouse workers.
Amazon human-resources executive Beth Galetti said the company was “reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we're investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers' current and future needs." Reuters reported that Amazon is likely cutting on short-term costs to shore up investment in long-term bets, that is, in their AI infrastructure buildout. Meanwhile, last week’s AWS outage took down whole swathes of the web, impacting millions, raising important questions about what it means to have one company control so much of the internet’s infrastructure.
We know these layoffs come as Amazon is pouring money into AI, committing in 2024 to spending $10 billion a piece to build data centers in Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina. In May, CEO Andy Jassy said the company would continue to “invest very aggressively in AI” while cutting back on staff numbers they say are inflated due to overhiring during COVID. Jassy and the tech giant are making big bets on AI and productivity, suggesting back in June that AI "should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs." Corporate employees have reported that this is turning office work into the kind of punishing labor that Amazon’s warehouse workers are already well-acquainted with.
The incursion of “AI” into corporate, warehouse, and logistics work is only possible with heavy investments in workplace surveillance technologies. Last week, DAIR launched Driven Down: How Workplace Technology Enables Amazon to Steal Wages, Hide Labor, Intensify Poor Working Conditions, and Evade Responsibility, a report co-authored by Alex, alongside Adrienne Williams, and Sandra Barcenas. Based on in-depth interviews and Adrienne’s own lived experience of working as an Amazon delivery driver, the findings are stark. The report found that Amazon is using surveillance technologies to intensify driver workloads, instill a patchwork of uneven digital punishments and expose drivers to wage theft and unsafe working conditions.
Read the report and watch the video. And please share on BlueSky and LinkedIn.
At every stage of an Amazon delivery driver’s day, they are being surveilled. From the Mentor app drivers use, to their handheld scanners, to sensors in the delivery vans and AI-powered cameras mounted to the inside and outside of vans, there is no second of a driver’s work day (even the times that they’re “off duty”) that is not being tracked, monitored, and surveilled. Almost all the technologies are described by Amazon as being for “safety,” but they’re also used to penalize drivers for routine decisions, like breaking, shifting a route due to bad weather or unexpected roadworks. There’s zero privacy for drivers, even if they’re being forced to urinate or use menstrual products in the van because there’s no time to take a bathroom break. The report found that these apps in fact decrease safety for both delivery drivers and the general public, as they rush and forgo taking breaks to meet delivery expectations.
On the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 podcast, we’ve discussed the ways that Amazon is also involved in other forms of surveillance, including the development of border-enforcement and immigration tech. Friend of the pod Karen Hao has described Amazon as the “backbone” of ICE’s immigration operations.
In the episode, The "AI"-Enabled Immigration Panopticon, we spoke to anthropologist and immigration lawyer Petra Molnar, about how "AI" tech is everywhere in the enforcement of national borders. [Livestream, Podcast, Transcript]
Adrienne spoke with us on the pod for our episode Billionaires, Influencers, and Education, about the incursion of data-driven surveillance technology in education. [Livestream, Podcast, Transcript]
In addition, Sophie Song, Tina Park, and Alex have written about how productivity gains promised by “AI” are actually a myth, and that we’re likely to see remaining workers driven harder in the face of mass layoffs.
This is the through-line that links Amazon’s treatment of its corporate employees with its surveillance of its drivers. As Emily and Alex write in chapter two of The AI Con, “Modern logistics and information economies are built on automation, surveillance, and the reduction of people into mere objects, the grease on the gears. AI is part of a longer tradition within global industry of finding ways to replace labor, and/or enforce grueling schedules and working conditions in the name of productivity.”
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