We also shouldn’t forget about scrip: At least one Amazon facility rewarded their workers with “swag bucks,” which were only valid for purchasing Amazon products. Companies can quickly pack up and move their operations, but middle and working-class families aren’t afforded that same kind of privilege. If Amazon were to close its Otay Mesa facility, what would happen to the people who worked at the company and lived in the surrounding housing units? In West Virginia, a local union branch warned families they would probably have to sell their homes and relocate when a pharmaceutical plant closed and moved its operations to India and Australia. In Otay Mesa’s case, however, the local government is doing most of the building.īuilding housing and communities around industrialized companies - especially in a day and age when companies exploit cheaper labor - is short-sighted. A company-centered housing development might as well just be labeled a company town. In this quiet, unbothered part of southern San Diego, Amazon plans to build a new distribution center, and resident advocates worry that Otay Mesa’s affordable housing plans will build housing in industrialized areas. The residents of Otay Mesa currently feel the effects of what could be an Amazon company town in the making. If it means bringing jobs to their area, states and local governments contort themselves to appease the company while not paying any mind to the quasi-company town’s long-term effects on their communities. Recall the intense PR battle between states and local governments back in 2017 when Amazon looked to build another headquarters. Amazon has a lot of influence whenever it occupies an office space or builds a fulfillment center because of the prospective positive economic impact. Therefore, it is doubtful Amazon would suddenly employ better workplace practices if it were to organize and run its own company town.Īdditionally, the company’s sheer presence makes it an ever-expanding tenant. Amazon’s horrid workplace environment - including unreasonably high mandated hours, extremely short breaks and an injury rate three times the national average - are well documented. First and foremost, company towns often don’t have the best working conditions. These towns may offer recreational activities in addition to housing, and it isn’t uncommon for a company town to pay their employees in scrip, or non-legal tender, for them to use exclusively in the towns’ stores.Ĭurrently, Amazon doesn’t own any company towns, but it employs some of the same sleazy tactics and practices that made company towns reprehensible. Typically in rural and isolated areas, company towns center around large industries or factories that produce raw materials or products, such as coal or automobiles.Ĭompany workers - and their families - usually live in company towns and go to nearby factories or plants for work. While many may not know about company towns, we should be glad they aren’t as common anymore. The writer seems to have completely forgotten business-built towns’ horrible conditions. A recent Bloomberg opinion article, however, promoted the benefits of Amazon company towns. We are in a much better place now than decades ago because past laborers refused to stand by while employers subjected them to undignified conditions and starvation wages. We still have a ways to go until the working class experiences justice, but we owe shorter work days, generally safer working conditions and better benefits to the folks who came before us. We take a lot of things for granted nowadays, including practices in the workforce. “We may not have central business districts anymore,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams grudgingly admitted recently.When it comes to labor practices, history is a great indicator of what works and what doesn’t work. When the dust finally settles, experts like Stanford University’s Nicholas Bloom predict that fully 20% of all workdays will be done remotely, up from roughly 5% before the pandemic, with as many as half of the knowledge and professional workers who occupy downtown offices working remotely at least part of the time. But several big cities, including New York, Chicago and San Francisco, have been stalled at 40% or under for several months - a sign that the workplace disruptions of the Covid era are with us for the long haul. That’s better than they looked in May 2021, when the average stood at just 27%. In 10 of the largest US cities, office occupancy averages are less than half, roughly 44% as of mid-August, of what they were back in 2020 before the pandemic hit. America’s downtowns are in big trouble, or so the pundits tell us, thanks to the enduring effects of Covid-19 and the rise of remote and hybrid work.
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