BERNIE SANDERS IS OFFICIALLY GETTING UNDER JEFF BEZOS'S SKIN

[Uncle Joe]

While Donald Trump zeroes in on Facebook and Google, Bernie Sanders has for months been waging war against another tech giant. In statement after statement, the progressive senator from Vermont has decried Amazon, claiming that the $954 billion company doesn’t pay enough workers a living wage—especially those who toil in its more than 100 fulfillment centers across the country. Many of the attacks have been personal: “It is completely unacceptable that ordinary Americans should be subsidizing the wealthiest people in the world like Jeff Bezos when they pay their employees such inadequate wages,” he tweeted earlier this week. “Count to ten,” he wrote in another tweet. “In those ten seconds, Jeff Bezos, the owner and founder of Amazon, just made more money than the median employee of Amazon makes in an entire year.” Not content to bludgeon the company from the confines of Twitter, Sanders’s office has also appealed directly to Amazon employees: “Have you used public assistance, such as food stamps, Medicaid or subsidized housing, in order to make ends meet?” asks a form on his Web site.

(snip)

Amazon’s own claims run counter to dozens of reports of worker mistreatment. In recent years, stories have proliferated about warehouse workers skipping bathroom breaks to keep their jobs; taking home less than the minimum wage; and walking as many as 15 miles a day inside warehouses, while handheld scanners tell management how much idle time they spend between fulfilling customer orders. In Amazon’s Breinigsville, Pennsylvania, warehouse, workers were allegedly forced to work in 100-degree heat, leading some to become dehydrated and collapse. (Amazon eventually installed air conditioners in the warehouse.) Since 2013, according to the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, seven people have died on the job in Amazon warehouses. (In response to the N.C.O.S. study, Amazon said in a statement that it is “proud of [its] safety record and thousands of Amazonians work hard every day innovating ways to make it even better.”)

So far, the responses to Sanders’s form have told similar stories. “If my aunt wasn’t helping I wouldn’t be able to make it, at least put food on the table,” wrote one current worker in Cleveland, Tennessee. “Was homeless sleeping in the parking lot after I no longer could afford rent,” wrote a former worker in Fort Worth, Texas. “If anyone wanted to experience what a turn of the 20th century American sweat shop might have looked/sounded/felt like,” wrote a former employee in San Antonio, “they [can] look no further than Amazon.”

(snip)

Amazon seems uniquely wary of Sanders, and for good reason. While damning stories have not been enough to ruffle the company, rising political tensions have. In the past five years, as it has grown in size, Amazon has increased its lobbying spending 400 percent, mostly staving off Washington regulators. More recently, however, Trump has given Wall Street reason to worry. After a series of tweets in which the president claimed the company gets special treatment from the U.S. Postal Service (“Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon,” he wrote in one), Amazon’s stock plunged 5 percent. Worse for Bezos, the negative attention is increasingly bipartisan. Sanders is the most popular politician in the country, at least according to recent polling, meaning his words could prove substantially weightier than the (notoriously unpopular) president’s. He could also inspire other progressive lawmakers to mimic them. If there is to be a sustained effort to cut Amazon down to size, after all, it would help if it outlasted Trump’s tenure in the White House.



https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/bernie-sanders-is-officially-getting-under-jeff-bezos-skin

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

1. Yes, we know, Bernie is not a Democrat... there, I saved you the trouble.

[Uncle Joe]

2. That's correct InAbLuEsTaTe but I agree with Democrat Andrew Gillum

and have so before I even knew him.

(snip)

“It’s an honor to have Senator Bernie Sanders’ endorsement in this campaign,” Gillum responded in a statement. “He has been an unapologetic fighter for everyday working people standing up to the special interests. From Medicare-for-All, to a $15 minimum wage, his ideas and platform have become the Democratic Party’s north star on economic justice for those who need it most.”

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/os-bernie-sanders-andrew-gillum-20180801-story.html

[Nitram]

3. Me too.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

5. So glad AG won... he will make an AWESOME Governor!! Keep following that North Star!!

[ProfessorPlum]

4. phew! thank goodness

I was worried no one would mention this

[QC]

6. !

[LiberalLovinLug]

8. Bernie is not even a D.....................

[TomCADem]

7. The Trump/Bernie Tag Team on Bezos

It is just odd how often they align on things like trade, Russia sanctions, and now a mutual hate of Amazon.

[earthshine]

9. Bernie has voiced an even greater contempt for Trump so spare us your attempt to associate the two.

[Uncle Joe]

10. Using your logic FDR and Stalin would've lined up in the same political spectrum as well

because they were both enemies of Hitler.

Not suggesting that Bezos is Hitler but the same dysfunctional "logic" applies.

Trump doesn't give a rat's ass about the average working American and never has.

[George II]

11. If he has such a problem with Amazon, why does he sell his books and t-shirts on Amazon?

[Uncle Joe]

12. Steven Wright