Amazon: Behind the Smiles

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2019

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Shop. Click. And the next day, your purchase is on your doorstep. Amazon has changed the face of shopping, but at a surprisingly high cost to its workers. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming soon, we look at what’s behind those smiling packages to reveal the dangers of working at Amazon.

Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal.
0:08.8	I'm Al Letson.
0:09.8	It's the holidays, black Friday, Cyber Monday.
0:12.7	Oh yeah, Thanksgiving too.
0:14.8	Tis the season for one click ordering.
0:17.5	An Amazon makes it easy for shoppers to get the goods overnight.
0:21.9	That's one way CEO Jeff Bezos became one of the world's richest people.
0:26.6	Behind the scenes, it takes a massive effort.
0:30.2	At Amazon, the season is called Peak, and it's intense.
0:34.1	Here's how one manager revs up his staff at the beginning of a shift.
0:37.8	Friday, straight on three, one, two, three, four.
0:45.9	More than 100,000 people work to get all those gifts out of the warehouse.
0:51.0	Sometimes on 12 hour shifts.
0:53.4	From the time you punch in to the time you punch out, you're like,
0:56.7	go in a million miles a minute.
0:58.4	That's Christina VanVorse, who lives in Southern California.
1:01.8	She started working at Amazon's Eastvale warehouse when it opened last year.
1:06.0	Workers have to process hundreds of items an hour,
1:09.3	and their pace is monitored down to the second.
1:12.4	It's intense.
1:13.4	It's very, very intense.
1:15.1	Think of Santa's workshop.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.