Damning the Amazon

It's a toss-up which would be easier: bring the river to a halt, or bring the world's most popular online retailer to its senses and make it behave with something approaching common decency. I'd heard of Amazon's use of union-busting tactics before now, and have tried to use publishers', authors', and independent booksellers' websites when linking to particular titles. However, I hadn't been evangelical about it until I found this on my Blogger dashboard:

Do you link to Amazon in your blog posts? Our Amazon Associates integration makes linking easier and can even earn you some money! Details here.

I'm leery of such propostitions anyway: who, I think, is using whom here? Is this an offer of payment, or a bribe? Am I being invited to do Amazon's work for them, pretty much for free? How easy is it to de-integrate if you decide to withdraw? (The penny first dropped twenty years ago when I read, in a portrait written by Harlan Ellison, that Steve McQueen would cut the little red tab off his Levi's. I did the same, wincing. The Levi's 501 is the only product I've ever consciously bought as a result of advertising - the coolest being the one with the Screamin' Jay Hawkins cover of a Tom Waits song. Waits sued, successfully.)

Well, I took a look at Amazon's record on unionisation, and it's not pretty. In 2001 the GMPU had a go at getting the 500 workers at Amazon's Milton Keynes warehouse to sign up; Amazon responded by (allegedly, our lawyers advise) improving terms and conditions while at the same time spreading black propaganda about the union; by constructive dismissal of organisers - sorry, agitators; and by arranging and simultaneously undermining a ballot of the workforce on union recognition. The tactics worked, the ballot failed and the GMPU was driven off, all under the appearance of consultation, democracy and corporate avuncularity on Amazon's part. The details can be found on the Guardian, The Register and on an article at the Word Power Books site.

Now I know this is all some time ago, and one could be forgiven for thinking, well, what's the point now? But no, no no no...just because this shmuck is coming late to this particular party dun't mean the party isn't still going on. One thing I know from bitter experience is that a corporate culture which is this malign doesn't just fade away with time: it's embedded, it permeates the structure, the practices and the souls of the people of work for the company - especially in management, and regardless of who goes and who stays. And so in a Sunday Times (hardly a firebrand publication of the hard left) report from late 2008, we find that the working practices and the attitude towards the workforce are...well, as you'd expect.

Of course, there was a total contradiction between what Amazon said and what they did in 2001, but I still can't help being shocked and enraged by it. I mean, treating your workers like shite is one thing - it's to be expected that employers will try that and get away with it whenever they can, and of course it is always unacceptable and should always be fought against - but bare-faced lying and manipulation is something which drives me to a fury beyond reason.

So from henceforth this will be an Amazon-free zone. Neither by link nor by reference nor by passing comment will they be acknowledged.

Yeah, that'll bring 'em to their knees...but what else can you do?

Bastardquest

No other way to put it - bloody awful news regarding The Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times this week. In brief: new editor-in-chief of all three titles, Donald Martin, has sacked the entire workforce, around 250 hacks, and told them to reapply for their jobs under new terms and conditions. Oh, and there will be 40 fewer jobs to apply for.

The owner of the titles since 2003 is Newsquest, a UK subsidiary of an American company called, unbelievably, Gannett. Newsquest owns 17 dailies, one Sunday (the Sunday Herald) and an absolute shedload of free weeklies; they also own the s1 series of websites. And the Exchange & Mart.

A bit of background: Scotland has what I'm told is a German model of newspaper production and reading - the main daily titles are strongly associated with the cities in which they're based. Glasgow has the Herald, Edinburgh the Scotsman, Dundee the Courier and Aberdeen the Press and Journal. Despite the claims of both the Herald and the Scotsman there is no national newspaper.

Since Newsquest took over there has, allegedly, been a marked decline in quality on all three Glasgow-based papers. (I say allegedly because I don't read the Herald, since it's a Glasgow paper.) Resources have been cut as well. In fact things got so bad in 2007 that the journalists went on strike; you can read a good account of it, as well as background, in a piece from the Independent.

It doesn't seem things got any better. Job cuts and new IT systems that didn't work have, unsurprisingly, led to over-stressed and under-motivated staff, according to a report by the NUJ. The Guardian covers the story here (28 Sep 2008).

Regarding the new editor-in-chief, it doesn't seem that he's done much of a job on the Evening Times. Contributors to this discussion board reckon he's driven readers away with front-page trivia and unquestioning support for Glasgow City Council, and then tried to win them back with bizarre giveaways. The discussion runs to two pages but it's mostly concise and well-written, and bang up-to-date.

It's deeply saddening and ironic, though not surprising, that the DTI report approving Gannett/Newsquest's acquisition of the papers made these key points:

1. The transfer is unlikely to adversely affect competition between newspapers in Scotland.

2. We do not expect the transfer to adversely to affect editorial freedom, the current editorial stance, content or quality of the SMG titles, accurate presentation of news or freedom of expression.

3. Nor do we expect the transfer to result in undue financial pressure on the titles acquired such as to reduce editorial quality.

Alex Salmond has said that he can imagine how The Herald would have covered the story if this had happened at another company in Scotland: in fact, they have. Google "herald" and "sackings" and you find this 2002 story about the Clyde & Forth Press Group sacking 11 editors and inviting them to apply for four new posts; also this one about SEPA sacking 600 staff who refused to sign a new contract.

The thing is, it simply does not make sense to treat staff in this way. The return you get from listening to and consulting staff and bringing them on board massively outweighs the expense, because a motivated workforce is more productive. I don't, I just don't understand why employers don't see this, unless it's the old story from Suetonius and The Twelve Caesars: people who are put in a position of power will abuse it. In other words, it's not because they have to - it's because they can.

NUJ.