Amazon warehouse worker seeks reforms in shareholder proposal
Yahoo Finance’s Allie Garfinkle joins the Live show to discuss a new shareholder proposal put forth by an Amazon warehouse worker that seeks to reform the company's labor practices.
Video Transcript
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- Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. Amazon is approaching its annual meeting this week, but a dominating story continues to be the labor movement within the company. And one worker in Texas is taking a different approach to enacting change at Amazon, and that's raising concerns as a shareholder. Joining us with more on this story is Yahoo Finance's senior tech performer, Allie Garfinkle. Allie, give us the lowdown on exactly who this worker is and what exactly he's proposing as a shareholder of the company.
ALEXANDRA GARFINKLE: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me. So this worker I've been following for this story, his name is Daniel Olayiwola, and he's 28, he's been working at Amazon since 2017. And the proposal he's put forth focuses on ending Amazon's quota systems and surveillance practices.
Now, you might be wondering, what quotas? What does that actually mean in this context? In Daniel's case, he's what's called a picker. He's somebody who goes around and gathers items for shipping. And pickers in Daniel's position have to gather between 3,000 and 5,000 items a day. Now, that sounds like a pretty big number to you and me, Brian, probably. And it is. But imagine being in that situation in a warehouse where the nearest bathroom or the nearest item is a quarter of a mile away, half a mile away.
Daniel actually is an army veteran, he served as a medic. And when people ask him, he says that working at Amazon is harder than being in the US Army. So that's kind of why he's putting forth this shareholder proposal.
- And Allie, how unique is this approach? I mean, where does this fit into Amazon's unionization story?
ALEXANDRA GARFINKLE: That's a great question, Akiko. So the shareholder proposal approach is a first for Amazon, but there are sort of two things worth noting there. The first is that shareholder proposals like this, while they aren't necessarily frequently passed, they have been seeing higher rates of acceptance in recent years. And this is particularly true for social and politically oriented proposals.
The second thing to note is that the concerns that Daniel is bringing forward are concerns that workers who've been unionizing across Amazon have also voiced. For instance, Amazon surveillance practices that Daniel talks about, they have particularly been a subject for discussion among unionization efforts. Many workers are also saying that working at Amazon, the levels of surveillance are like jail. And while Daniel didn't quite echo that, it's worth saying that his approach while it's novel, it actually is-- well, his approach is novel, the concerns he has across the board are the same as Amazon workers across the country.
- OK, a story we'll be watching closely. Allie, thanks so much for that.
