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This thesis explores how Amazon's treatment of white-collar workers, as revealed in a New York Times exposé, contributed to the public discourse on labor rights and organizational identity. the demanding workplace culture, use of anonymous feedback tool, and Amazon's responses to the controversy. It also touches upon the role of media and journalism in labor activism and the lasting impact on Amazon's organizational identity.
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i DOES THE TIN MAN HAVE A HEART?: ORGANIZATIONAL RHETORIC AND THE PUBLIC DEBATE OVER PRECARITY IN THE AMAZON- NEW YORK TIMES CONTROVERSY by EMMA E. COLLINS B.A., Western Kentucky University, 2015 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Communication 2017
ii This thesis entitled: Does the Tin Man Have a Heart?: Organizational Rhetoric and the Public Debate over Precarity in the Amazon- New York Times Controversy written by Emma E. Collins has been approved for the Department of Communication
Bryan Taylor
Ruth Hickerson
Jody Jahn Date ___________________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline.
v Co-construction of Organizational Identity .............................................................................. 60 Lessons Learned on Resisting Precarity ................................................................................... 64 References .................................................................................................................................... 68
separation between work and free time, a social safety net if all else failed and so on.” (p.622). While knowledge workers, and more specifically high-tech workers may be thought to be too skilled or too privileged to be exploited by labor conditions, they are increasingly affected by uncertainty and exhaustion. Rodino-Colocino (2006) argued that technology jobs are often represented as an excellent opportunity for economic opportunity and advancement. These jobs often require training but not advanced education and are possible for many historically marginalized groups on the wrong side of the digital divide. However, the dream of achieving equality through employment in well-paying technology jobs remains elusive for many. Rodino- Colocino explained “as critique of the IT labor market demonstrates, technological proficiency and even mastery do not ensure stable, living waged work” (p.495). Further, Brophy explained that high-tech work “is a paradigmatic form of work in the knowledge economy” and features “increasingly precarious” occupations. (p.623). Software engineers and computer scientists are increasingly being hired as temporary and contract workers, leaving them without consistent work, pay or benefits. Brophy compared the scene to 1930s auto factory workers, because although the work is definitively less physical, corporations are yet again taking advantage of labor and there are not yet strong unions or protections in place for the workers. Rodino-Colocino (2012) explained that the reality of the instability of technology work shocked many that were affected from 2002-2005, an era filled with technology firm layoffs and offshoring. Traditionally privileged identities, including white-collar professional white men in the technology sector, were outraged when their jobs and livelihoods proved to be disposable during this especially tumultuous time in the technology sector (Rodino- Colocino). In response, unions have begun to emerge in the high-tech sector, demanding stable
work and benefits (e.g., Washington Alliance of Technology Workers). However, there is still a cultural hesitance among many high-tech workers to unionize or collectively bargain (Brophy, 2006). The myth of a new economy, in which the need for unions and collective action is anachronistic, is so pervasive that workers who are the most exploited believe it most strongly. Dempsey and Sanders (2010), for example, studied the published autobiographies of a related group of professionals, social entrepreneurs. They highlighted how these narratives emphasized the glorification of self-sacrifice and the “privileging of organizational commitment at the expense of health, family and other aspects of social reproduction” (p.439). The narratives suggested that “because meaningful work is inherently inspiring and highly fulfilling, there is less need to protect the boundary between professional life and personal life, or to inquire about the costs of the resulting overwork, exhaustion and self-sacrifice” (Dempsey & Sanders, 2010, p.452). It is clear that even highly skilled knowledge workers are not immune from exploitation by capitalist logics that consistently privilege corporate revenues and stockholder value over worker’s rights. As Rodino-Colocino (2002) reported, the Amazon corporation was likely trying to impress investors and Wall Street about its gritty willingness to cut costs when the company laid off nearly 400 Seattle customer service employees in 2001. de Peuter (2011) called for a reformed labor politics that includes knowledge, communication and media workers. Workers employed in the so-called creative economy ought to be involved in discussions of labor and rights, and as de Peuter argues communication studies scholars can contribute this inclusion as they take up the analysis of labor issues. Cloud (2001) has cautioned that we must recognize age- old patterns of worker exploitation even when operating in a supposed “new” economy.
headquarters, and a video was released of the CEO of the company yelling at an Uber driver when he brought up declining driver pay (Vaccaro & Adams, 2017). Labor precarity remains concerning for individuals at risk for constant job loss, change and uncertainty. However, precarity has also become a topic of mediated cultural controversy that allows many different voices to sensemake, critique, and decide how we talk about workplace practices in our post- industrial economy. Labor Precarity in High Tech Organizations High-technology organizations are at the nexus of labor precarity and the post-industrial economy. Although there is not a singular accepted definition for a high-technology organization, Rogers and Larsen (1984) suggested they include these four elements: highly skilled workforce, fast growth, high ratio of research and development (R&D) investment to sales and a global market for products. Beyond their mechanical definitions, high-tech organizations are also cultural artifacts, that are influenced by and influencers of contemporary culture. It is through this lens that this project approaches the high-technology sector. To gain a better understanding of this perspective, I will first summarize common elements of contemporary high-tech firms and how these elements contribute to precarious professions. High-technology organizations are often characterized by their heavy investment in R&D (Grinstein & Goldman, 2006). As a result, high-technology firms are often highly concerned with the production of R&D, innovation. Ou and Hsu (2013) assessed that the two lynchpins to a high-technology firm’s success are its technology and reputation. Innovation is critical to maintaining both of these critical elements. Many academic studies of the high-tech sector are focused on optimal conditions for innovation (e.g., Magri, 2014) and return on investment dollars for R&D (e.g., Coad & Rao, 2008). High-technology companies, and by extension,
employees, become obsessed with the next big idea and invention. This mentality, explained by Taylor and Carlone (2001), seeps beyond the workplace and encourages people to not only look for the newest and greatest product, but also the latest and greatest job and relationship, encouraging a lifestyle that thrives on uncertainty and adaptability. While high-technology organizations often share industry-wide traits such as attention to innovation, they are also regionally situated. Perhaps the most famous collection of high- technology companies is known by its geographic location: Silicon Valley. High tech organizations, however, have increasingly sprung up around the country and the world. Each collection of organizations is both affected by and influences its regional environment. Taylor and Carlone (2001) summarized how Silicon Valley firms are highly inflected with a particular way of operating influenced by the norms and values of the area. The massive collection of high- tech firms has also had a great impact on the surrounding area, including rapidly rising housing prices and resource depletion. Similarly, James (2005) studied the regional cultural influence on high-tech firms in Salt Lake City, Utah, discovering that successful firms had a mix of industry- wide accepted norms and locally-expected customs in a highly Mormon area. James concluded that there was not a one-size fits all formula for a successful high-tech firm, even as many organizations around the country tried to copy the Silicon Valley characteristics: “provision of venture capital, additional spending for education, incubator space, prestigious addresses in local university based science parks and technical assistance” (p.1212). Further, Mayer (2013) identified how one large technology company (“a hub company”) may change the local culture of technology as their employees break off from the hub and create their own tech startups (“spoke companies”). Mayer studied Microsoft’s role as a hub company in creating the vibrant technology sector and culture in Seattle and discovered that management practices and
typically women, are often forced to choose careers that allow for more flexibility in work hours because of nonwork obligations. Rutherford (2001), for example, argued that time spent and expected at the workplace was a main contributing factor to women’s non-advancement in their careers. Because there is not yet equality in the expectations for women raising families or taking care of elderly family members, increased expectations for work disproportionately adversely impact women. Expectations for work continuously increase as the social safety net erodes, leaving workers in the high-technology sector left overworked and uncertain of their future. Finally, high-technology organizations often rely on low-wage workers on the periphery to support their operations. Taylor and Carlone (2001) explained, “employers increasingly exploit two-tiered structures in which a small number of core knowledge workers are surrounded by a large contingent of temporary and contract laborers” (p.295). Organizations may outsource this work domestically through third-party employers or offshore the work entirely. Both practices have often led to controversy. In 2011 and 2012, for example, the publications Mother Jones (McClelland, 2012), Pennsylvania’s The Morning Call (Soper, 2011), and The Huffington Post (Jamieson, 2011) all published exposes in revealing the low paying, mentally demanding and physically dangerous jobs in “customer fulfillment centers” that make Amazon’s fast and cheap shipping possible. News coverage erupted around the world when a series of employees at a Chinese factory supplying companies such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Dell, committed suicide (Guo, Hsu, Holton, & Jeong, 2012). High-technology workers at all levels of organizations are left in precarious work situations and contracts, but this pressure is likely felt the hardest at the lowest-levels and periphery of the firms. High Tech Organizations as a Cultural Text
Beyond the inner-workings of day-to-day life at a high-technology company, however, the organizations are also the subject of public interest and imagination. Taylor and Carlone (2001) describe Silicon Valley “both as a real site of high technology organizations and as a contested symbolic site of cultural discourse,” (p. 289). High-technology organizations are often the subject of television shows and movies (e.g., Halt and Catch Fire , Silicon Valley , The Social Network ), syndicated cartoons (e.g., Dilbert), investigative and financial journalism and dinner table conversations. Office perks of Silicon Valley companies such as Facebook’s laundry services, Google’s lunchroom, and the popular office Ping-Pong table have become commonplace cultural knowledge. Further, high-tech companies draw thousands of people to conferences for product launches and millions from around the world tune in later (or even live) to watch. Altogether, high-technology organizations are positioned at the nexus of technology, ethics, politics, work expectations and public imagination. This makes this industry an ideal place to analyze the cultural and communicative underpinnings of organizational life. A recent exposé on the working conditions of one of the most well-known technology companies offers an opportunity to explore the relationship between culture, communication and organization. A Bruising Workplace, Contested After conducting nearly 8 months of research and over a hundred interviews, news journalists Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld (2015a) had their story “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace” published on the cover of the New York Times Sunday edition_._ The story detailed the online-retailer’s quest to perfect the productivity of the white- collar worker and the accompanying mental, physical and emotional toll this goal took on the company’s employees. Kantor and Streitfeld (2015a) reported that Amazon’s workplace culture was so demanding and unrelenting, employees frequently cried at their desk, their promotion
caring Amazonians I work with every day” (as cited in Cook, 2015) and offering his direct email to employees if they had these concerns. As Cook (2015) noted, Bezos and Amazon have been critiqued by the media before (e.g. McClelland, 2012; Soper, 2011), but this is one of the first articles to receive such a swift response from the company – a fact which signals its perception of the story’s saliency for Amazon stakeholders. That same day, CBS This Morning , a broadcast news program brought journalist Jodi Kantor and Jay Carney, Amazon’s Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs on the show to discuss the article. Carney echoed the points of Bezos’s memo, repeating that he (Carney) did not recognize the Amazon described in the article. He argued that Amazon could not be a successful company, recruiting top talent if the events depicted in the article were true, and shared a contrasting story of the company helping an employee whose husband suffered from cancer. He made sure to emphasize Amazon’s success at job creation, and argued that technology employees were in high-demand. If Amazon was truly terrible, Kantor argued, they could easily find work at plenty of other companies. Perhaps this quick response was necessitated by the popularity of the article. Just 17 days after their cover story was published, Kantor and Streitfeld (2015b) reported that millions of people had viewed the article online and 5,800 comments were posted, an all-time record for the Times. This is particularly note-worthy considering that the Times comment section is moderated so that non-topical, and offensive posts are eliminated, as well as comments only featuring a link to different website on the topic (Sullivan, 2015). Even after that process, the article inspired nearly 6,000 comments, in addition to the hundreds of other print and online media commentaries on the subject (Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015b).
The comments section on the original article closed several weeks after publication, but the conversation continued elsewhere. In October of 2015, Carney, sparred with the Times executive editor, Dean Baquet in a series of Medium articles over the veracity and the journalistic ethics of the article (Carney, 2015a; Carney, 2015b; Baquet, 2015). In April of 2016, Jeff Bezos, implicitly invoked the Times article while defending the company’s corporate culture in a letter to investors (Kastrenakes, 2016). The letter didn’t have to spend long defending the company to investors as Amazon posted its fourth straight profitable quarter (Alba, 2016). Although the company, founded in 1995, had been raking in record revenues for a long time, it had always struggled to make a profit, favoring growth and reinvestment instead. The trend of low profits and mediocre reports to Wall Street investors seemed to have ended, as Amazon had doubled its market capitalization to $360 billion in the last year and a half (Kim, 2016). Some economists are even predicting Amazon will soon be the first $1 trillion-dollar business (Kim). The Seattle- based company has thus come a long way from exclusively selling books online; they have slowly, but surely pioneered e-retail, disrupting traditional distribution and retail infrastructures in a growing number of industries (e.g., television and – most recently – grocery stores). Although Amazon had an official and direct response to the Times article, their unofficial reply to the controversy seems to be citing achievement of record high profits, more than at any time in the company’s 19-year history as a public company, assuaging any doubt over the financial impact of the expose. While these financial successes may have been sufficient to make many investors forget once again about workplace culture at the company, it is not enough to turn scholarly inquiry away from the subject. Soaring profits in the face of workplace abuse controversy is yet another symptom of neoliberalism’s exclusive valuing of profit over people,
RQ1: How did media coverage of this story and Amazon’s responses serve to depict labor precarity in relationship to the contemporary organization of high-technology work? RQ2: What discursive strategies do corporations and external stakeholders practice in controversy, in order to establish the legitimacy and authority of their arguments concerning labor precarity and high-technology work? I turn now to discuss the methodological framework I will use to explore these questions.
Organizational Rhetoric, Controversy And Methods So far, we’ve examined the rise of labor precarity, with a particular interest in how these changes have manifested in the high-technology sector. While white-collar technology work is not often a priority of labor activists or scholars, this increasingly large section of the U.S. workforce, once thought to be a beacon of hope and prosperity for well-paying and plentiful domestic careers, deserves critical attention. We can examine labor precarity in high-technology organizations through a rhetorical lens, focusing on a case involving the country’s largest retailer, Amazon. To accomplish this rhetorical analysis, I’ll first review relevant literature on organizational rhetoric and controversy. Next, I will survey my primary texts of analysis, including a comprehensive summary of the Kantor and Streitfield (2015a) article at the center of this project, and detail my methods of analysis. Finally, I will conclude the chapter by previewing the following chapters in this project. Organizational Rhetoric For centuries, rhetoric was known informally as the study of “great men giving great speeches.” It was the study of influencers persuading audiences through public oratory. However, as society evolved, the most influential rhetors of the time changed from individuals to organizations (Conrad, 2011). As Heath (2007) has argued, “organizations have replaced individuals as the key figures in society” (p.42). Aided in part by the ‘cultural turn’ of rhetoric, organizational scholars, no longer constrained by the tactic to study individual rhetors and speeches, began studying the rhetoric of organizations. This area of study moves beyond individual moments, speeches, and people and addresses larger societal trends. As Conrad (2011) explained “studying organizational rhetoric involves analyzing fundamental issues about the
