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**FEBRUARY 4, 2021**

Meyerson on TAP

Spy on One, Spy on All! A Suggestion for Amazon.

News reports this week have documented that Amazon plans to install
surveillance cameras

in its "last mile" delivery vehicles-a move it has already taken in
its long-haul trucks. The cameras will enable the company to observe its
drivers' every move-literally.

Amazon is no stranger to the dark art of surveilling its workers. A
report

last September from the Open Markets Institute documented management's
electronic (and not just electronic) eyes that followed its warehouse
workers as they scurried among the shelves. Other reporting
,
some of it based on leaked internal documents, has uncovered the
surveillance the company has engaged in to deter unionization and other
worker activism in Europe and the United States.

The company has apparently determined it will keep an Orwellian eye on
its every employee, both on and off the job.

My question is why a select group of more powerful Amazon directors
aren't subject to the same discipline. After all, if a worker takes
too long for a bathroom break, the amount of damage inflicted on the
company isn't likely to significantly depress the value of its shares.
If a director sloughs off on the job, however, the consequences could be
more serious.

I've checked out the company's directors, and there are suspicious
characters. Longtime director Thomas Ryder, who heads Amazon's all
important Audit Committee, was the CEO of the Reader's Digest
Association, and for all we know may sneak in readings from the
magazine's "Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met" when he should be
busy auditing.

At a moment when it is trying to persuade (or, if we may dump the
euphemism, intimidate) thousands of its employees at an Alabama
warehouse to vote No in the upcoming unionization election, you'd
think the company would realize the propaganda value of subjecting the
great as well as the small to its abusive tactics. "Hey," Amazon could
say. "We not only spy on you. We spy on everyone!"

Well, not Jeff, but you get the point.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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