Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

by Jessica Bruder

Amazon’s treatment of warehouse workers had been making headlines since 2011. That’s when an investigation by the Allentown Morning Call newspaper revealed what were—quite literally—sweatshop conditions. When summer temperatures exceeded 100 degrees inside the company’s Breinigsville, Pennsylvania, warehouse, managers wouldn’t open the loading bay doors for fear of theft. Instead, they hired paramedics to wait outside in ambulances, ready to extract heat-stricken employees on stretchers and in wheelchairs, the investigation found. Workers also said they were pressured to meet ever greater production targets, a strategy colloquially known as “management by stress.” Amazon monitors productivity in real time, analyzing data from networked scanner guns that employees use as they move and sort merchandise. Laura Graham, a CamperForce member who worked as a picker in the Coffeyville, Kansas, warehouse, told me each time she scanned a product, a countdown began on her screen. It indicated how many seconds she had to reach the next item, as if she’d graduated to the next level in a video game. Her progress toward hourly goals was also tracked. When an accidental trip down the wrong aisle left her more than five minutes behind schedule, a supervisor arrived to scold her.