The employee chat app being developed by Amazon bans words such as 'union,' 'slave labor,' and 'wage increase.'
New Amazon Worker Chat App Would Ban Words Like “Union”
https://theintercept.com/2022/04/04/amazon-union-living-wage-restrooms-chat-app/
According to information independently obtained by The Intercept, Amazon is developing a chat app for employees, but in this app words such as 'union' and 'wage increase' that directly lead to the formation of a labor union and 'slave' The use of words such as 'labor,' 'prison,' 'plantation,' and 'toilet' that could lead to potential criticism of Amazon's working conditions is prohibited.
When The Intercept contacted Amazon about this, 'Our team is always thinking of new ways to help employees interact with each other.' 'A particular program hasn't even been approved yet, so it's significant. It may be changed to, or even not started at all. '
According to sources, Amazon convened a high-level meeting in November 2021 to discuss 'plans to create an in-house social media program that allows top executives to recognize employee performance' and develop a chat app for employees. It seems that it has started. 'The main goal of this program was to promote worker well-being and productivity, and to reduce employee turnover,' said Dave Clark, Head of Global Consumer Business at Amazon. The app has a game-based reward system embedded in it, and employees are awarded stars and badges for'activities that add direct business value'. '
Also, at the meeting, it was devised to implement 'automatic fraudulent word monitor' in the application. This constitutes a blacklist that reports to employees the sending of messages containing profane or inappropriate keywords and automatically blocks them. However, apart from profane expressions, words such as 'union,' 'complaint,' 'pay raise,' and 'reward' are included in the blacklist. In addition, it seems that the prohibited words include words such as 'ethics', 'injustice', 'slave', '(slave) master', 'freedom', 'diversity', 'injustice', and 'fairness'.
A document about the chat app developed by Amazon, originally obtained by The Intercept, states that 'free text creates negative emotions between viewers and recipients, which can put the sender of a message at risk. 'We want to focus on limiting the content we can post to prevent negative associate experiences,' he said.
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