The Corner Newsletter: September 3, 2020
Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we introduce our new report on Amazon, which reveals how the corporation built a surveillance infrastructure to monitor its workers’ every move, and we announce the Oct. 27 publication of Monopolies Suck, the new book by Open Markets Director of Enforcement Sally Hubbard.
To read previous editions of The Corner, click here.
Groundbreaking Open Markets Report Exposes Amazon’s Omnipresent Surveillance of Its Workers
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of surveillance software by employers, and Amazon is leading this troubling trend. Amazon continuously and pervasively surveils its more than 800,000 workers, and this surveillance harms workers in a variety of ways. Amazon uses surveillance to deter workers from legal efforts to unionize, and to make it easier for the corporation to terminate workers for deviating from metrics the workers don’t even know exist. The surveillance also harms the health and mental well-being of workers. For example, Amazon requires its warehouse workers to use item scanners that count down the number of seconds within which employees must complete their assigned tasks. Amazon’s process creates the psychological effect of a constant “low-gradepanic” to work faster.
To call attention to this vital issue, the Open Markets Institute on Monday released a report titled “Eyes Everywhere: Amazon’s Surveillance Infrastructure and Revitalizing Worker Power.” Our groundbreaking report was covered by Reuters, The New York Times, The Independent, Investing.com,Channel News Asia, Vice, Fortune, The Hill’s Rising, and The National Post.
In our report, we present overwhelming evidence that workers do not have a second of privacy from the moment they walk onto Amazon’s premises. For some employees, Amazon’s surveillance infrastructure is even attached to their bodies, in the form of item scanners. When employees fall behind Amazon’s productivity rate (e.g., packages processed per hour), software in the scanners reprimands the employees who spend too much “time off task.” The reprimands include official warnings and even termination.
As we report, Amazon has set up cameras throughout the warehouses, to monitor employees’ every word and movement. When these cameras capture workers stealing items from a warehouse, Amazon displays the images on giant television screens. The practice publicly shames the people caught stealing and bluntly reminds workers that the company is watching them at all times — and that any deviation from Amazon’s rules will result in severe punishment and humiliation.
Beyond the individual harm that Amazon’s surveillance causes, the corporation’s practices also deter and prevent workers from unionizing. In an exclusive interview with Open Markets, Hibaq Mohamed, an Amazon warehouse worker in Minneapolis, said that Amazon uses its surveillance infrastructure to move around employees whom management suspects of collectively organizing.
Our new report also highlights how Amazon’s surveillance practices embody one of the signature problems of monopoly power: the ability to limit not just the salaries of workers, but also their freedom and privacy. Importantly, the problem is not limited to Amazon. Other dominant corporations, such as Walmart, are adopting similar practices. Walmart recently purchased facial recognition software to identify workers and customers in its stores and monitor their productivity, location, and purchases.
In our report, we present a raft of policy solutions for Congress, state legislators, federal and state agencies, and antitrust enforcers to enact new worker protections and prevent the formation of dominant corporations. Specifically, Congress and state legislators should pass legislation requiring employers to obtain approval for surveillance practices. Federal agencies should enact bright-line merger rules, to limit not just monopolization but concentration of power and control over workers.
Read the full report here.
SALLY HUBBARD’S NEW BOOK:
MONOPOLIES SUCK - 7 Ways Big Corporations Rule Your Life and How to Take Back Control
Simon & Schuster will publish Monopolies Suck by Sally Hubbard on Oct. 27. The book is the first by Hubbard, who is Open Markets’ director of enforcement strategy. Hubbard examines how modern monopolies rob Americans of a healthy food supply, the ability to care for the sick, and a habitable planet, because monopolies use business practices that deplete rather than generate. Monopolists also threaten fair elections, our free press, our privacy, and, ultimately, the American Dream, Hubbard shows. In Monopolies Suck, Hubbard reminds readers that antitrust enforcers already have the tools to dismantle corporate power and that decisive action must be taken before monopolies undermine our economy and democracy for generations to come. In Monopolies Suck, Sally provides an important new view of America’s monopoly crisis and of the political and economic harms of concentrated private power. Pre-order your copy here.
🔊 ANTI-MONOPOLY RISING:
The Athena Coalition, Open Markets Institute, and more than 40 organizations hosted a special open briefing for congressional staff, press, and members of the public on Tuesday to discuss the urgent need to break up Big Tech corporations in order to protect workers, independent businesses, communities, and democracy. Experts and advocates reflected on salient lessons from the House Antitrust Subcommittee’s groundbreaking Big Tech hearing on July 29, and speakers also analyzed the path forward for the broader anti-monopoly movement. (American Economic Liberties Project)
Department of Justice officials and state attorneys general are separately investigating Google for suspected use of unfair and anti-competitive tying arrangements, in which sellers illegally bundle distinct products and exclude rivals. (Bloomberg)
More than 2,000 members of the All India Online Vendors Association sued Amazon in India for anti-competitive and unfair business practices, accusing the corporation of favoring certain bulk retailers who price products below cost in order to drive independent sellers out of the market. (Reuters)
📝 WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO:
Sandeep Vaheesan published an article in Barron’s on how the Epic Games lawsuit against Apple and Google offers a template for antitrust enforcers seeking to discipline other tech monopolists.
Claire Kelloway’s article was quoted in Food Processing. Her article investigated the purchase of a Colorado lamb processing plant by Brazil’s JBS, one of the world’s largest meat corporations.
Barry Lynn was quoted in The New York Times supporting structural breakups of Big Tech and reining in their power. “The world is going to be better off after we break up these companies,” said Lynn.
Sally Hubbard was quoted in Bloomberg Law explaining why drugmaker Teva Pharmaceutical should lose its fight against the Justice Department (DOJ) over the corporation’s price-fixing and market-allocation schemes for generic drugs. “I don’t think it’s a matter of the merits here. I don’t think Teva has an argument that they have a shot at succeeding with,” Hubbard said.
Barry Lynn’s cover story in the new issue of Harper’s, “The Big Tech Extortion Racket,” earned a spot in Ron Charles’ Book Club recommendations in The Washington Post.
Open Markets Institute hosted a virtual conversation, moderated by Barry Lynn, between Zephyr Teachout and David Dayen, each of whom recently released new books on monopoly and antitrust. Teachout’s new book is "Break 'Em Up," and Dayen’s new book is "Monopolized."
Open Markets Institute was mentioned in the San Diego Union-Tribune as a signatory of a joint letter with 20 technology companies, carmakers, and advocacy groups urging the Federal Trade Commission to continue its antitrust fight against Qualcomm’s exclusionary patent licensing practices.
Open Markets Institute was cited in the Harvard Business Review for inspiring action against Big Tech firms’ erosion of data privacy.
Barry Lynn was mentioned in The American Interest as a “leading advocate” for regulation of Big Tech to reduce the industry’s market power.
The Open Markets Institute released a statement pointing out that an article in The New York Times misidentified the causes of a growing book production shortage in the United States. The statement explained that the shortage has been driven by the destructive roll-up of press capacity by private equity firms, as detailed in an Open Markets letter to the Justice Department in 2019.
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📈 VITAL STAT: 5 Million
The number of laptops that school districts across the United States need to combat critical shortages and delays in back-to-school supplies caused by disruptions from concentrated supply chains based in China.
📚 WHAT WE'RE READING:
“What Shall We Do About Self-Preferencing?” (Competition Policy International, Pedro Caro de Sousa): de Sousa argues that digital platforms that engage in the act of self-preferencing — favoring one’s own products or services in a downstream market — can be justifiable at times, but there is potential for harm that goes beyond competition policy.
“How Horizontal Shareholding Harms Our Economy—and Why Antitrust Law Can Fix It.” (Harvard Business Law Review, Einer Elhauge): Elhauge argues that the anti-competitive effects of horizontal shareholding involve more industries than the traditional examples of banking and airlines, and Elhauge builds new legal theory on the Sherman Antitrust Act to address the issue.
BARRY LYNN’S NEW BOOK:
Liberty From All Masters
The New American Autocracy vs. The Will of the People
St. Martins Press will publish Open Markets Executive Director Barry Lynn’s new book, Liberty From All Masters, on September 29. The book is Barry’s first since Cornered, in 2010. In it, he details how Google, Amazon, and Facebook developed the ability to manipulate the flow of news, information, and business in America, and are transforming this power into autocratic systems of control. Barry then details how Americans over the course of two centuries built a “System of Liberty,” and shows how we Americans can put this system to work again today. Pre-order your copy here.
Open Markets Employment Opportunities
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