Ultra-wealthy Americans want you to think their philanthropy will change the world. They should just pay their taxes instead.

insider@insider.com (Paul Constant) 

© Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images 

Author Anand Giridharadas says charitable giving is a 'smokescreen' for the ultra-wealthy. 

Paul Constant is a writer at Civic Ventures and cohost of the "Pitchfork Economics" podcast.

In a recent episode, author Anand Giridharadas explained how wealthy Americans use philanthropy to avoid taxation.

He says it's a relatively cheap way the ultra-wealthy can "do bad things in the billions and wipe it out with gifts in the millions."

In this week's episode of "Pitchfork Economics," journalist Anand Giridharadas, author of the excellent book "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World," explains how billionaires use philanthropic giving to whitewash their reputations - and avoid taxation.

"We're living in this time in which you cannot walk down the street in certain ZIP codes of this country without bumping into a plutocrat trying to change the world," Giridharadas said. It seems as though every billionaire in America has at least one nonprofit foundation focusing on one social ill or another.

But aren't these splashy hundred-million-dollar-plus donations a good thing? Aren't these billionaires creating positive change with their charitable donations? Giridharadas argues that the charitable giving is a smokescreen to disguise the fact that the richest humans in the history of world "benefit from a near-monopoly on the fruits of the future" in which they have "essentially rigged the society to function as a casino in which the house - i.e., them - always wins."

"You've got a whole class of people who have cause to be resented," Giridharadas said, "who are, in many cases, manipulating their company books so they don't pay taxes, who are underpaying workers." For those wealthy few, he said, philanthropy is "a relatively cheap, bargain-basement way of changing your name. You can do bad things in the billions and wipe it out with gifts in the millions."

Despite their splashy press releases touting huge donations, the fact is that the super-rich's charitable giving is a drop in the bucket compared to their ever-growing fortunes. Zara Khan points out for Datawrapper, "charitable donations by the richest 20 Americans account for less than 1% of the total wealth of the donors."

If you are an average American taxpayer, the 400 wealthiest families in America now pay a lower tax rate than you. Imagine all the programs and projects we could have built had the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans stayed at 91%, where it was in the US from 1951 to 1964 (PDF), when the economy was growing at its fastest.

That's why "Pitchfork Economics" host Nick Hanauer this week wrote an editorial for the New Republic calling on Congress to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans - including Hanauer.

"It drives me crazy when I hear Democrats say that 'for the sake of the economy' we have to cut back on the $3.5 trillion spending in Biden's Build Back Better legislation, or that we can't possibly raise taxes on the wealthy and huge corporations as much as Biden proposed," Hanauer wrote.

"Those folks have it totally backward," Hanauer continued. "Taxing the rich is the only plan that would increase investment, boost productivity, grow the economy, and create more and better jobs." He's right - raising taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations would pay for the $3.5 trillion in spending over the 10 years of the Build Back Better plan, and the mammoth scope of that legislation, from greening the economy to investing in childcare to increasing educational opportunities for children and adults, would more significantly transform the economy than any plutocratic philanthropy ever could.

That's because there's another benefit to raising taxes on the super-rich: Their money would no longer be hoarded in the kind of offshore accounts that we learned about last week in the bombshell Pandora Papers. Instead, once it was invested in ordinary Americans, that money would circulate through local economies from hand to hand, creating jobs, spurring small business growth, and strengthening local communities through increased consumer demand. It's a much simpler system than elaborately disguising ostentatious wealth through philanthropic giving - and it has the added benefit of being better for everyone in the long haul.

Migrants' hopes dashed by surprise deportation to Haiti from U.S. border


FILE PHOTO: Haitian migrants board a plane for a voluntary repatriation flight from Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico to the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince

Daina Beth Solomon
Fri, October 8, 2021


By Daina Beth Solomon

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Haitian migrant Nikel Norassaint did not know where he was headed when Mexican migration officials put him on a flight last week in the southeastern city of Villahermosa, days after they had detained him near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The sea below was his only clue until the plane touched down in Port-au-Prince a few hours later, his first time in the country in five years.


"I said, 'Wow, I'm in Haiti,'" Norassaint, 49, recalled. "My heart almost stopped."

Norassaint, who has lived abroad for two decades, and another Haitian migrant on the flight said they were stunned to be returned to their homeland without warning.

They joined some 7,000 people expelled to Haiti from the United States after more than double that number amassed last month at an encampment in Del Rio, Texas on the Mexican border. Mexico has sent 200 people total back to Haiti as well.

Migrant advocacy groups and even a former U.S. special envoy to Haiti https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/haitian-migrants-face-crucial-choices-expulsion-flights-ramp-up-2021-09-23 have condemned deportations to the Caribbean country beset by poverty and violence as inhumane, casting doubt on pledges from both the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to aid struggling migrants.

Norassaint said he had been hopeful that Biden, who had advocated for a "humane" immigration policy, had "opened the door" for migrants when he crossed into Del Rio to seek entry to the United States.

But he decamped to Mexico once word began to spread of U.S. deportations. Migration officials detained him in the city of Ciudad Acuna opposite Del Rio and then bused him 930 miles (1,500 km) south to Villahermosa.

The Mexican government's National Migration Institute (INM) had described the Sept. 29 flight to Port-au-Prince with 70 migrants on board as "voluntary assisted return."

But for Norassaint, who lived in the Dominican Republic for 16 years before resettling in Chile in 2018, nothing about going back to Haiti was a matter of choice.

"There's no work, it's unsafe, there was an earthquake, many people are dead," he said, noting even President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in July.

When asked about Norassaint's experience, Mexico's migration institute said it followed legal administrative protocol to return people to Haiti.

MIGRATION POLICY OF 'EUPHEMISMS'

Jose Miguel Vivanco, head of Human Rights Watch in the Americas, said in an opinion article on Sunday that the group has documented past instances of Mexican officials pressuring migrants to agree to "voluntary" returns, and described the country's migration policy as "riddled with euphemisms."

The migration institute sent another 130 migrants back to Haiti https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexico-sends-another-130-migrants-haiti-by-plane-2021-10-06 by plane on Wednesday; that flight was not labeled "voluntary." A video of migrants boarding the plane, filmed by a migrant rights activist and posted on social media, showed one man jumping from the stairs and dashing across the tarmac.

Norassaint is now staying with family in the coastal city of Miragoane and asking relatives in the United States to send money because he cannot withdraw funds from his Chilean bank account.

His 12-year-old daughter and 17-year-old stepson are still in Mexico with their mother.

Another man on the flight, Alfred, also mourned his surprise deportation to Haiti after he left the country in 2009 to live in the Dominican Republic, and then Chile.

He hoped to reach the United States to escape worsening discrimination in Chile, but hung back in Mexico to avoid deportation.

Officials detained Alfred, who requested anonymity because of Haiti's precarious security situation, as he was leaving his hotel in Ciudad Acuna to buy food and supplies for his wife, who is two months pregnant.

Alfred had made it to Mexico by following tips in a WhatsApp group while his wife took a plane so she would not need to risk her life crossing the jungle between Colombia and Panama.

During the week in migration detention, he was allowed to make one brief call to his wife, who said she was making her way to the northern border city of Tijuana.

"I'm about to have a heart attack, thinking I left my wife behind," Alfred said. "We've been together for ten years. Look where she is now, and I'm here."

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Aurora Ellis)



Former U.S. envoy to Haiti tells Congress: ‘No one asked me about the deportations’



Jacqueline Charles, Michael Wilner
Fri, October 8, 2021

When the Biden administration last month decided to deport thousands of Haitian migrants living underneath a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, along the U.S.-Mexico border, the man who was supposed to be in charge of all U.S. things related to Haiti was not even consulted.

“No one asked me about the deportations. I found out about it on the news just like the rest of us,” former U.S. special envoy Daniel Foote told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee during a public briefing Thursday. “I thought I was the special envoy, so maybe when we’re making policy decisions, someone would come to me and say ‘Is this good? Is this bad?’ But it didn’t happen.“

Foote, who was appointed to the role after pressure from Congress and after the shocking July 7 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, resigned last month after only two months on the job. In his strongly worded resignation letter, he harshly criticized what he called the United States’ “inhumane” treatment of Haitian migrants and cited “irreconcilable policy differences” with the Biden administration on Haiti.


House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks later told the Miami Herald that he found it “disconcerting” that the envoy he and 67 others first pushed for in April was blindsided. On Thursday, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, called for “the immediate appointment of a new Special Envoy for Haiti as the country reels from natural disaster, gang violence, COVID-19, and political crisis in the wake of the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.”

Menendez made the request in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He and 14 other Senate Democrats expressed their disappointment over the “United States’ inhumane treatment of Haitian migrants at the southern border” and urged the administration to support long-term stability in Haiti. The State Department had previously said it did not think another special envoy for Haiti is needed.

Foote’s resignation has set off a debate over the U.S. policy toward Haiti, and has added pressure on the Biden administration, which was already facing questions over its approach to a series of crises in the volatile Caribbean country.

Foote has accused the U.S. and international community of propping up Prime Minister Ariel Henry and told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that absent U.S. support for Henry, he believes he would not survive.

“I think the risk of changing governments in a country like Haiti makes us nervous,” Foote said.

In a call with reporters Thursday before Foote’s briefing with lawmakers, a senior administration official said the administration was trying to avoid the impression that it was putting its “thumbs on the scale” in favor of one political figure over another.

“The situation with regard to the elections, the political dynamics and the security situation are all intertwined, and so we see our role as one where we’re going to be taking the long view on Haiti, and figuring out how we can be most effective at supporting Haitian-led solutions to Haiti’s challenges,” the senior official said.

“What that means on the political side is not putting our thumbs on the scale on the side of any one particular actor,” the official continued, “but rather being seen as supporting this broad dialogue while we engage with the interim prime minister, Ariel Henry, on delivering vaccines, making sure we’re providing robust support for those who are being repatriated.”

While pressure continued to build Thursday for the administration to stop its support for Henry, the Haitian leader has also been encouraged by senior Biden administration officials and others in the international community to continue to pursue a political accord he has forged with the goal of changing his government and holding elections and a vote on a new constitution next year.

However, his appointment has been controversial. Henry was tapped by Moïse just days before his death, but had not yet been officially installed, following pressure on Moïse by the international community to appoint a new prime minister who could lead a new consensus government that could take Haiti to presidential and long overdue legislative elections.

A 71-year-old neurosurgeon, Henry previously served in the cabinets of former president René Préval and Michel Martelly, and in 2004 was among a council of advisers who chose the prime minister to lead Haiti through a two-year transition after the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Though Henry has said he has no intentions on holding onto power, he remains a target of both those loyal to Moïse, who are opposed to his outreach to opposition groups, and members of civil society pushing their own governance accord.

“The reality is our current policy toward Haiti is a holdover from the previous administration and is in desperate need of fresh faces and perspectives,” Meeks, a New York Democrat, said at the start of the meeting. “I am concerned that using business-as-usual diplomacy is counterproductive in a country which is demanding closer ties and an ear toward the recommendation of civil society and grassroots groups.”

He said the plan is to continue talking and he will take back what they have learned to the Biden administration.

“We want to make sure there is an open dialogue where we are listening to the Haitian people,” Meeks said. “We are not picking winners and losers. We are creating an atmosphere so that the Haitian people can pick their own.”

At the time of Foote’s resignation, State Department spokesman Ned Price said that some of Foote’s policy proposals on Haiti “were determined to be harmful to our commitment to the promotion of democracy in Haiti and were rejected during the policy process.”

The senior official, in his call with reporters, said the Biden administration first learned of the outgoing envoy’s concerns with the handling of the crisis in Del Rio from his resignation letter. The White House has said in the days since his resignation that border policy was not in Foote’s portfolio.

“I’m not going to get into the particulars,” the official said. “We ran a very robust process, so every issue he put on the table was considered at my level, at the deputies’ level and the principals’ level to make sure that we came out with the best policy outcomes and the best recommendations possible for the president.”

During the 90-minute virtual public briefing before the House committee Thursday, Democratic and Republican lawmakers asked Foote about his resignation, his assessments of Haiti and U.S. policy, and why the ongoing deportations of Haitians forced his decision to leave the job. They also wanted to know more about his security concerns, which he cited as not just a factor in Haiti’s lack of readiness to hold elections but the repatriations of migrants.

“Deportation back to Haiti is not the answer right now,” Foote said. “Haiti is too dangerous; our own diplomats cannot leave our compound in Port-au-Prince without armed guards. Deportation in the short term is not going to make Haiti more stable. In fact it’s going to make it worse.”

The repatriations carry strong implications for Haiti as it is still reeling from the assassination of the president, followed by a deadly magnitude 7.2 earthquake a month later in the midst of spiraling gang violence. Committee members said the heartbreaking repatriations from Del Rio, on top of the president’s murder and an earthquake in August, are only exacerbating Haiti’s crises.

Haiti, Foote said, needs assistance with security. While Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman had told the McClatchy Washington Bureau that Foote wanted to send U.S. troops to Haiti, he told committee members that his recommendation was for the Haiti National Police to establish an anti-gang task force with several components, including commandos and intelligence.

“The gangs run Port-au-Prince. It is in their control, it is in their hands; they are better equipped and better armed than the police. They control the main highways and transit routes not only across Port-au-Prince but across the country and they are now moving out of the slum areas and have been in areas of Petionville where there has never been gang violence,” Foote said. “There were 20 kidnappings last Saturday, in one day in Port-au-Prince.”

Foote, who met only once with Henry, according to Haitian government sources, made no secret of where he stood: On the side of civil society, which has forged one of the three political accords circulating on moving the country forward.

Among the provisions Foote said he supports is banning any senior member of the current regime from running in the next elections.

“I don’t have anything personal against Dr. Henry,” Foote said, adding that there is consensus in Haiti that “the ruling party, PHTK, put Haiti where it is today and probably doesn’t deserve to be part of the solution.”

PHTK was founded by Martelly, a musician-turned-president, who later handpicked Moïse to be his successor.

“We sort of chose Martelly because there was a lot of controversy over runoffs back then in 2011, and the same thing with Moïse. We can’t do that again. We need to let the Haitians select their own presidents,” Foote said.

“Some of the previous presidents and prime ministers in Haiti, particularly in recent administrations, have had their bite at the apples and Haiti probably doesn’t need them back again,” Foote added without naming names, but referring to Martelly and one of his prime ministers, Laurent Lamothe. “Haiti doesn’t need the same old politicians, the ones that are in Pandora Papers, that’s corrupt. They need people that are looking for Haiti’s best interests and the Haitian people.”

America's unemployed are sending a message: They'll go back to work when they feel safe - and well compensated



Heather Long
Fri, October 8, 2021

The anemic September employment report, with only 194,000 jobs added, illustrates the extent to which the recovery stalled as coronavirus cases surged last month, but it also signals something deeper: America's unemployed are still struggling with child-care and health issues, and they are reluctant to return to jobs they see as unsafe or undercompensated.

For months, economists predicted a surge in hiring in September as unemployment benefits expired for millions of workers and schools reopened across the country. Instead, last month marked the weakest hiring this year, and an alarming number of women had to stop working again to deal with unstable school and child-care situations.

The numbers are striking: 309,000 women over age 20 dropped out of the labor force in September, meaning they quit work or halted their job searches. In contrast, 182,000 men joined the labor force, Labor Department data showed.

The simplest explanation for the mediocre jobs gains in September is the rapidly spreading delta variant of the coronavirus. It zapped a lot of momentum from the recovery as people in many parts of the country became more hesitant to eat out and travel. A mere 2,100 jobs were added in hotels and just 29,000 in restaurants.

The coronavirus surge also torpedoed the reopening of public schools and the return to in-person learning. Schools repeatedly faced outbreaks and concerns from staff members, including many bus drivers, who were hesitant to go back to driving vehicles teeming with children, as those under 12 can't be vaccinated.

"It's been so unpredictable. In-person school has not been reliable, and working moms had to balance that with trying to have a career," said Alicia Sasser Modestino, an economics professor at Northeastern University. "My 9-year-old woke up with sniffles and could not go to school today. I am living this in real time."

The September jobs report offered fresh evidence contradicting Republicans who have said that generous unemployment aid has been keeping people away from the workforce. Millions of people lost all aid or had it significantly scaled back at the start of September. But there was not an immediate wave of workers returning to jobs.

The key takeaway from the jobs report is that this is an uneven and bumpy recovery. The reason the United States has roughly 11 million job openings and 7.7 million unemployed is more complex than many are willing to admit.

The coronavirus continues to be a major factor in people's hesitancy to return to work, but there is something deeper going on in 2021. Workers, especially low-wage workers, are revolting against years of poor pay and stressful conditions. It remains unclear how the Great Reassessment of work will play out going forward. For now, people are still hesitant to take the first jobs available to them, if they don't believe they're good jobs. And they are not reluctant to quit a situation they don't like.

"The big news out of the jobs report was the delta variant slowed things down. That disproportionately hit lower-wage workers," said University of Michigan economist Betsey Stevenson. "But people are also thinking they can afford [to] wait for a better job - or a safe job - to come along."

For those looking for silver linings in the report, the most obvious is that the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 4.8% in September - the lowest since the pandemic hit. It marks a stunning rebound in just a year and a half from April 2020, when the official unemployment rate hit 14.7% (and it was probably even higher since the Census Bureau struggled to do its normal interviews that month).

It took nearly seven years for unemployment to drop this low after the Great Recession. Many credit the swift government response this time around, including trillions in aid for American households and businesses, for keeping people from falling into poverty and helping drive a swifter rebound.

But the unemployment rate declined for the wrong reason: The labor force got smaller in September. Fewer people, especially women, were looking for work as they continued to struggle with child care and schooling uncertainty. More than 5 million Americans have stopped looking for work during this crisis. A big question remains: Will they return?

Bahar Cetinsoy is among those millions. She was a substitute teacher in New York City before the pandemic hit. She and her husband relocated to College Park, Md., when he got another job offer. Cetinsoy is trying to get certified to teach in her new state and can't do much work in her field without that. She's also taking care of their young son, who was born during the pandemic.

"Child care is a big factor. It's expensive. If I get a part-time teaching job, I would pay more for child care than I would be making," she said. "I have never been unemployed for this long."

The optimistic view on Wall Street is that September was just another blip. There was a big decline in public education jobs, which was unusual and probably a result of many schools hiring over the summer instead of waiting until September. Excluding government and public education jobs, private-sector hiring rose 317,000 last month.

September saw modest job gains in nearly every sector outside of government. There were 74,000 hospitality jobs added, 60,000 business service jobs added, 56,000 retail jobs, 47,000 warehouse and transportation jobs, and 26,000 manufacturing jobs.

Even more encouraging is that coronavirus cases appear to be subsiding and vaccines could be available for children soon. This is driving renewed hope that hiring will pick up during the rest of the year and into 2022.

"The runway is cleared for a fall/winter jobs boom. I don't know if it starts this month or next, but I believe it's coming," tweeted Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork, a jobs site.

But forecasters have repeatedly been too optimistic this year. The reality is that people continue to feel unable to return to work. For some, ongoing child-care or eldercare issues are holding them back. For others, it's concerns about being in a job with heavy exposure to the coronavirus - or one where they would repeatedly encounter customers who don't take precautions like mask-wearing and vaccinations. Some of this may improve in the coming months, but many government and business leaders have underestimated how long the deadly virus would stick around.

Beyond the virus, there is a deeper question of what jobs - and pay - people are willing to come back for. Hourly wages continued to rise in September as many businesses increased pay to try to attract workers, but the wage gains have almost entirely been eaten up by higher inflation this year.

There's also a clear divergence in how many college-educated, white-collar workers view this economy and how non-college-educated workers see it.

Employment in September grew by about 350,000 among people with a college degree or at least some college education. In contrast, employment declined by more than 430,000 among Americans with a high school degree or less.

"The labor market isn't working at the bottom," said Stevenson, the University of Michigan economist.

For now, many working-class Americans have some savings left from their stimulus checks and unemployment aid, and they often supplement it by taking on gig jobs like driving for Uber Eats. This gives them more of a cushion to wait for the right job to come along.

ONTARIO

Parents of high school students started a petition to remove a principal who loves classic heavy metal band Iron Maiden

Sarah Al-Arshani

Fri, October 8, 2021, 

Iron Maiden members Adrian Smith, Nicko McBrain, Bruce Dickinson, Steve Harris, Dave Murray, backstage in 1985. Paul Natkin/Getty Images

• A Canadian high school principal loves Iron Maiden and posts about the band on social media.

• Parents started a petition to transfer Eden High School Principal Sharon Burns.

• They said it was inappropriate for her to post a drawing that featured the symbol "666."

Parents of high school students in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada have started a petition to remove a school official because of the classic heavy metal band Iron Maiden.

Close to 400 people have signed the Change.org petition to transfer Eden High School Principal Sharon Burns.

IHeartRadio reported that the petition was started by Debbi Lynn.

"As concerned parents with impressionable children at Eden High School in St. Catharines, Ontario, we are deeply disturbed that the principal assigned to the school blatantly showed Satanic symbols and her allegiance to Satanic practices on her public social media platforms where all the students can see them under @edenprincipal (not her personal account)," the petition said.

On Friday, an update on the petition said they didn't want to remove Burns because of her love for Iron Maiden but because of "openly displaying her OWN handmade sign with the 666 clearly displayed on it."

The number 666 is used to represent the devil, antichrist, or evil.

Iron Maiden was formed in 1975 in East London, England, and grew popular in the early 1980s with several albums going platinum or gold including "The Number of the Beast" in 1982 and "Piece of Mind" in 1983. The group is still touring.

Burns's Twitter bio identifies her as "Principal at Eden High School. Growth Mindset Practitioner. Fueled by metal & ska. & chickens."

A petition in support of Burns had more than 10,000 supporters by Friday night.

"It is ridiculous that a couple of parents only judge her role as a principal only based on an instagram post. (About liking the band Iron Maiden. That's it.) Eden High School is a public school. Not a Christian school. If you somehow don't like the principal of your child, grandchild, relative etc.'s school, then send them to another one," it said.

The incident is reminiscent of the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s, when conspiracy theorists claimed satanic cults were abusing children, NPR reported.

Vox reported that paranoia grew in the 1980s as many faced anxieties over changing family structures, the need for childcare, and an increase in attention to kidnapping as faces of victims began to be placed on milk cartons.

At the same time, Vox reported that Christian fundamentalism was growing, and so were messages fighting against things relating to spirits. Anti-occult crusader Pat Pulling, for example, said Dungeons & Dragons, a fantasy tabletop role-playing game, caused her daughter's suicide and labeled the game as dangerous to children.

Vice reported the fear also led to certain types of music being seen as the "work of Satan," especially heavy metal.

Eden High School, Burns, and Iron Maiden did not respond to Insider's request for comment at the time of publication.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION

 

The Devil Has All the Best Tunes

You may have heard that A. P. Carter could play the fiddle, but refused to do so on record because it was “the devil’s box.” And just about everyone knows Charlie Daniel’s 1979 hit song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” about a demonic fiddling contest. But here’s the question: Out of all the instruments, why is the devil so taken with the fiddle? Why not the accordion? The saxophone? I mean, surely the kazoo was born from hellfire, right?

This fiddle from our collection looks pretty free of fire and brimstone… © Birthplace of Country Music; Photographer: Haley Hensley. Gift of Ruth Roe

Where there is fiddle music, though, there is often dancing, and where there is dancing, the devil is surely at play. I have stories of this in my own family – my grandmother’s Uncle Willard was very musical, but Grandma and her sisters would only dance to his music when their very religious Aunt Eugie wasn’t around to see them. The link between dancing and the devil is an old one in fact. Way back in the 4th century, St. John Chrysotom said that “where dance is, there is the devil.” Countless preachers over the centuries have espoused the same.

While the fiddle and its link to dancing was seen by many as the devil at play, the devil’s prowess with a fiddle and bow also brought inspiration. In the early 18th century, the Italian composer and violinist Giuseppe Tartini claimed that his most famous work, the “Devil’s Trill Sonata,” was delivered to him by the devil in a dream. This, of course, led to some imaginative depictions of what that might have looked like…

Illustration of the legend behind Guiseppe Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill Sonata.” Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons

Scotland’s favorite poet, Robert Burns, wrote “The Deil’s Awa Wi’ The Excise Man” a few decades later, in which the devil fiddles into town and dances off with the tax collector. The townsfolk react thusly:

We’ll mak our maut, and we’ll brew our drink,

We’ll laugh, sing, and rejoice, man,

And mony braw thanks to the meikle black deil,

That danc’d awa wi’ th’ Exciseman.

In case your Scots dialect is a bit rusty…basically everyone extends their grateful thanks to the devil, for with the tax man gone, they can booze it up all they want and have a big time!

With that rollicking party in mind, here are a handful of the most devilish tunes I know:

“The Devil’s Dream”

“The Devil’s Dream” is a standard Appalachian fiddle tune. Laura Ingalls Wilder remembers hearing this tune as a child in the 1870s, so it’s probably safe to assume that it was also a familiar one to fiddlers in our region at the time of the Bristol Sessions. It originated in Scotland as “The De’l Among the Tailors,” and it was also noted in an English folk tale from the early 1800s. It is played here by the Whitetop Mountain Band (featuring Radio Bristol DJ Martha Spencer and family).

 

Laura Ingalls Wilder remembers her Pa playing “The Devil’s Dream” in Little House in the Big Woods. Photograph courtesy of Emily Robinson

“Did You Ever See the Devil, Uncle Joe?”

“Did You Ever See the Devil, Uncle Joe?” is another good fiddle tune. Fiddlin’ Cowan Powers and his family, who play it here, were the first family string band to record commercially…three years before the 1927 Bristol Sessions! I learned this tune as “Hop High Ladies,” and some may know it as “Miss MacLeod’s reel” – another import from the British Isles. Click on this link for an extra treat: Pipe Major Willie Ross playing both of these tunes in the early 20th century!

“Never Let the Devil Get the Upper Hand”

Speaking of the 1927 Bristol Sessions, here’s another devil-fueled tune recorded a decade later by Bristol Sessions artists The Carter Family: “Never Let the Devil Get the Upper Hand” – which just seems like good all-round advice! Spoiler alert, however: the devil DOES get the upper hand of the young man in this song and convinces him to murder his lover. This story might sound familiar if you’ve ever heard the old murder ballad “Knoxville Girl.” It’s basically the same tale, though the latter adds a lot more gruesome detail.

“The Old Lady & the Devil”

In contrast, a woman gets the upper hand of Old Scratch – and her husband! – in “The Old Lady & the Devil,” recorded by Johnson City Sessions artists Bill & Bell Reed. In this tune, a farmer happily lets the devil carry off his wife, but she raises so much hell in Hell that the devil brings her back home again. Dave Rawlings included a fantastic version of this song on his 2017 album Poor David’s Almanack… though he shortens the chorus and leaves out the bit where the woman whacks her husband with the dasher from the butter churn.

That gives you just a few of the devilish tunes out there, but I hope the music and the links between the devil and the much-loved fiddle get you in the mood for a very Happy Halloween!

Posted in History, Museum, Music & Songs

Royal Mail Buys Canadian Trucking Firm to Expand GLS Arm

Anthony Palazzo
Fri, October 8, 2021,


(Bloomberg) -- Royal Mail Plc agreed to purchase Canada’s Mid-Nite Sun Transportation Ltd. for C$360 million ($287 million) to expand in North America.

The acquisition will add to earnings in the current fiscal year, Royal Mail said Friday in a statement. Mid-Nite Sun will become part of London-based Royal Mail’s GLS international freight and parcel arm, extending its reach in Canada.

Royal Mail, established by Henry VIII in the 16th century, is tapping into a market with about 5% annual growth amid a worldwide boom in online shopping. The deal allows family-owned Mid-Nite Sun, which operates as Rosenau Transport, to add parcel delivery to its main freight business. The Rosenau network will also tie into existing GLS routes on the U.S. west coast, extending its cross-border capacity.

Shares of Royal Mail advanced 0.8% to 416.9 pence as of 8:14 a.m. in London. The stock is up 23% this year amid a turnaround effort and higher demand for home delivery.

Rosenau Transport posted revenue of C$175.0 million and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of C$41.6 million in the 12 months through August. It has 24 owned facilities throughout four Canadian provinces.

Royal Mail said it expects the purchase to close on Dec. 1, subject to regulatory approval. It will be funded by cash and debt.

U.K. Job Recruiters See Strongest Wage Growth in 24 Years

Reed Landber

U.K. wage growth rose at its strongest pace on record in a survey of job recruiters, indicating strains from a shortage of workers are persisting.

The findings from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation and KPMG will add to inflationary pressures that are already ringing alarm bells at the Bank of England. They also indicates difficulty moving people off of furlough and into work following the pandemic, an issue the REC said government should address with more training programs.

Starting salaries for permanent workers rose at the strongest pace in 24 years of data collection in September, according to the REC survey released Friday. At the same time, the pool of available workers fell at near the sharpest rate on record.

“While higher salaries are good for job seekers, wage growth alone is unlikely to help sustain the economic recovery,” said Claire Warnes, head of education, skills and productivity at KPMG. “Many do not have the right skills to transfer to the sectors with most demand.”

The survey of 400 recruitment and employment consultants also showed:

Rising wages were seen in a diverse range of roles from logistics and food processing to white collar professions

Hiring activity rose sharply in September, slightly below the record rate in August

Temporary staff billing fell to the lowest in five months to a level that remained historically strong

Factors including “fewer EU workers and a lack of confidence among employees to switch roles due to the pandemic” all contributed to the decline in candidate numbers

Satellite captures rare weather phenomenon following volcanic eruption

By Maura Kelly, AccuWeather, Accuweather.com



A bullseye-shaped cloud was the product of a rising column of superheated ash and gases known as the eruption column on October 1 as part of the Cumbre Vieja volcano eruption on La Palma, one of the Canary Islands. Photo courtesy of NASA

Oct. 9 (UPI) -- The Cumbre Vieja volcano, located on the Spanish island of La Palma, has been erupting since the middle of September.

In addition to destructive lava flows and airport closures, the volcano produced a mesmerizing cloud formation during its eruption Monday.

On Thursday, the La Palma airport was closed for the second time in about two weeks as ash and dust accumulated on the runway.

The latest eruption forced the air above the volcano upwards. This was followed by circular ripples spreading out from the volcano, which could be seen on satellite and was caught on video by bystanders.

Meteorologists have given this weather phenomenon a name: gravity waves.

AccuWeather meteorologist Renee Duff explains that gravity waves occur when air is displaced from a calm state.

"As this air is pushed upward, it wants to sink back down in order to remain in a state of equilibrium," stated Duff. "It may take many up and down waves for this state to be reached."

In this case, the waves were made visible by clouds forming, as the air rose and became moist, creating the repeating pattern, like seeing the ripples in the water after dropping a stone in a pond.

Volcanic eruptions aren't the only mechanism that can create gravity waves.

"In the atmosphere, the 'stone' disrupting otherwise calm or stable conditions can be a severe thunderstorm, winds blowing over mountains or cold fronts," Duff said.

The gravity waves satellite photo wasn't the only impressive picture taken of the volcano from above. Planet Labs, Inc., which operates the largest earth observation fleet of imaging satellites, took a stunning closeup of the same day, in which not only the eruption is visible but also the lava which reached the coast last week.

Thousands of residents have been evacuated in the Canary Islands, located off the northwestern coast of Africa, since the Cumbre Vieja volcano began erupting Sept. 19. Hundreds of buildings and farms have been destroyed by rounds of lava, but one "miracle house" survived. The eruption came with dramatic footage of lava devouring a pool, filmed via drone.

On Saturday morning, the northern face of the volcano partially collapsed.

Volcano island flights resume after ash closed airport

Issued on: 09/10/2021 -

Two new lava flows emerged from the Cumbre Vieja volcano on Saturday

 Luismi Ortiz UME/AFP


Madrid (AFP)

Flights to and from La Palma in Spain's Canary Islands resumed Saturday after the airport reopened following a 48-hour closure due to volcanic ash, airlines and the airport authority said.

Clouds of thick ash from the volcano had shuttered the airport on Thursday morning for the second time since the September 19 eruption on La Palma, one of the Spanish islands off the northwestern coast of Morocco.

"La Palma airport is back in operation," Spain's AENA airport authority tweeted, with local Canaries airline Binter confirming it had resumed flights several hours later.

"Binter has resumed its flight schedule with the island of La Palma following an improvement in weather conditions and the ash cloud," an airline statement said.

Thick ash had forced the airport to close down on September 25 but although it reopened 24 hours later, it was three days before flights resumed.

It has been almost three weeks since La Cumbre Vieja began erupting, forcing 6,000 people from their homes as the lava scorched its way across 1,200 acres of land.

Earlier on Saturday, part of the volcano's cone collapsed, sending new rivers of lava pouring down the slopes towards an industrial zone.

"It seems part of the cone has collapsed... giving way to two different lava flows," volcanologist Stavros Meletlidis of Spain's National Geographic Institute told RNE radio.

He said one had opened a new path, while the other was following the path of an earlier flow "but with a higher volume of lava, looking like it will overspill the old flow at some point."

Miguel Ángel Morcuende, technical head of the Pevolca volcanic emergency committee said they were concerned about one of the flows that was approaching the Callejón de la Gata industrial estate, which includes warehouses and businesses.

"There is a large amount of lava there," he told reporters.

- Lava delta at risk of collapse -

Experts also said there was a risk that the lava delta, now stretching 80 acres (32 hectares) into the sea, could collapse as it reached the outer limits of the island's coastal shelf.

"Having reached the limit of the coastal shelf, if it continues to advance, its crust could collapse which could cause the abrupt release of gases, magmatic explosions and the generation of waves," said María José Blanco, the IGN's director in the Canary Islands, speaking at the same news briefing.

A costal or insular shelf is the underwater landmass surrounding an island, which extends from the shore to a depth of about 100 fathoms (about 180 metres or 600 feet) after which there is a sudden steep descent.

According to the latest snapshot from the EU's Copernicus satellite -- taken before the overnight events -- the lava had covered almost 1,200 acres (480.5 hectares) of land and destroyed 1,149 properties.

It has also destroyed huge swathes of banana plantations -- the chief cash crop on La Palma.

"New lava flows have mainly damaged agricultural areas now totalling 120 hectares of crops (300 acres), half of them bananas," Pevolca said on Friday.

Dozens more earthquakes took place overnight, including one with a magnitude of 4.3, the IGN said on Twitter.

© 2021 AFP

Amazon Delivery Partners DRIVERS 

Rage Against the Machines: 

‘We Were Treated Like Robots’

LONG READ 

Spencer Soper
Thu., October 7, 2021,

(Bloomberg) -- Three years ago, Amazon.com Inc. issued an invitation that seemed too good to pass up: Start your own company and earn as much as $300,000 a year delivering packages for the world’s largest online retailer.

The offer had strong appeal for would-be entrepreneurs. With an upfront investment of as little as $10,000, these new “delivery service partners” could have a fleet on the road in weeks. Amazon pledged to use its negotiating power to help the fledgling companies get better deals on vehicle insurance, classified ads and leases for its signature blue vans. Tens of thousands of people applied, eager to draft off of Amazon’s seemingly unstoppable growth. Today some 2,500 of these small businesses—captained by military vets, construction contractors, retired college professors—employ more than 150,000 drivers in the U.S. and around the world.

Ted Johnson was a typical recruit. He and his wife, Karen, moved from Illinois to New Hampshire, leased 80 vans and hired 160 drivers. A military veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Johnson was resourceful. He translated Amazon’s training materials into Spanish and hired non-English speakers to help address a labor shortage if Amazon was overwhelmed by demand. When his drivers had downtime, he paid them to make deliveries for a local food bank. Amazon was so impressed it sent him cameras to make a documentary about being a delivery partner.

But even as he congratulated himself on finding a second act he could call his own, Johnson, 56, was constantly torn between making money, meeting Amazon’s demands and treating his workers fairly. Ultimately, he was forced to shutter the business at a loss, the casualty of a system that Johnson said imposes unrealistic demands on the drivers who play a critical role in delivering packages to customers around the U.S.

Johnson blames the machines and algorithms that manage the operation and ensure delivery service partners hit their marks. Video cameras, telematics devices and smartphone apps monitor drivers’ every move. Software dictates how many packages a driver should be able to deliver in a 10-hour shift, a number that keeps creeping up and can be difficult to meet. The system is designed to maximize efficiency and discourage hazardous behavior, such as texting while driving. But the algorithms often get things wrong, several delivery owners said, dinging drivers for offenses they didn’t commit. These demerits affect the report cards the delivery contractors receive each week. The lower the score, the less Amazon pays them.

Bloomberg interviewed 15 delivery partners and two lawyers representing them in disputes with Amazon. Most spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the company, and almost all corroborated Johnson’s account of unrealistic delivery expectations, buggy software and a dismissive attitude toward their concerns. The working conditions are so tough and unforgiving, they say, that their drivers have been known to abandon their package-laden vans on the first day of work and disappear.

“We were treated like robots,” Johnson said. “They’re so data-driven they don’t know how to treat people with dignity and respect.”

Amazon uses machines to oversee much of its global operation, including the online marketplace, fulfillment centers and its Flex network of gig delivery drivers. The company argues that automating these businesses is the only way it can manage an enterprise of such daunting scale and complexity. But if error-prone algorithms have marginal consequences for Amazon, they can be catastrophic for a small business owner who suddenly sees his or her income reduced or cut off entirely. Amazon is willing to accept a certain amount of collateral damage. After all, there are always new recruits ready to take the place of those who don’t measure up.

A few weeks ago, the Seattle-based company cut loose about 100 delivery partners, according to people familiar with the situation. Online forums where owners congregate erupted with anger and fear. Some delivery firms wondered how many infractions they were away from their own curtphone call telling them they’d been terminated. Others discussed ways of persuading Amazon to take their concerns more seriously. That seems unrealistic. In a message sent last month and reviewed by Bloomberg, an executive warned delivery contractors that, with the holiday season looming, drivers would be expected to handle more packages than ever.

In a statement, Amazon spokeswoman Alexandra Miller said: “As we grow, we don’t always get it right, and we are committed to seeking feedback to continue improving the DSP and driver experience. This year, we made more investments than ever before in new technology, process improvements and rate increases for the DSP program—and much of the changes we made were based on the feedback and input from partners. The majority of DSPs consistently out-pace our marketed profit expectations for the program, and this year we invested $700 million to support DSP rate increases, sign-on and retention bonuses and recruiting costs.” About 90% of Amazon delivery drivers complete their routes within the designated time and the average route has about 250 packages, according to Amazon.

Not all delivery firm owners are dissatisfied. Franco Ramos, introduced to Bloomberg by Amazon, started a delivery business three years ago in Denver, following a career in management consulting. Ramos, 48, said the surveillance system isn’t perfect but that the mistakes are negligible. Profits, he said, have exceeded Amazon's projections of as much as $300,000 a year.

“This has been life-changing and I’ve made a shit-ton of money,” said Ramos, who employs about 60 drivers and plans to hire an additional 30 for the holidays. “This is not a difficult business. You don’t even need a sales team. There are just packages, and you deliver them.”

Amazon unveiled the delivery partner program in 2018 to help reduce its reliance on United Parcel Service Inc. and the U.S. Postal Service. Since then, the operation has helped the company weather the pandemic and more than double revenue to a projected $476 billion this year. Maintaining a healthy system of independent delivery contractors will be critical to helping Amazon manage costs and fulfill its commitment to speedy delivery. The program was loosely modeled on FedEx Corp.’s network of independent contractors. Like FedEx, Amazon doesn’t directly employ the drivers but takes a more hands-on approach, closely monitoring their performance and reserving the right to have them fired when it deems necessary.

Devices installed in vans and apps on the drivers’ phones monitor their delivery performance and driving habits. The data, which the delivery firms are contractually obligated to share with Amazon, is converted into weekly report cards that measure things like on-road safety, delivery completion rate and customer experience. The score determines what Amazon pays the delivery firm per package, typically ranging from 10 cents to 25 cents. While the company pays an average of $425 per route per day to cover things like driver’s wages, payroll taxes, van leases, insurance and fuel, it’s the per package rate that often determines whether or not owners like Ted Johnson make money.

Amazon engineers have put heavy emphasis on “safety and compliance,” which is the first section on the weekly report card. Devices monitor speed, seat belt use, whether drivers have their eyes on the road, if they roll through stop signs and so forth. The problem, the delivery firms say, is that the software often detects unsafe driving when in fact the driver has done nothing wrong. False “distracted driving” alerts are a common occurrence and can be triggered by something as benign as a driver’s phone shaking when the van travels over rough terrain. Some smartphones are more likely to trigger alerts than others, and the delivery firms try to buy ones with the least sensitive sensors.

Amazon has been installing video cameras in delivery vans. They capture even more data and provide a video record of the driver in the cab and what’s happening on the road. Here, too, the algorithms sometimes misinterpret the data. “The camera will say someone was distracted, meaning they were on their phone, but we’ll go back to the video and they just sneezed,” one delivery partner said. “Or the camera says a driver ran a stop sign, but the video shows they made a right turn before they got to the stop sign.” In response to complaints about buggy cameras, Amazon in August introduced a feature letting delivery partners flag demerits that they think are mistakes. The company said it now reviews all of these and fixes scorecards when errors are confirmed.

These false positives add up and can seriously affect the weekly score card. Just a few mistakes, delivery partners say, can cost them $7,000 or more a week and mean the difference between turning a profit or losing money.

In a sense, Amazon has created a monitoring and rating system with mutually exclusive goals: delivering as many packages per hour as possible while doing so without causing accidents or breaking the law. The delivery contractors say the system’s architects have unreasonable expectations of how many packages a driver can deliver during a shift and fail to take into account how much real-world conditions vary from place to place. It takes much longer to deliver packages in a rural setting with gravel roads and long driveways during a snowstorm than it does in a manicured suburb on a flawless summer day.

Johnson said Amazon expected his drivers to deliver more than 30 packages an hour. His best drivers, whom he described as “industrial athletes,” could deliver about 25 packages an hour because terrain and weather slowed them down. When a driver couldn't finish in 10 hours, Johnson had to pick his poison. He could pay overtime that Amazon wouldn’t reimburse to complete the route or he could return undelivered packages to the station, which hurt his score and reduced how much Amazon would pay him.

Amazon’s engineering culture has hardwired executives to trust the software more than human beings, and when delivery firms try to dispute the algorithms’ errors, they say, the company takes note but typically declines to adjust their performance score. Johnson said he paid a lawyer to write letters to dispute the machine-generated grades, but said Amazon seldom over-rode an error and he gave up challenging false negatives. Another delivery partner said he has disputed false alerts about drivers not wearing a seat belt and showed Amazon video to prove the point but failed to persuade the company to correct his score card.

One delivery partner said a driver was bitten by a dog while making a delivery in a rural area with no cell reception. The driver sped to the hospital to have a deep puncture wound treated. The algorithm dinged the driver for speeding but Amazon declined to overturn the demerit, the delivery partner said. “They’ve made it increasingly difficult to dispute the computer-generated driver scorecard,” he said. “They know they can punish us with buggy software, and there’s nothing we can do.”

Leah Ranalli, 38, started her delivery business in Tucson, Arizona, three years ago and was invited by Amazon to speak for this story. Ranalli said she loves the freedom associated with being her own boss and said the money is far better than what she made running dialysis centers. She employs 90 drivers and has more than 40 vans.

Ranalli does have one gripe, saying that Amazon fails to differentiate between what a young athletic driver can do and what an older driver with bad knees can reasonably accomplish. And she echoed other delivery firms’ contention that the company fails to make allowances for rural areas with extreme weather.

One of her drivers is in his 20s, plays competitive soccer and runs from his van to doorsteps through much of his route. He wants to finish early so he can go home, she said, but then the algorithms see that and try to squeeze more packages on the next run.

“What Amazon needs to do is stop looking at everything from such a high level and have regional teams that understand regional concerns,” Ranalli said. “People in the ivory tower in Seattle don’t understand what drivers in the mud are experiencing or what the hiring market is like in Chicago. Unless they do that, there will be unrest.”

Amazon’s senior executives, including consumer and logistics chief Dave Clark, have been aware of such concerns since the program began, according to a person familiar with the matter. Rather than solve the issues, the person said, they kept pushing drivers to work harder and improve their metrics. Executives mostly had experience refining Amazon’s warehouses where weather, traffic jams and locked gates aren’t an issue, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter.

“The data would come in and say something had been planned for a 10-hour route and it took the driver 14 hours to complete,” this person said. “There were a few people on the team who were willing to dive in and try to figure out why. Was it weather, or a poor route, or a parade? No matter how much scrutiny you gave it and how many details you pointed out, the feeling at the top was ‘they’re just lazy, they’re not working hard enough.’”

Miller, the company spokesperson, disputed this characterization, saying: “Our leaders are proud of this program and regularly seek feedback from DSPs and drivers to measure to improve their experience. Anyone who says otherwise is speaking out of self-interest to discredit the program. The biggest challenge in developing a driver network is building great teams who understand their communities, and we think local small business owners do that best—they tap into their community to hire and develop great drivers, while the Delivery Service Partner program supports them with logistics experience, technology and services that help their business thrive.”

Tensions between Amazon and the delivery contractors began escalating earlier this year when they discovered that they could be terminated with no explanation. Many who saw their agreements extended for an additional year were angered that Amazon reduced their overall number of routes while adding new delivery partners with whom they’d be competing. They suspect Amazon would prefer to spread the work around to a greater number of smaller businesses so it can control and replace them more easily.

Johnson got a call from Amazon in February and was expecting congratulations for delivering so many packages during the holiday shopping season. Instead, he was told his contract wasn’t being renewed and that Amazon was under no obligation to tell him why. Johnson was gutted. Then he learned that a business that cost as little $10,000 to launch would cost a lot more to shut down. Johnson said he lost about $100,000 to pay for various costs, including covering damage to the leased vans because he said the algorithms underestimated the beating the vehicles would take—a common complaint among delivery firms.

Two delivery partners in Portland, Oregon, hit their breaking point in June and stopped making deliveries. Their attorney, Tom Rask, has since heard from several other firms and is helping them consider legal options. Amazon requires delivery contractors to agree to resolve all disputes through binding arbitration, a secretive process that precludes class-action lawsuits in public courts. Amazon offers delivery partners $10,000 to go away quietly as part of a separation agreement, one of which was reviewed by Bloomberg. Other delivery partners were able to negotiate bigger settlements of about $100,000, according to people familiar with the matter.

The pushback in Portland emboldened other delivery partners and fueled complaints in online discussion groups, including a platform shared with Amazon. Driver burnout and retention were of particular concern, with one delivery partner saying he typically lost 75% of his drivers within months of hiring them. The delivery firms suggested raising wages for their drivers, who make about $18 an hour on average—considerably less than their counterparts at UPS and USPS. Amazon urged them to stop screening applicants for marijuana and make that explicit in job advertisements—a suggestion that didn’t fly with some firms afraid of potential legal exposure in the event of an accident.

In August, Parisa Sadrzadeh, Amazon’s delivery service director, tried to quell the unrest with a 2,200-word message to delivery partners. The 10-year Amazon veteran, who began her career working on Kindle tablets before moving to logistics, highlighted $96 million Amazon dedicated to improving compensation, $12 million on marketing and recruitment and the creation of a team to assist with hiring. In the same missive, however, Sadrzadeh warned that vans would be packed with even more packages and that the delivery jobs would become even more physically demanding since drivers would spend more time walking up driveways and less time driving around.

“We’ve seen a growing number of posts around concerns over driver workload, questioning the data we use to determine what ‘good’ looks like, and asking to see more change,” she wrote. “I have multiple facets of my team whose only jobs are to gather and analyze insights from drivers and DSPs across the network, and we look at this data consistently and frequently.”

Counseling patience, she warned that “unconstructive negativity and complaints add noise to the platform and detract from the experience of the partners who want to learn, connect and ensure their voices and experiences are heard.” She shared some encouraging metrics, including that Amazon increased driver wages and that attrition had dropped in the previous six months.

Many delivery partners didn’t buy it. Days later, about 100 convened in Las Vegas. They were there for a meet-and-greet session organized by Amazon that had been canceled thanks to a spike in Covid-19 cases and figured they might as well show up anyway to discuss their souring relations with the company. Driver turnover was top of mind and, once again, the algorithms came in for criticism—sending drivers down dirt roads in downpours, for instance, where they would become mired in the mud and incur costly towing bills. On top of the relentless pressure from the machines, their employees were earning fast-food industry wages.

It was during the Vegas summit that the delivery contractors learned Amazon had terminated about 100 of their counterparts. Panic ensued. Some suggested forming an association so they could negotiate with Amazon on issues like compensation and metrics with one voice. Others afraid Amazon was recruiting new contractors to compete with them, discussed ways of selling their businesses and getting out. In late September, drivers working for a contractor in Long Island whose contract wasn’t renewed blocked an Amazon delivery station with their vans, took their keys and walked off, making it impossible for other drivers to pick up their packages.

One proprietor from a southern state who was terminated said he lost about $80,000. He said his drivers were frequently penalized for spinning their tires trying to negotiate a steep grade or get a van through mud, which the sensors flagged as abrupt acceleration. “It was not a pleasant experience,” he said. “It was constant mayhem, and when you try to address anything with Amazon, they just hold over your head that they can replace you in a heartbeat.”

Johnson, for his part, now works as a substitute teacher. He doesn’t miss the long days, revolving door of drivers or battles trying to overturn machine-generated scores. “I’d pick being in the shit in Afghanistan or Iraq any day over this because of the way they treat us,” he said. “They say work hard and make history, but Amazon is a culture of fear and anxiety.”

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