I suggest reading the whole article at the following link:http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/may/04/amazon-seasonal-work-homeless-jobs-unemployment
Jana Kasperkevic
Sunday 4 May 2014
When President Barack Obama visited an Amazon's fulfillment center in Chattanooga, Tennessee last year, he compared it to Santa's workshop. "This is kind of like the North Pole of the south right here," he said. Then speaking of the workers, he added, "Got a bunch of good-looking elves here."
What went unsaid and unnoticed was that the Amazon "elves" would not have jobs or prospects after the holidays. Many of the people in those Amazon warehouses were among the long-term unemployed – shuffling from one temporary job to another to another. Due to this unstable employment, number of them have found themselves living in shelters.
Working away in warehouses, beyond the pages of Amazon's website, the seasonal workers and the effects that temporary contracts have on their lives are kept out of public's eye and often avoid scrutiny.
Andrew Cummins, 43, was one of these elves last year, working north of Chattanooga at an Amazon warehouse in Jeffersonville, Indiana. For three months, he stowed away clothes, working 40 hours a week at $10 an hour. He enjoyed the job and saw it as his ticket out of the Haven House, a shelter where he lives with his wife, Kristen, and stepson.
"They had this big hype that they were going to hire on and stuff and that didn't happen. They just worked you until the time was up and then they let everyone go," he says. According to him, about 50 other seasonal workers like him who were hired through Integrity Staffing Solutions – a staffing agency working with Amazon in Jeffersonville – were let go at the same time. "They just said they would email everybody that they let go but we never heard anything back. And then you can't apply for [another Amazon job] for another year after you worked for them."
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Since Amazon opened its warehouse in Jeffersonville, one homeless shelter, Haven House, has been a home to between two and six of its employees at all times, says Barbara Anderson, the shelter's director.
"The impact is profound. One man was sleeping in a car when he landed his 'permanent job' with Amazon," she says. His good luck didn't last long. "He lost everything all over again. The jobs are good but the temporary status sets people up for failure."
More than half of the shelter's tenants are working poor, according to Anderson. Often times they are either in between jobs or working jobs that pay just enough to make ends meet, but not enough to help them break out of the cycle of homelessness.
With lack of subsidized housing affordable at their level of income, they are stuck. They have no one to co-sign an apartment for them and no way to save up for a security deposit, much less the first and last months' rent that many landlords now require before one moves in.
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Cummins didn't always live in Indiana.
"I am originally from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I arrived by bus. I took my last paycheck and came down here, because I was told there were jobs here," he says, adding that his jobs in Pennsylvania were also temporary placements obtained through staffing agencies. Instead of finding a job, Cummins ended up at Wayside Christian Mission where he earned $60 and a bed to sleep on for a full week's worth of work.
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If offered a job with evening shifts, those living in the shelter have to get a written note from their employer stating that they are at work. "It's embarrassing. 'I live in a shelter. Can you write me a note?' Like a two-year-old," says Cummins.
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