A masterclass in exploitation at Amazon

Hi everyone, 

When I or one of my colleagues takes on a story, we think about if it can change the world – and if there’s any point in doing it if it won’t. 

But at the same time, I can’t promise change. I can’t be sure people will listen. And I can’t pretend to know exactly what should happen next. It’s a delicate line to walk. 

That’s something that award-winning journalist Pramod Acharya also told me he felt. Pramod’s a freelance journalist from Nepal who’s now based in Texas. He spoke to me this week about his 10 years of investigating migration, modern slavery, climate change and how these intersect with labour rights.

His conversations with sources often started the same way: “In any reporting I do, whenever I start to talk to the workers, the first question they would ask is: ‘What will happen?’ “

Understandably, people want to know how sharing their experiences – something which can put them and their jobs at risk – will actually be of benefit to them. 

“So I say, ‘While I cannot guarantee that it would make tangible or visible changes to you, these kinds of stories will help make other people aware of the process that you’ve been through, so they won’t have to’.”

He also tells them that journalism like this can lead to advocacy – and that might lead to policy changes or other reforms. “I say, ‘Your voice is really important and you have potential to change things.’”

Pramod was no stranger to the issues that beset migrant workers in Gulf States. But when he learned about Amazon recruiting Nepali labourers in the region, his interest was piqued. 

He told me: “When I first heard that Nepalese workers were working for Amazon I was naturally curious, because usually if we talk about male workers, they’re largely in the construction sector in the Gulf nations …  but now they’re attracting workers to the manufacturing, service and hospitality sectors as well. I was curious to see how this has impacted workers from other countries.”

He ended up speaking to more than fifty workers about how they’d ended up in Amazon’s Saudi warehouses. They told him that they’d paid between roughly $830 and $2,300 in recruiting fees. That’s well beyond what’s allowed by the Nepalese government. Many of them were misled into believing that they would be working directly for Amazon. But instead, they told him, some Saudi labour supply firms took cuts of their wages and then said they’d have to pay steep exit fees if they wanted to return home. 

Reaching that many workers was no mean feat, considering Pramod was 2,500 miles away from the people who he was speaking to. The workers were understandably circumspect about talking to a journalist, often having only one day a week away from the warehouses and very little privacy. 

As it turned out, this investigation was one that led to real change for those who had been exploited. 

In fact, the work of Pramod and his colleagues won back $1.9m to 700 current and former workers who’d paid recruitment fees to work for Amazon. In a follow-up published by the Guardian and ICIJ, one worker who received more than $1,800 back said: “I never expected that I would get the money back … Keep doing this for other workers as well. It means a lot.”

It’s an epic, multi-award-winning investigation. I asked Pramod how he thought his own background affected how he approaches this work.

“When I was just getting into investigative journalism, one factor that pushed me was what I’ve seen with my own eyes in my hometown. Many friends of mine, who I went to primary school with, later had to drop out because of poverty. The Gulf countries were accessible for them to go for work. 

“The single privilege I had was that my father was a school teacher, so he made sure I completed my education. But I was well aware why people leave. We’re the same people from the same town.”

“I’m actually an electrical engineer by training, so I have a background completely unrelated to journalism. In my studies I started to do some programming. A friend introduced me to some people who were interested in doing a new journalism project and thought I could be a good fit. I started consulting for them and then we realised that the best approach for the project was probably to have in-house developers. I eventually became one of the co-founders.

There was a lot of planning involved, lots of secret meetings in gardens with dozens and dozens of journalists. It made all the people involved feel really valued and part of something. The pitch was, come and have a conversation with us because we’re doing something new and maybe you’ll want to join us in the future.

Switzerland is a small market – there are only 5 million German-speaking Swiss. At that time, the big commercial publishers were not really investing in online journalism. Because the ad market is so small they would have to rely on subscribers to make revenue and they didn’t really believe that that had a future. 

It was a big shock after Trump won the US election and so with this project we were really saying, “Look, democracy is under threat and one key ingredient for a good democracy is good journalism.”

We began with a crowd-funding campaign in spring 2017. We didn’t so much have a product but an idea we were selling, and that worked really well. Something that also helped us was that we were six co-founders all with different backgrounds, different ages, and rooted in different communities.

We reached our initial goal of 3,000 members within a few hours. By the end of the five-week campaign, we had almost 14,000. The company is actually owned by the readers – they are members of a co-operative, and the co-operative owns parts of the company.

~ It’s this which really impressed me about Republik: The Project R co-operative (which holds over 46% of the shares) takes on all the non-profit work, including training, events and legal. But the two sides act as one team ~

We launched the first issue in January 2018. Something that has always worked really well is the comments section. There are several hundred members that comment a week on the content. 

~ Transparency is central to Republik, and you can see current stats on members, subscriptions and more on its site. There were just over 28,000 members when I last looked. ~

We were actually just trying to create a place where quality, independent journalism had a future. We wanted to create a high-quality print magazine and bring that online.

Although I no longer work for Republik, I still consider it the best magazine in the country. And I believe that journalism only has a future if it radically reinvents the relationship with its audience.”

It’s getting chillier in my corner of the world now, but it’s sort of warming me up to think of all the good that Pramod’s stories and Clara’s ingenuity have brought to the world. They didn’t overpromise, but they certainly did deliver!

See you next week!