Tracking the global Internet giants for more than a decade, perspective the real United States under the shadow of technology

Since mid-March 2020, as COVID-19 containment measures have taken hold, the Thornton warehouse's total business has climbed, as has happened across the United States. Millions of Americans feel the only way to stay safe is to shop online from home, and orders are surging to holiday levels. Hector had only been on the job for nine months, and he was the only one of the 20 people who had gone through the orientation with him - the others either had trouble adjusting to the pace, suffered an injury, or ran out of time off after an injury and were laid off. Now, the pressure of a surge in orders, coupled with fears of close contact in warehouses amid the pandemic, is making the movement of people more frequent. The number of workers is shrinking, putting more pressure on those who remain. Hector was required to work overtime -- 12 hours a day, five days a week. With longer hours and fewer days off, Hector's tendinitis got worse.

He learned about the situation of the workers with whom he was in close contact and worked every day - the company did not say anything, but heard it from other workers. One day, the 40-something co-worker stopped showing up for work, and Hector thought he was one of those people who quit, because so many people just leave. But then it was said that the colleague had actually contracted the virus and was seriously ill. When Hector told his wife all this, Laura was worried about the health of her family, especially her elderly mother, who lived with them and suffered from a blocked lung. So Laura asked her husband to move into the basement. The basement wasn't much renovated, but they put a bed for Hector, equipped with a mini refrigerator, microwave, and coffee maker. To use the bathroom, he had to sneak upstairs.

What annoyed Laura was that they had all figured it out on their own, that the company had not informed Hector of anything. Nor did the company tell you how to deal with the risk of contagion. There is no public service hotline to consult. Laura tried looking online for instructions on how to deal with the situation, and the only thing she could find were the company's web pages boasting about what it had done as a company to cope with the coronavirus crisis. "They may have done a lot," she said, but the company "has profited off its employees every step of the way without giving them and their families the protections they deserve."

She could not help regretting that she had not rushed Hector to work there. "They call themselves a technology company, but they're really a sweatshop," Laura said. "This company controls our economy and our country."