Amazon Takes Fresh Stab At $16 Billion Housekeeping Industry (bloomberg.com)

PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from Bloomberg: Amazon is quietly hiring house cleaners in Seattle as direct employees. The online retailer is swapping the low cost of contract workers for the greater control of employing its own people. Doing so puts it on the hook for things like minimum wage, workers compensation and overtime pay. But it also lets Amazon determine how the workers are trained, which cleaning products they use and how they organize their schedules. Amazon's experiment signals it's concerned that saving money by using independent contractors can compromise the customer experience and make it just another online matchmaker. So it's conducting a trial to see if investing in its own housekeepers will differentiate its services by linking them more directly to the popular Amazon brand. The new housecleaning service, Amazon Home Assistants, offers home cleanings in Seattle that vary in price by the size of the home and frequency of visits. A weekly cleaning of a 1,500-square-foot home runs about $156.

Comments

It's got nothing to do with control

[rsilvergun]

there have been several lawsuits over this. The independent contractors have more or less won the right to minimum wage. There's no point to hiring a contracting firm if they can't abuse their employees.

Another Way In

[Anonymous Coward]

I fully expect Amazon to start 3D mapping your house and everything in it. They'll do it for your security, cameras on the cleaners to prove they aren't stealing anything. Then they'll use the videos for profiling the types of things you like. Then they'll offer a virtual furniture makeover. And finally a percentage of your house sale when you list it through Amazon and use their virtual walk-through.

Guess what. These cleaners can deliver your and your neighbor's Amazon purchases when they visit too. They can even pick up things you're selling through Amazon.