Guest, Ed, wrote:
"So following this logic: given the long hours, 'back breaking' work and low pay that many farm workers have to put up with, I assume that you're going to stop buying food?

"As Steve had alluded to, the UK has a minimum wage and some of the most stringent health and safety and employee protection laws in the world.

I unassamedly use Amazon, and until I get better reasons than the ridiculous "[employees] get an electric shock every time they touch a book", I will continue to do so."

Hi Ed. Seems to me your response is a wee bit more antagonistic than is really called for, but I will try to answer your points reasonably.

As far as food goes, I do try to be aware of which foods come from places that don't treat people well, and buy accordingly: Fair Trade Chocolate, coffee, no California grapes, etc. I'm sure I'm not batting 100% - I know I could be doing much better - but I do think it's worth trying to act on the things that I'm aware of.

I suppose I could just think, "Nothing I ever do will make a difference, so why bother about anything?" - but I don't think I could live with myself if I took that approach. If you have something that's better/more effective, I'm all ears.

I believe the only real way to get any of these companies to pay attention is via a threat to their profits. If I'm the only one who says "I won't buy from you unless/until you treat your employees better," then sure, they won't give a hoot. But if enough of us do, then there's a decent chance they will change. Not out of the goodness of their hearts, of course - but to keep their image from being too tarnished.

As far as "[employees] get an electric shock every time they touch a book" being "ridiculous": if you had taken the time to read the link I provided before deciding what I said was "ridiculous", you would have read the following (excerpt from an account written by a reporter who worked as a "picker and packer" at one of these places):

In the books sector, in the cold, in the winter dryness, made worse by the fans and all the paper, I jet across the floor in my rubber-soled Adidas, pant legs whooshing against each other, 30 seconds according to my scanner to take 35 steps to get to the right section and row and bin and level and reach for Diary of a Wimpy Kid and "FUCK!" A hot spark shoots between my hand and the metal shelving. It's not the light static-electric prick I would terrorize my sister with when we got bored in carpeted department stores, but a solid shock, striking enough to make my body learn to fear it. I start inadvertently hesitating every time I approach my target. One of my coworkers races up to a shelving unit and leans in with the top of his body first; his head touches the metal, and the shock knocks him back. "Be careful of your head," he says to me. In the first two hours of my day, I pick 300 items. The majority of them zap me painfully.

"Please tell me you have suggestions for dealing with the static electricity," I say to a person in charge when the morning break comes. This conversation is going to cost me a couple of my precious few minutes to eat/drink/pee, but I've started to get paranoid that maybe it's not good for my body to exchange an electric charge with metal several hundred times in one day.

"Oh, are you workin' in books?"
"Yeah."

"No. Sorry." ... "They've done everything they can"—"they" are not aware, it would appear, that anti-static coating and matting exist—"to ground things up there but there's nothing you can do."

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Do you still think the thing about the electric shocks is "ridiculous"?