翻译硕士考研者，在暑期阶段需要看双语阅读文章，来提升阅读水平和翻译能力。下面，北京文都考研网为助力翻译硕士学子们在备考上一臂之力，整理了MTI双语阅读精选文章:亚马逊能解决工会问题吗?供考生参考。
2020考研MTI双语阅读精选:亚马逊能解决工会问题吗?
INSIDE THE Amazon fulfilment centre in Monee, Illinois, the temperature is pleasant and the whirr of machines bearable. “Stowers” take items from yellow containers and place them on shelves after scanning their location. “Pickers” follow instruction on screens, grab items from shelves, scan them and put them in containers, which then move on via conveyor belt to the packers. Packers scan them again and put them into cardboard boxes they quickly seal before sending them off to get their address tag. Shifts are ten hours four days a week, with two breaks every day. About 125,000 people work in 100 fulfilment centres across the country. (During the holiday season Amazon hired another 120,000 seasonal workers.)
位于伊利诺州的Monee城市内的亚马逊一运营中心里，温度舒适，机器响声适度。“舱内装卸工”从黄色集装箱中取出物品，扫描完后堆放在货架上。“分拣工”按照屏幕上的指示，从货架上取出物品，扫描后放入集装箱中，然后通过传送带继续运送给包装工人。包装工人再次扫描物品，放入纸板箱中，快速密封好，之后物品会送到标签上的地址。10小时倒班一次，一周工作4天，每天有两次休息时间。全美国约有125,000人在100个运营中心工作。(在圣诞假期里，亚马逊还雇佣了12万名季节性工人。)
As online retail grows ever bigger, warehouses have become the workplace of choice for many without a college degree. In the past they would have worked for a bricks-and-mortar retailer such as Sears (in bankruptcy) or Toys R Us (also bankrupt). Whereas traditional retail has its own union, the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which had its heyday in the 1930s, hardly any warehouse workers are union members.
随着线上零售业规模的不断壮大，仓库工作是没有大学文凭的人的首选。过去，他们在实体零售商上班，比如西尔斯百货(处于破产状况)或玩具反斗城(也处于破产状况)。然而，传统零售店也有自己的工会，零售批发和百货商店联盟(RWDSU)在20世纪30年代一度处于鼎盛，几乎所有的仓库员工是工会会员。
This could be changing. Workers in Amazon warehouses in Minnesota, Staten Island and New Jersey mobilised before Christmas. In Amazon’s new state-of-the-art warehouse in Staten Island, workers launched a campaign to unionise. Their main grievances are safety, pay and 12-hour shifts with insufficient breaks as well as punishing hourly quotas. Amazon says it pays its workers in Staten Island $17-23 an hour, which is more than other local warehouses, as well as providing health care, offering workers further education and up to 20 weeks of parental leave. In New Jersey activists pushed state government to enforce a code of conduct at big retailers which includes the right to unionise.
这种情况可能会发生改变。在明尼苏达州、史坦顿岛和新泽西州的亚马逊仓库员工在圣诞节前发起动员。在亚马逊史坦顿岛最先进的仓库中，工人们发起了一场工会成立运动。他们的不满主要是安全、薪水和12小时轮班制、休息时间不足以及惩罚工时定额等。亚马逊称，史坦顿岛的工人时薪为17-23美元，超过其他当地仓库的时薪，同时为员人提供医疗保健，为工人提供继续教育机会以及最多长达20周的生育假。在新泽西州，激进分子敦促州政府执行大型零售商的行为准则，其中包括组织工会的权利。
Will workers’ activism lead to unionisation at the country’s second-biggest private employer? If past experiences at Walmart, the world’s largest retailer that is America’s biggest private employer, is anything to go by, the answer is no. Walmart fought attempts by workers to form a union. As soon as top management heard rumblings about unionisation through a hotline that local managers were directed to call, the retail behemoth sent a “labour team” from its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, to the uppity shop, writes Rick Wartzman, a former head of the Drucker Institute, a researcher of corporate management. The team took over the shop’s management and showed workers a steady stream of strident anti-union videos and other propaganda. If these efforts failed, it simply closed the shop.
工人的激进行为会导致美国第二大私人雇主实现工会组织吗?如果在全球最大零售商和最大的民营雇主沃尔玛(Walmart)的过往经验能供以参考的话，答案是否定的。沃尔玛反对工人组建工会的想法。该企业高层管理人员获得当地管理人员打的热线电话了解到有关组成工会的讨论声音，这家零售巨头从阿肯色州本顿维尔总部派出了一支“劳工队”到不受控制的门店里，企业管理研究机构德鲁克研究所的前负责人Rick Wartzman如此写道。该团队接管了该店的管理层，向员工展示了一大堆反对组织工会的视频和其他宣传资料。如果这些方法不起作用，沃尔玛就会直接关闭门店。
Amazon learned from Walmart (as did many other big firms) and is likely to be as effective as the Bentonville behemoth in influencing its workers’ thinking. Even so, warehouse workers have a lot of latent power, argues Brishen Rogers of Temple University. Thousands of them work together at one giant site where they can easily communicate compared with, say, janitors who work in isolation. Warehouses are at the centre of Amazon’s operation and they are hugely expensive to build, so management cannot simply shut down a warehouse. It takes weeks to train top-notch warehouse workers to operate the technology they use, so staff cannot be replaced from one day to another.
亚马逊仿效沃尔玛(其它大企业也是如此)，可能会像它一样能有效地影响员工们的想法。坦普尔大学的Brishen Rogers认为，即便如此，仓库工人也有很多可能的力量。成千上万的人在一个巨大的网站上一起工作，可以轻松地进行沟通，而不是象那些不相往来的守门人。仓库是亚马逊运营的中心，建设成本非常高，管理层不能直接关闭仓库。培训一流的仓库工人需要几周的时间来操作他们使用的技术，员工不可能在一天之内更换。
Unionisation typically succeeds when a company does a poor job in addressing grievances of workers, argues Paul Osterman at MIT. Amazon reacted quickly after Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont, introduced the “Stop BEZOS Act”, which would have required Amazon and Walmart to pay the government for food stamps, Medicaid, public housing and other federal assistance received by their workers. A few weeks later Amazon announced it would increase the minimum wage for all its workers in America to $15 an hour.
麻省理工学院的保罗奥斯特曼认为，如果企业不能很好得解决工人的诉求，组织工会通常会取得成功。在佛蒙特州参议员伯尼·桑德斯推出“停止BEZOS法案”，要求亚马逊和沃尔玛为政府提供的食品券、医疗补助、公共住房和其员工获得的其他联邦援助而支付费用，之后后，亚马逊迅速作出反应。几周后，亚马逊宣布将美国员人的最低工资到每小时15美元。
Amazon cares about its reputation as a progressive company based in liberal Seattle. This is a vulnerability but also a strength. The company is likely to listen more to its workers than big retailers did in the past, discouraging anaemic unions to take on the Goliath of the industry.
作为一家地处于自由西雅图的进步性企业，亚马逊爱惜羽毛。它一种脆弱表现，但也是一种实力。与大型零售店的过往行为相比，亚马逊可能会更多地倾听工人的意见，阻挠无精打采的工会来抗衡在线零售行为的巨头。
以上是北京文都考研网给出的“2020考研MTI双语阅读精选文章:亚马逊能解决工会问题吗?”，希望对翻译硕士考生有所帮助!祝2020考研金榜题名!
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