Reality of amazon

Is the intemperate language used by MSPS Neil Findlay and Willie Rennie over employment conditions at Amazon’s Dunfermline plant helpful in promoting Scotland as an attractive place for in ward investment (“amazon slammed by MSPS as ‘a throwback to a Victorian era’”, 14 December)?

It is not usually wise to raise the spectre of a sword of Damocles about the future of the complex.

But the harsh reality is that organisations like Amazon can be quite discriminating about where they set their plants up. Too harsh a criticism from our elected representatives about how some employees feel about how they are treated can be counter productive. Those employees may have little choice about where they work. Amazon can exercise plenty of choice about where it locates.

The company’s working methods seem to be suited to a relatively young, fit type of person who asks no questions. Its location is not ideal for people who do not have their own car and may be stuck for transport early in the morning or late at night. The shifts may be long and physically challenging.

This has to be balanced against the hundreds of thousands of customers who have

a clear preference for the online shopping in which Amazon excels.

It has to be balanced, too, against the creation of hundreds, at times thousands of jobs for an area that desperately needs employment opportunities.

Whether it is right for economy secretary Keith Brown to be an arbitrator in all this is questionable.

In the final analysis, this is one of our many industrial relations problems, all of which can only be sorted out satisfactorily by the employer and the people who work for it.

BOB TAYLOR Shiel Court, Glenrothes