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Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

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Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#121

Post by aylmao »

noonespecial wrote: post #87
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #47

My fear is that the future of work for most people is not unemployment, but shitty jobs like this. My feeling is that in order to avoid this and prosper, the people need to own the robots that do all the work (Marxism heyy). If robots provide huge productivity gains, then they will provide those gains for their owners. If it’s the big corporations that own them, they will see the gains. But as long as people are trea…

But I do already own some of the robots. I have Amazon stock in my 401k. That's what "the people owning the robots" looks like. What you're getting at is that there are many people right now who are too poor (and are going to be too poor) to ever own any part of the robots. This century's great debate is forming up to be whether or not we should give them some anyway even though they can't "earn" it for whatever movi…

> But I do already own some of the robots. I have Amazon stock in my 401k. That's what "the people owning the robots" looks like.

Is it though? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't stock only generates value if it increases in price (or the company decides it wants to pay dividends), and not directly from the productivity of robots?

To put it a bit more clearly, your stock only makes you money if Amazon keeps growing. Let say Amazon were to reach a theoretical maximum size: profits and value stop growing. It would still generate massive amounts of money but would it be obliged to give you a cut of it?

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#122

Post by bertil »

Amazon in general, like Uber, considers that warehouse employees and driver are just a needed adjustment until robots take over. They have the consideration that Google/Waymo has for the people filling in “Is this a Stop sign” Catpcha. Thinking of it as sweat labor is not false, but it won’t convince the company change.

If you think of it that way, you understand better how Amazon product managers and engineers are OK with the treatment. Also part of that vision: those employees benefit from constant iteration of the work conditions, from Bezos’ initial suggestion to get knee pad to help filling in boxes (rapidly replaced by the far better option to get tables). All the pain is just a step in the process that has not been automated yet, and the “handful” of people “temporary” suffering now are just there to provide training data for the order of magnitude more orders to come when running around, climbing on step-ladders, will be automated. And, in fairness, a lot of it has, or is about to: Amazon has robots to carry shelves around, raising platforms, etc. They are generally not used at scale yet, but teams are actively working on it.

I’m not saying that to justify the company’s callous take, or pain their plan as a delusional grandeur, but to explain how the stress is part of the process: to reveal what hurts. As far as I can tell, all employees, especially desk-dwellers, are asked to do shifts in the warehouse to build some empathy. It’s far from perfect and seem to hide the reality of family life for the de-facto full-time workers -- but accusing Amazon of having inhumane condition is missing the dynamic angle to it.

I believe there is a massive mis-match between how employees see their service and the efforts so many employees are putting in; I’m not convinced that you can reach automation faster by having humans run around and learn from their mistake. I would be a lot more comfortable with the experiment is participants where excited by the perspective of automation rather than working poor, but I’m not in charge of the company, so it’s hard to grasp exactly what could be done. I believe that warehouse employees with more free-time, more initiative and the ability automate themselves would automate faster than what Amazon is currently doing, but that’s just speculation.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#123

Post by noonespecial »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #111
noonespecial wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I do already own some of the robots. I have Amazon stock in my 401k. That's what "the people owning the robots" looks like. What you're getting at is that there are many people right now who are too poor (and are going to be too poor) to ever own any part of the robots. This century's great debate is forming up to be whether or not we should give them some anyway even though they can't "earn" it for whatever movi…

I think there are some differences between owning stock and owning the machines. Stock gives you abstract control through voting, and the board has much more power than you. When you own the machine, you can physically operate it yourself. It’s like owning a car versus owning stock in Uber - when you own a car you reap the benefits of cheap travel much more directly and in a very different way than getting a dividend…

>When you own the machine, you can physically operate it yourself.

Can I? I've got no clue how to run a Kiva, I just know that somewhere, there's one making me a few pennies right now being run and maintained by people who know what they're doing.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#124

Post by truculation »

What's the typical walking time to the toilet in a large warehouse? Where do the relevant employees keep the bottles (e.g. are they attached to their legs underneath trousers? If not how do they avoid CCTV?) Are break periods mandatory or optional?

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#125

Post by drharby »

baby wrote: post #105
noonespecial wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I do already own some of the robots. I have Amazon stock in my 401k. That's what "the people owning the robots" looks like. What you're getting at is that there are many people right now who are too poor (and are going to be too poor) to ever own any part of the robots. This century's great debate is forming up to be whether or not we should give them some anyway even though they can't "earn" it for whatever movi…

In a few centuries students in history classes will look back and try to understand why we let our people die in the streets.

I disagree

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#126

Post by aje403 »

mistermann wrote: post #20
aylmao wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If there's money to re-invest, there should be money to treat employees at least decently.

Unless the public can somehow get politicians to govern according to their desires, the way the world actually is, rather than how it should be, will continue to be defined by alpha leaders like Jeff Bezos and Xi Jinping.

The public does not know how the world is

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#127

Post by shamsalmon »

aylmao wrote: post #121
noonespecial wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I do already own some of the robots. I have Amazon stock in my 401k. That's what "the people owning the robots" looks like. What you're getting at is that there are many people right now who are too poor (and are going to be too poor) to ever own any part of the robots. This century's great debate is forming up to be whether or not we should give them some anyway even though they can't "earn" it for whatever movi…

> But I do already own some of the robots. I have Amazon stock in my 401k. That's what "the people owning the robots" looks like. Is it though? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't stock only generates value if it increases in price (or the company decides it wants to pay dividends), and not directly from the productivity of robots? To put it a bit more clearly, your stock only makes you money if Amazon keeps growing…

Due to population increase the revenues would grow. When a company stops growing and increasing revenue its not keeping up with population increase and may as well be dying.

There are also stocks with high dividends, which are paid out based on profit and not by the stock increasing in value.

This is obviously ignoring the fact many people either make horrible financial decision or are too poor to invest in stocks.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#129

Post by aylmao »

jlebrech wrote: post #115
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #47

My fear is that the future of work for most people is not unemployment, but shitty jobs like this. My feeling is that in order to avoid this and prosper, the people need to own the robots that do all the work (Marxism heyy). If robots provide huge productivity gains, then they will provide those gains for their owners. If it’s the big corporations that own them, they will see the gains. But as long as people are trea…

or learn electronics and coding and be the guy/person who fixes the robot.

Yes, though that doesn't fix "the problem", only puts you on the better side of it.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#130

Post by TaylorAlexander »

creep wrote: post #89
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #47

My fear is that the future of work for most people is not unemployment, but shitty jobs like this. My feeling is that in order to avoid this and prosper, the people need to own the robots that do all the work (Marxism heyy). If robots provide huge productivity gains, then they will provide those gains for their owners. If it’s the big corporations that own them, they will see the gains. But as long as people are trea…

Sounds interesting, but also like a lot of bureaucracy. What happens when the people want to change the way the robots are operating? What if the robots don't do exactly what they're told? Who manages manufacturing robots vs transportation robots vs communications robots? Would the people have to elect representatives to deal with the robots?

I assume that the engineering would be run like an open source project. Debian is a good example, or the Linux kernel. The best stuff is decided by the contributors and anyone is welcome to fork and compete. Actual labor of manufacturing and distribution is handled by competing companies (which may be democratically operated) but the tech is open source so “lock in” (which is a man made inefficiency in the market) can’t do easily occur.

Life always takes work to run. Getting to work every day to pay for food at the store and run errands etc just to do it all again tomorrow feels like beaurocoracy too. I’d much rather have a world where the work I do to support myself is to vote on local community matters (the next merge request, etc), instead of commuting through a zoo and looking out the window at the sunshine.

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