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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

#151

Post by 80386 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #37
StaticRedux wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other side of the coin, if they hadn't spent the money on reinvesting, they wouldnt be the size they are now or employ as many people. (This is not saying they shouldn't treat employees better, just that the reason they employ so many people in the first place is bc of reinvesting and expanding to more areas. It's not as simplistic as, 'if they have the money they should spend it on people instead of business'…

If you can't grow your business to be a monstrosity without treating your employees like slaves, your business should not exist.

I work at an Amazon warehouse. I'd rather be able to do that and write code on the side than be unemployed and have to live with my parents in the middle of nowhere. My parents don't even have an internet connection.

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

#152

Post by leggomylibro »

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…

I think we need to democratize the means of automation.

Building blocks spanning microcontrollers to motors to power converters to lighting to the rapid fabrication of small parts have never been cheaper or more accessible. And why would you buy remote-controlled lightbulbs from BigCo if you could make one yourself (or get a friend to) for the cost of a sandwich?

Because you can't spare the extra $3 to buy a fair-trade organic lightbulb every few months, would probably be the answer. And that would probably be because you're stuck in jobs like these. So maybe I'm just spouting baseless optimism.

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

#153

Post by School-Cotton »

opencl wrote: post #28
notheguyouthink wrote: post #2

Are Amazon's margins razor thin? I'm trying to understand what compels them to be so toxic in their work environment. Especially compared to the people I know who work at Costco, I struggle to understand why Costco treats employees so well, and Amazon treats their employees so poorly. It's really sad, regardless.

Meanwhile they shove all of their software developers into one of the highest cost of living cities in the world and pay them six figure salaries.

Maybe it's changed since I lived there, but I don't really think Seattle is "one of the highest cost of living cities in the world". It is (or was) quite a bit cheaper than NYC or SF, for example.

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

#154

Post by FussyZeus »

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.

This is such a massive oversimplification as to be ridiculous, and it's so rampant in these discussions. Even if every person working a factory floor job was capable of doing this: They aren't supported whatsoever through such a transition, meaning minimum 2 years of living on basically savings, something most people who know "electronics and coding" would have a hard time doing, let alone someone on the poverty line, and the few who manage to do it, say five, can now oversee all four hundred machines that replaced them and their former coworkers. And all of that isn't even going into the fact that they machines they'd be maintaining in your ideal dream world are probably an ocean away being maintained by people who know that skillset already working for slave wages.

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

#155

Post by brandonmenc »

truculation wrote: post #124

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?

A bathroom break in a large factory or warehouse can easily take twenty minutes after factoring in the transit time.

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

#156

Post by TaylorAlexander »

noonespecial wrote: post #123
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Following the car analogy, many people don’t know how to change their oil, but they could if they wanted. That is a freedom a piece of normal stock does not give you. If your stock truly represented an equal share of the operation, you could work with other shareholders and manage the local warehouse to your liking. It sounds like you’re satisfied with Amazon, so perhaps you won’t get involved. But it would give the warehouse workers a voice if they felt they were being abused.

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

#158

Post by chiefalchemist »

Obviously, I wouldn't call this slavery. But in terms of the effect on the employees, it's __in some ways__ getting close.

Do we have a word for this type of relationship between worker and company?

There's something wrong when we (at least in the USA) are said to be approaching but workers (albeit in the UK) can't stop to pee. All this at the hands of the richest man in the world?

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

#159

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#160

Post by 80386 »

Pezmc wrote: post #18

If everything is based on performance metrics alone, surely there's a feedback loop here? Employee A starts peeing in a bottle, so their performance numbers go up, then at the end of the week they have better performance numbers and everyone else's targets are increased to be more inline with employee A. So more people start using bottles and taking shortcuts and the problem just increases over time!

Performance metrics are standardized across all Amazon FCs, so no.
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