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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

#201

Post by ItsMe000001 »

Domenic_S wrote: post #138
baby wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Who is dying in the street in substantial numbers?

Poor people die earlier. More importantly though their quality of life sucks, especially in a country with tens of millions without health insurance. They may have rotten teeth and loads of stress, but hey, they are not dead yet so what's the problem?

Sorry that it's all The Guardian but they had a series that I happened to remember, and I think that publication has a good enough reputation:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/15/america-extr...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/21/seques...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/01/un-extreme-pov...

Of course, if we find the slightest mistake or hyperbole (if there even is any) in an article or comment about the plight of the poor we can discuss THAT instead and dismiss the entire thought. Another form of bike-shedding, instead of using good faith for the discussion use every tiny opening of the "opponent" to sidetrack the discussion and to dismiss the issue.

So, where are the people of the masses of dying in the streets? None? Even in San Francisco they look shabby but very much still alive? Well, case closed I guess.

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

#202

Post by hajile »

louisswiss wrote: post #108
atrexler wrote: post #23

Long-haul truckers have been doing this for decades for the same reason-- they don't have time to pull over and use the restroom-- and no one is upset about that. I'm sure there are many industries, white and blue collar, where similar norms are expressed. Edit to add: I'm not endorsing the practice in any industry at all, just pointing out that its not a unique problem to Amazon. My comment would have been better ph…

Are there no legally-mandated 'rest stops' for truckers in the US? In Europe there are (quite strictly enforced) regulations in place to ensure truckers/HGV-drivers take a 30min break every few hours.

Yes. They are limited in hours per day, hours per week, breaks, mandatory layovers, etc. Most companies have automated logs to ensure these are enforced too.

https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/sites/fmcsa.dot.gov/files/docs/Dri...

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

#203

Post by timdorr »

aylmao wrote: post #88
timdorr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're buying AMZN on the market, that's coming from other investors, not the company itself. It's already sold that stock (the IPO was back in 96) and benefited directly from it at that time.

Not trying to be combative! Just providing a counter argument. Although it doesn't directly and immediately benefit a company, doesn't having lots of buy interest keep the stock price high, which _is_ beneficial for the company in general?

Yep, you're totally right. I was only distinguishing on direct benefits (cash flow). There are certainly many more indirect benefits to performing well on the stock market.

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

#204

Post by djhworld »

bertil wrote: post #122

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 O…

> you understand better how Amazon product managers and engineers are OK with the treatment.

Or do they really care?

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

#205

Post by madamelic »

leggomylibro wrote: post #152
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-tra…

>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?

I think you need to step out of the engineer shoes.

The majority of people struggle to understand their computer works, let alone building their own robots and writing the software.

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

#206

Post by progval »

babygoat wrote: post #10
ProAm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how you get your Amazon Prime same day/two day delivery.

If that’s true, then charge us more and be a real human.

If you have Amazon Prime, you can choose to have a longer delay (ie. the same as non-Prime consumers) when selecting shipment options.

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

#207

Post by crankylinuxuser »

isostatic wrote: post #75
kelukelugames wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a poor argument. I've gotten offers from many tech giants. They all included a sign-on cash bonus. Often much bigger than Amazon's. Amazon's total offer was usually about 100k lower. Sometimes more. Amazon SWEs still earn hundreds of thousands of dollars. So being treated poorly and paid less is relative. In Amazon's defense, I have friends who enjoy working there. The MBAs especially love it. Again, it's not…

White collar jobs are somewhat different than. We have choice, we have power. The best bet for amazon warehouse employees, and delivery drivers, would be to unionise. This would lead to either 1) More investment in robotics, taking away menial jobs 2) Better conditions for shelf-stackers. Both are good -- as a society we should not be making people work when the work could be done by robots.

Roboticization is great for the long-term, Star Trek style economy.

It's the Bell Riots and Sanctuary Districts I'm worried about.

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

#208

Post by progval »

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!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

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

#209

Post by aquadrop »

isostatic wrote: post #75
kelukelugames wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a poor argument. I've gotten offers from many tech giants. They all included a sign-on cash bonus. Often much bigger than Amazon's. Amazon's total offer was usually about 100k lower. Sometimes more. Amazon SWEs still earn hundreds of thousands of dollars. So being treated poorly and paid less is relative. In Amazon's defense, I have friends who enjoy working there. The MBAs especially love it. Again, it's not…

White collar jobs are somewhat different than. We have choice, we have power. The best bet for amazon warehouse employees, and delivery drivers, would be to unionise. This would lead to either 1) More investment in robotics, taking away menial jobs 2) Better conditions for shelf-stackers. Both are good -- as a society we should not be making people work when the work could be done by robots.

More automation -> less jobs -> more pressure to keep working at the awful, but paying job you have.

I think best solution is universal basic income, but that of course is far from being accepted in USA. But it gives power to people, it make them not being so afraid to lose a job, so employers have to act accordingly.

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

#210

Post by rossbmiller »

decebalus1 wrote: post #179
losteric wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW: I think Amazon's stock vesting schedule for ICs is reasonable considering the sizable hiring bonus (iirc ~$20k for new graduates). Stock grants are intended to reflect an employee's ownership in the company, and rapidly increase with tenure. That said... Amazon is definitely not human-oriented. Leadership within established business units is brutally efficient, with far too much faith in their metric goals. Ask…

> I think Amazon's stock vesting schedule for ICs is reasonable considering the sizable hiring bonus (iirc ~$20k for new graduates) One can get this bonus basically everywhere else in the area with similar sized companies. Hell, I got way more than that 8 years ago. The vesting schedule is diabolical: > 5% 1st yr, 15% 2nd yr, then 20% every 6 months coupled with the turnover rate: http://www.slate.com/content/dam/sla…

I think it's brilliant. If you live in Seattle and know anyone who's a mid-level corporate employee at Amazon, you should notice that it's a great way of selecting talent who are committed to the company and who will stick around. Also, contracts are re-negotiated every two years, so if you chain them up, you're getting a pretty significant annual payout.
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