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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

#311

Post by icebraining »

leggomylibro wrote: post #230
madamelic wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 compu…

Sure, but education on those topics has also never been cheaper or more accessible. And these days, you could use something like MakeCode to automate simple tasks without ever touching a programming environment. There still aren't many people muddling through the introductory online courses on those topics, but there could be. Encouraging participation in learning about useful subjects seems like another good goal wh…

These people are working in very stressful environments, often for 10-12 hours/day, and making a pittance (which also adds to overall stress). Add a kid, and the idea of having time and mental energy for learning programming starts to sound a bit far-fetched.

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

#312

Post by laythea »

decebalus1 wrote: post #270
rossbmiller wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's brilliant for Amazon, not so much for the employee and it doesn't matter if you're committed to the company if the relationship is not bilateral (and it's often not). You can re-negotiate your pay and stuff but if the company has a financial incentive not to, there are several HR devices to keep you from doing so. Let's not bring up the regular reorgs which are notorious for wiping out careers. I've been living…

I am in no way an Amazon supporter, however I fail to see how any single company can "wipe out your career". As a skilled engineer, you have many options. And incidentally, from the sounds of it, it seems like if they let someone go, they would be doing that someone a favor.

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

#313

Post by RockyMcNuts »

epicureanideal wrote: post #281
RockyMcNuts wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subsistence farming and coal mining were shitty jobs too. Most jobs have always been shitty, this is less shitty than most and pays somewhat better (I believe Amazon is harder work than Walmart but pays more). And you can't find Americans to work in the fields, mines, slaughterhouses anymore. If it was really shitty the US would get foreigners to do it. So much of the stuff Amazon ships is made overseas we almost mig…

Automatic default reply whenever I see "can't find Americans to work..."... ...at the rate of pay offered. Speaking as a software engineer, if you offered me double my salary and secure employment for a couple years to work in a field or mine, I'd do it. Test me. Make me an offer. Slaughterhouses I don't know if I could do, but I'll bet plenty of people would for my current salary or less. About a decade and a half a…

Oh, I totally agree... if you can get $13 an hour working at Amazon how much would you need to work in the field or the mine, harder, more dangerous, exposed to toxic stuff. $25 or $50 isn't so crazy.

By the same token, the fact that Amazon retains hundreds of thousands of employees at $13 an hour means working conditions can't be in a different league from Walmart etc. Of course Amazon should be managing this stuff so it's not a Dickensian sweatshop. But of course they know that and they know the worse it is the more they have to pay, and these stories are maybe a little overblown.

Or at least I don't see buying at Walmart instead of Amazon to be a humanitarian necessity or particularly welfare-enhancing.

I kind of see it as a FedEx vs. UPS situation, FedEx pays more and is more brutal, pick your poison as a customer or employee.

Everything you buy that's cheap is cheap because people worked hard in shitty jobs.

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

#314

Post by bbddg »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #141
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…

With truly advanced multi-purpose robots (like in sci-fi), it would take just one donation of a robot to a charity to start a 'robot self-replication for poverty movement', where one robot build another with its own labor, doubling, and doubling again, until every down and out has their own pool of robotic laborers.

This implies a world with unlimited energy and natural resources?

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

#315

Post by rconti »

CamTin wrote: post #268
gimmeDatCheddar wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average working class American is financing their car. The average car payment is $500. That is way too much car, yet people are financing that. Over the average working career, this $500 per month represents a foregone multi-million dollar net worth at retirement. So the average working class American is poor or struggling for cash not because of income issues, but because of spending issues. We have a spending…

I can't find a way that $500 per month adds up to "multi-million dollar net worth". Even at a very optimistic 10% return rate, it comes to just over 1.1 million over thirty years. What assumptions are you making in your calculation to come up with 2million+ at retirement from $500 per month of savings?

... and how is spending $0 on transportation a reasonable solution, anyway?

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

#316

Post by CobrastanJorji »

pascalxus wrote: post #287
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.

SF spends 240 million dollars every year to help the homeless. That's more than most city's entire budget. The reason that money doesn't help anyone is because it won't go very far in a city where housing costs 2000$ per square foot. And it really doesn't need to be like this at all. It's an entirely man made disaster of colossal proportions. There's plenty of blame to go around. You can thank all the NIMBYs and coun…

> just look at the tiny house movement. Just imagine how much cheaper it would be if something like that was built but stackable.

Say, did you ever read or see "Ready Player One"?

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

#317

Post by leggomylibro »

laythea wrote: post #288

Hang on a second. Isn't the magical quality about life, is its ability to adapt? If the world is becoming full of this kind of job, we need as individuals to reject it, and adapt to other forms of income. Off course, if you let the corporations treat us like this, they will. And they are not at fault. It is us at fault for accepting it. We must not accept these forms of income. Easier said than done, I know. But, who…

Of course, it's so easy - there's no apprehension of the fallout from your decisions, no lingering self-doubt, no fear that maybe you contribute to the problem and self-advocacy might amount to petulance, no implicit duress from the question of where your food and shelter will come from.

I guess it might not be a bad metaphor, but I gotta say, your advice seems facile and sort of in poor taste from my point of view.

You're exhorting people to stand up and say 'this is not okay', but that additional burden shouldn't have to be borne solely by the people who are already shouldering the worst of the situation's negative externalities, should it?

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

#318

Post by dragonwriter »

mnemonicsloth wrote: post #309
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…

The problem with Marxism is that in many of the places where it's been implemented in earnest, it's killed millions of people. Think of Russia under Stalin, China under Mao, and Cambodia under Pol Pot. People try to rehabilitate Marxism every so often, but the problem of the murderous regime pops up again and again, for a simple reason: when the state arrogates to itself enough power to remake society according to so…

> The problem with Marxism is that in many of the places where it's been implemented in earnest, it's killed millions of people.

That’s the problem with Leninism.

The (biggest; there are others but this prevents even useful discussion of those) problem with Marxism is that people (even those who oppose Leninism and disbelieve everything else associated with it) accept Leninism’s propaganda that it is Marxism, rather than a system which adopts the rhetoric and stated end goals of Marxism, but abandons both it's mechanisms and explicit preconditions.

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

#320

Post by laythea »

marrone12 wrote: post #305
laythea wrote: post #288

Hang on a second. Isn't the magical quality about life, is its ability to adapt? If the world is becoming full of this kind of job, we need as individuals to reject it, and adapt to other forms of income. Off course, if you let the corporations treat us like this, they will. And they are not at fault. It is us at fault for accepting it. We must not accept these forms of income. Easier said than done, I know. But, who…

Not everyone has that kind of luxury. If you have hungry kids and a late car payment you sometimes just need a pay check.

I did not mean it like that. Jobs at all levels, have many options. A warehouse level job is very transferable. I know, because I spent years doing it.

Also, if your in that role, you can more easily move to different industries than say a Phd major is a specific subject. My point remains, it is up to the individual.

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