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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

#371

Post by learc83 »

gimmeDatCheddar wrote: post #304
CJefferson wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've replied to multiple posts about these poor people with $500 month car financing. Prove it. And show what they should be doing instead.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2016/06... Instead, buy a used car for $5,000 to $10,000 and use it. Invest the rest. Hell, financing a car for $200 and investing the rest would be much better than financing $500 worth of car per month.

The OP said prove it. You didn't do that.

Poor people aren't financing cars for $500 a month. $500 a month is the average monthly cost for a new car loan. Poor people aren't financing cars for that much.

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

#372

Post by CamTin »

gimmeDatCheddar wrote: post #306
CamTin wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

$500 a month is $6000 a year. $6000 a year invested from 26 to 66 at 10% interest per year is $2,921,110.87. At 12% it's $5,154,854.34. Keep in mind this is just from a single decision the average person is making.

Ok so you're assuming 40 years instead of 30. That's where the discrepancy is. Thank you for clarifying.

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

#373

Post by graeme »

wutbrodo wrote: post #308
vkou wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The model of exploitation they have cannot possible account for that. No, what accounts for that is access to incredibly cheap energy, in the form of fossil fuels and electrification. Energy is what lifted people out of poverty, not any of that other nonsense. Without coal, oil, and hydro power, most of us would still be subsistence peasants, regardless of whether or not we would live in Communism, Feudalism, Capit…

Out of curiosity, what is your model for the dramatic examples of India and China, which were faced with relative stagnation and incredibly dire, largely-intractable poverty for decades after WWII; followed by liberalizing (incrementally) their markets and explosive growth+massive declines in extreme poverty thereafter? I don't know a ton about the economic history of these two countries, but prima facie this seems t…

Energy wasn't sufficient, but it likely was necessary. That said, the energy was lying around all through history, so something exogenous got people to use it. And to develop the technology to do so.

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

#374

Post by xenostar »

laythea wrote: post #312
decebalus1 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty sure he means to wipe out your career within the company.

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

#375

Post by avoutthere »

wenc wrote: post #212

It seems that everyone is assuming that the allegations in the article are true, and are commenting based on that assumption. But are they true? Can someone corroborate? p.s. the reason I ask is because things are often more complex than a simple narrative would have you believe, and it's worthwhile thinking about what's actually going on rather than just taking in a narrative without questioning it.

I personally know a number of Amazon warehouse workers and none of them consider the workplace to be harsh. This article smacks of a smear campaign. Note the timing with this piece: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-13/oracle-is...

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

#376

Post by hathawsh »

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.

What's mysterious for me is just how much less Costco charges for staples than Amazon does. For example, for Honey Bunches of Oats cereal, Costco charges $0.15 per ounce (if you buy it locally), while Amazon charges $0.52 per ounce. Sometimes Costco even cuts 25% off that price. Bezos has a very long way to go if he wants to conquer that market!

https://www.costco.com/Post-Honey-Bunches-of-Oats-with-Almon...

https://smile.amazon.com/Honey-Bunches-Oats-Almonds-14-5-Oun...

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

#377

Post by castle-bravo »

knieveltech wrote: post #285
GuB-42 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is completely true. In shitty countries, most people have a "job" working for the local dictator. They are exploited by force. It works because most work is just manual labor, they don't need highly skilled, well educated workers. It is not the case in developed countries. For example, we don't increase food production by just adding more farmers with hand tools. We have mechanical engineers making m…

Please explain this "need" for exploitative jobs. Edit: No, I'm serious, I want someone to supply an internally consistent rationale that explains why corporations or society in general requires someone getting fucked over to function.

I think what the parent post is saying is that exploitative labour practices enable the existence of elites with enough leisure time to create philosophical and technological progress. It's basically the argument that there would be no great classical civilization without slavery, so slavery is justified by the achievements of the civilizations that used it.

I would like to think that in the 21st century we could have idleness for many, and abusive exploitation for none.

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

#378

Post by Domenic_S »

ItsMe000001 wrote: post #201
Domenic_S wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.c…

You're moving the goalposts. The person I replied to implied that people are literally dying in the gutters, so of course future humans will look at us with genuine confusion -- who steps over a dying person in the street? How does that make sense? It trivializes the problem and handwaves away the millions of people who help the poor/homeless, and the millions of dollars we spend on that.

If future historians look at any part of this with confusion, it'll be the part where we ignore mental health and think dumping cash/housing/whatever on a person will solve everything.

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

#379

Post by burke »

wutbrodo wrote: post #354
burke wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Americans also need to do better Blaming any problem of this magnitude on individuals is not reasonable. There's a systemic pressure toward overspending through advertising, etc., and we've created a society where many people make an amount of money, that, if spent "wisely", procures a stressful and unfulfilling existence. Clearly Marxism is not the right solution: our system isn't inherently and completely broken,…

> Blaming any problem of this magnitude on individuals is not reasonable. This is just anecdotal, but I see this a LOT. The stubborn insistence that blame is paramount in any discussion and that the world should be made fair before action can be taken to improve one's life is a pretty substantial barrier to said improvement. Sometimes the deck is stacked, and working on unstacking the deck can happen in parallel with…

I think my actual position here is a little more nuanced than it came across before, and I pretty much agree with you.

I find it silly to blame individuals (if only they would do better!). The law of large numbers applied to these cases guarantees that there is a systemic issue, not an individual one — however — I think this sort of "you all should do better!" campaign can be a perfectly viable solution to a systemic issue in some cases, if it can effectively shift enough mindsets to turn a cultural tide.

Blame is a ridiculous concept when talking about large-scale social dynamics, and effectively shuts down the search for any systemic adjustment that would constitute a fix.

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

#380

Post by vkou »

graeme wrote: post #373
wutbrodo wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what is your model for the dramatic examples of India and China, which were faced with relative stagnation and incredibly dire, largely-intractable poverty for decades after WWII; followed by liberalizing (incrementally) their markets and explosive growth+massive declines in extreme poverty thereafter? I don't know a ton about the economic history of these two countries, but prima facie this seems t…

Energy wasn't sufficient, but it likely was necessary. That said, the energy was lying around all through history, so something exogenous got people to use it. And to develop the technology to do so.

> so something exogenous got people to use it. And to develop the technology to do so.

That was James Watt's steam engine, which was efficient at turning combustion into mechanical motion, and it was happenstance that it was invented in 1780, and not 1580, or 1980. People didn't suddenly develop a need to move heavy things in 1780 - it came around then because of advances in steelwork, precision manufacturing, and general refinement of the idea (Such engines were around for over a century, but were not compact, or efficient enough to be very useful.)

All of a sudden, the labour of a coal miner was enough to feed a 10, then a 50, then a 100 horse-power engine. It was the AGI of its era.

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