That's the future of the low paid work.
US poultry workers wear diapers on job over lack of bathroom breaks – report https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/12/poultry-work...
Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks
391–400 of 721 posts
Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bezos. Jeff Bezos is the reason why Amazon treats workers they way they do. Compared to other tech giants, Amazon is incredibly anti-employee. Look at how their stocks vest. I worked at Microsoft during Balmer's reign. The founder/CEO's attitude dictates the work culture. And causes harm if it's bad. I live in Seattle and often hear this joke: Being an Amazon customer is the best. An investor is great. An employee no…
Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for software engineers. Amazon is a highly successful company with significant anticipate growth still to come. All that success doesn't come without talent. So maybe not stupid, maybe just irrational? Tech companies in general, and Amazon in particular, are high…
Not to offend you or your work, but IMO Amazon makes the worst software out of all the big tech companies. I think that this is related to their ability to attract and retain talent due to their poor work culture.
Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bezos. Jeff Bezos is the reason why Amazon treats workers they way they do. Compared to other tech giants, Amazon is incredibly anti-employee. Look at how their stocks vest. I worked at Microsoft during Balmer's reign. The founder/CEO's attitude dictates the work culture. And causes harm if it's bad. I live in Seattle and often hear this joke: Being an Amazon customer is the best. An investor is great. An employee no…
Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for software engineers. Amazon is a highly successful company with significant anticipate growth still to come. All that success doesn't come without talent. So maybe not stupid, maybe just irrational? Tech companies in general, and Amazon in particular, are high…
How professional technologists are treated by their giant tech employer is utterly orthogonal to how lower-skilled, hourly warehouse workers are treated by the same company.
Why do technologists reliably chime in with completely irrelevant details of a technologist's experience of working for a tech company, in response to articles talking about how poorly those companies treat their non-technologist staff?
What does the one have to do with the other? "Amazon can't be all bad, if they aren't abusing (some of) the subset of their workforce that can meaningfully vote with its feet"?
EDIT: not singling you out specifically, but you did the thing here, so you get the follow-up.
Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks
#394Long-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…
Why shouldn't we be upset about long-haul truckers peeing in bottles? That seems inhumane to me as well.
it's not just inhumane, it's extremely dangerous. I don't want to be driving on the road while the guy handling a 10 tonne truck next to me is concentrating on pissing in a bottle.
I'd rather pay the external costs, i.e. an extra few pennies on my delivery and/or wait a day extra, this is exactly why we need regulation in these spaces.
Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for software engineers. Amazon is a highly successful company with significant anticipate growth still to come. All that success doesn't come without talent. So maybe not stupid, maybe just irrational? Tech companies in general, and Amazon in particular, are high…
The people in my recent college graduating class who were planning on going to Amazon for software engineering were going there with a plan to burnout after 2-3 years and take their experience elsewhere. It was seen as worth it for the money + resume, even knowing those years would suck.
Bit like been a lawyer for one of the big firms.
They work you like a dog but proof that you can 'graduate' from them gets you better offers afterwards.
Crazy system when you think about it.
Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please, the world had 94% extreme poverty in their time, and its down to less than 10%. The model of exploitation they have cannot possible account for that. I have tremendous sympathy for the empathic pain they had by seeing those levels of exploitation. Das Kapital's first volume is basically 50% accounts of child labor and exploitation. But they had no way to know that when the state holds the capital the results…
>had marx seen the soviet union at its prime he would have probably revised his own theory. Actually I don't think so. Even Marx saw that socialism was a stage of history which followed from capitalism. In the same way that feudalism's aristocracy provides the conditions which create a merchant class that eventually overthrows the aristocracy, Marx sees capitalism and capitalists as providing the conditions which cre…
You don't think stagnation in wages can be attributed to the massive increase in women in the workforce?
Supply and demand, after all.
Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for software engineers. Amazon is a highly successful company with significant anticipate growth still to come. All that success doesn't come without talent. So maybe not stupid, maybe just irrational? Tech companies in general, and Amazon in particular, are high…
Not to offend you or your work, but IMO Amazon makes the worst software out of all the big tech companies. I think that this is related to their ability to attract and retain talent due to their poor work culture.
What software specifically? The AWS cloud is still the leader in most products.
Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks
#398My 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…
Well, Marx and Engels did accurately identify that a large reserve of under-employed workers, or people who didn't previously participate in the labor force, is what enables the most exploitative jobs. All necessities in life cost money: food, housing, childcare, healthcare; and those in the most precarious social positions are the people most willing to accept abusive employment for reasons directly tied to their su…
It's interesting because Marx was writing in a time where automation was considered to even more imminent than it is today. Most intellectuals of the time were of the opinion that work weeks would reduce to 20 hours in a few decades, and people would live in leisure.
One thing Marx got right was this: He said that as long as Capitalism is the dominant system, there will always be full-time employment for the masses. There will be new jobs created in new fields which are far removed from producing goods(jobs like advertising, insurance, etc.). Marx thought that humans as a whole will never work for significantly fewer hours as long as capitalism exists.
Incidentally, Marx was vehemently opposed to things like Universal Healthcare, better Labour laws, Mandatory Vacation and a higher minimum wage. He famously said that if these things were considered Marxist, he himself was 'not a Marxist'. The reason? Because these measures are beneficial to capitalism in the long run because workers are more likely to stay working under a capitalist as their life is bearable. When conditions deteriorate, that is the time that workers are going to revolt and try to own the means of production.
So in reality most of the stuff liberals advocate like better pay and healthcare are decidedly anti-marxist and pro-capitalist. It is opposed by some corporations because they care more about short term profits rather than the long term sustenance of capitalism.
Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks
#399I stopped buying from Amazon a few years ago, the constant background noise of the way they treat their staff.
When I was young I worked in warehouses and it was hard, tiring work but the management by and large treat you like a human being.
We occasionally use Amazon at work (not my choice) and very often I can get a better price for something from aria, scan or ebuyer anyway.
Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks
#400Are 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://…
Amazon is about convenience and variety first, followed closely by price. If you want to drive to Costco and buy the bulk-version of the few choices they have then yes they will be much cheaper.