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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

#471

Post by ArchTypical »

fastball wrote: post #396
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

That was a result of the incorporation of one of these reserve armies. Over time, new centers of industry will be born to serve the decentralized burbs that aren't cost-efficient to serve by existing infrastructure and the cycle repeats. We just happen to be living in one part of the cycle.

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

#472

Post by delecti »

stone-monkey wrote: post #455
delecti wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it largely comes down to a few factors: Amazon does a lot of hiring, changing jobs is a hassle that many people won't do just because of momentum, and we naturally only hear about the very worst of what it's like to work at Amazon. If you keep hiring enough developers, enough of them will stick it out thanks to momentum (through possibly sub-optimal but not necessarily tortuous conditions) for long enough to…

>> I found out they have a very generous severance program if you know what to ask about. What do you mean? Are you referring to the severance you get if you leave on a PIP?

Yes, but you can also opt-in to that. I told my manager I was dissatisfied and thinking of leaving, he suggested I talk to HR about the pivot program. They then put me on a PIP so I could accept the severance option.

Also I had been on an actual PIP before and I'm pretty sure that option wasn't mentioned.

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

#473

Post by bezosisevil »

rectang wrote: post #441

We can't. Labor and capital need each other, but they are forever at odds. Good wages and working conditions can only be won through negotiating from strength. Modern America favors capital. Elections have consequences.

I assume you’re talking about the election of people like Obama, who visited and praised Amazon in 2013?

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

#474

Post by prostoalex »

aleksei wrote: post #325
prostoalex wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the people need to own the robots that do all the work What happens when a private party (or a competitive public party, like China) designs cheaper and more efficient robots? The conflict is explored in Ayn Rand's "Anthem", where the society is a collective owner of a candle factory and therefore resists advance of electricity, or Mike Judge's "Idiocracy", where half of the workers in the country are employed in v…

Then the Chinese also have robots? I haven't read those two works of fiction, maybe you could expand on what you think happens?

Society just ends up owning a bunch of obsolete tools whose products are of no interest to any consumer.

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

#475

Post by otakucode »

I am honestly quite surprised that Amazon warehouses haven't experienced a wave of workplace shootings. They're really a recipe for how to construct a place primed for them. During the 1990s there were several high-profile workplace shootings at US postal offices. Originally everyone presumed it was just isolated incidents, mentally ill people, etc. But in the years that followed, once people had calmed down and the situation could actually be analyzed, the truth was quite different.

The shootings had a cause. Those post offices had paired human beings with automated machines and slowly increased their expectation of performance of the humans to match the machines. They cut breaks, they expected humans to keep up with the machines (the machines would sort mail, for example, and kick out things its OCR scanners couldn't recognize for a human to deal with), and they made it clear that the humans weren't valuable employees... they were an annoying inefficiency in the system that hadn't been optimized away yet.

That puts people under immense pressure. And while some people might be able to handle immense pressure, it is fundamentally incorrect to expect large groups of people to handle it. Large groups will have people who will crack. This is as certain as gravity, and those who seek to ignore it just as ludicrous.

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

#476

Post by DanBC »

throwa_way_ wrote: post #453
rland wrote: post #424

Is this worth it? Is this worth having the ability to pick between 10,000 different toasters via internet and have them delivered to your doorstep in 2 days? Sometimes I look at society as a complete organ, with a hypothetical ability to make cohesive decisions for itself. And I think, it is making extremely self-destructive choices. All for the sake of satisfying the urge to buy more, at lower prices, with more conv…

Worth it for me, so I continue to buy stuff on Amazon. If the workers don't like it they can work elsewhere or start their own Amazon.

> If the workers don't like it they can work elsewhere

Note that the submitted article is from the UK, where the workers might not be able to work elsewhere, and where they may have had some element of compulsion through the current benefit system to apply for and take jobs at Amazon.

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

#477

Post by njarboe »

rland wrote: post #424

Is this worth it? Is this worth having the ability to pick between 10,000 different toasters via internet and have them delivered to your doorstep in 2 days? Sometimes I look at society as a complete organ, with a hypothetical ability to make cohesive decisions for itself. And I think, it is making extremely self-destructive choices. All for the sake of satisfying the urge to buy more, at lower prices, with more conv…

And for some reason one can only buy two sizes of socks. For shoe sizes 6-12 (regular) and 12-16 (large). A sock that fits 6 through 12 shoes sizes? Capitalism failure.

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

#478

Post by fastball »

komali2 wrote: post #447
fastball wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is getting a job not an option?

Do you think the only people on food stamps are the unemployed? But, Felony conviction, kids that need watching, physical disability, mental disability, age, lack of language skills, lack of any working skills, lack of available jobs for education level, lack of jobs at all, explicit or implicit racism, off the top of my head. If you think "laziness" belongs on the list, pm me and I'll send you a digital copy of "Evi…

All of those things make getting/holding a job harder.

None of them make it impossible.

I never claimed life is fair, but does unfairness really justify criminality?

Also, as the underlying discussion is "why might honest people need to steal food?", it's not very reasonable to include felony convictions as the first item on your list.

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

#479

Post by Lionsion »

manigandham wrote: post #400
hathawsh wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

I feel like that's pretty revisionist. For a very long time, shopping at Amazon was about price first, variety a close second, and convenience a very distant third. I doubt so many people would have developed a habit of shopping there so much if the advantages were truly "convenience and variety" first.

Amazon's prices have gotten much less competitive the last several years, which has disrupted the value proposition that caused many people to choose it.

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

#480

Post by wutbrodo »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #436
wutbrodo wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're thinking that people in the future will wonder why we weren't more parochial in our sphere of concerns? More precisely, they'll be morally shocked at the notion that we were too close to treating all humans as of equal moral worth, instead of prioritizing those that are located closer to us geographically? Don't get me wrong, I'm very aware that most moral systems have somewhat-principled reasons to priorit…

You act like we're putting in enormous efforts overseas to improve life, when we really aren't.

No, I'm not. You're projecting your overly simple-minded model of the economy and the world onto me.
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