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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

#551

Post by Spooky23 »

wombatpm wrote: post #486
Spooky23 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of this problem is that the warehouse operations people de-risk the impact and accountability for these problems to the bodyshops that fulfill these roles. Companies like Amazon love temporary workforces because they have big capital investments in fulfillment centers that they cannot walk away from, and an employee workforce would attract union mobilization. IMO, the way to attack this is to increase the…

There already is. They pay more on an hourly basis for temporary workers. The body shop gets their cut first. Body shop charges $17/hr, pays $13/hr

The body shop adds value by taking on compliance costs and risks. Amazon is pretty well run, I’m sure the margins on the staffing company side are as tight as they can be.

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

#552

Post by basseq »

Let's say Amazon leadership is appalled at these conditions. Management by metric is working insofar as it goes, but you really didn't know how bad it was several layers down.

How would an organization identify something systemic like this? E.g., identifying that unexpected consequences had popped up and you'd created an environment where people were afraid even to speak up?

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

#553

Post by bbddg »

conanbatt wrote: post #540
bbddg wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might have had some effect but decline in Union membership and collective bargaining power are much more important. After all, we're seeing record profits and a massive transfer of wealth to the top 1%. If workers could effectively organize, the increase in workforce wouldn't matter.

Ridiculous, thats not how unions work. Look at the history of argentina, where unions have constitutional protections, and tell me thats what help grow the economy. Unions can only raise a workers wage in two ways: by increasing productivity (which they seldom do) or by restricting the amount of workers.

I don't really know anything about the situation in Argentina but I don't think Unions are an unequivocal good no matter what form they take. Unions in many cases have leadership that don't have the interest of the workers at heart. What I really mean is that workers organizing together and using collective bargaining is a proven way to increase worker conditions and pay.

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

#554

Post by conanbatt »

bbddg wrote: post #546
conanbatt wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exploitation model needs self-generating poverty. If it is lifting people out of poverty then it is destroying itself, as it will run out of the required poor people. You can argue its not going fast enough, but the direction is unequivocally upwards so far.

Well now you're conflating extreme poverty with poverty. There are millions of people living in poverty in the united states. And you don't really need someone to be in complete poverty to exploit them. Also, the direction currently is towards stagnating wages and growing wealth inequality.

> Well now you're conflating extreme poverty with poverty. There are millions of people living in poverty in the united states. And you don't really need someone to be in complete poverty to exploit them.

After extreme poverty ends, you get poverty to uplift and so on.

> Also, the direction currently is towards stagnating wages and growing wealth inequality.

The problem with such nice catchphrases that are repeated over and over by interest groups is that they are inaccurate, and often end up advocating for even higher inequality.

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

#555

Post by spenczar5 »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #544
spenczar5 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least one reason is that the stock has done so well. A typical software engineer hired 4 years ago is incredibly well compensated at Amazon because of this. Consider a mid-level software engineer hired 4 years ago, on April 16 2014, with a salary of $100k. A typical stock grant at hiring for a mid-level software engineer in 2014 might be $400k over 4 years, backloaded so most of it comes at the end; on April 16 20…

Anyone could have bought this stock if they would have known the price. Yes, the decision to join amazon turned out to be great money wise, but still doesn't explain why the top talent works there.

Hm, I don't understand what purchasing stock has to do with it. If someone bought the stock then they would own it. But that's not what happens when a company grants you stock - it's a promise to deliver you shares later.

If this hypothetical employee quit on April 10th, 2018, they would not get the 464 shares (== $668k) on April 16th, 2018. They also would probably not get a comparable offer if they quit to join Facegooglesoft. So, if they quit, they lose out on hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's enough to keep many people even if the work is unpleasant.

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

#556

Post by rectang »

conanbatt wrote: post #548
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.

Labor and capital are on the same side, they are both producers of wealth. You are barking at the wrong tree.

I look forward to capital peeing in a bottle in solidarity with labor. :)

Naturally capital and labor collaborate and both produce wealth. That doesn't mean their interests are 100% aligned.

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

#557

Post by bbddg »

conanbatt wrote: post #554
bbddg wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well now you're conflating extreme poverty with poverty. There are millions of people living in poverty in the united states. And you don't really need someone to be in complete poverty to exploit them. Also, the direction currently is towards stagnating wages and growing wealth inequality.

> Well now you're conflating extreme poverty with poverty. There are millions of people living in poverty in the united states. And you don't really need someone to be in complete poverty to exploit them. After extreme poverty ends, you get poverty to uplift and so on. > Also, the direction currently is towards stagnating wages and growing wealth inequality. The problem with such nice catchphrases that are repeated o…

> The problem with such nice catchphrases that are repeated over and over by interest groups is that they are inaccurate, and often end up advocating for even higher inequality.

What specifically is an "inaccurate catchphrase" in what I've said?

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

#558

Post by pascalxus »

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…

It's not like people's entire paycheck is going toward materialism. In the US, nationally, roughly 70% of consumer spending is essentials (more or less): housing, transportation and food.

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

#559

Post by cbhl »

Having to go down four flights of stairs to go to a bathroom is ridiculous.

I wonder if this is an unexpected side-effect of automating warehouses. Normally, bathrooms are required by OSHA, but the relevant code appears to dictate only the number of bathrooms required by the number of employees on a site[0].

Adding bathrooms to a building is an expensive retrofit; I can't imagine this situation getting better without regulation.

My inclination would be to try and lobby congress to require bathrooms within X feet of employees on every floor, or require Y bathrooms per Z square feet of space. (But what about edge cases? What do construction workers do in high rises?)

[0] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol5/xml/CFR-...

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