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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

#671

Post by dang »

zelon88 wrote: post #435

> Amazon said it didn't time workers' toilet breaks... That means they set really high targets for middle-managers and then let them get creative with the rules. > ...and set its performance targets based on previous worker performance. That means they cherry pick their best performing employees and set global standards based on the top n%. > The company said it provided coaching to help people improve... That means…

Cheap outrage is great for upvotes, but what's the substance here? Factual basis? Commenters to this site need to do better than this.

This is not a defense of Amazon, and I probably feel similarly to most people who read HN. But that's no reason not to hold ourselves to a fair standard.

Commenters: if you're not in the mood to hold yourself to a fair standard, please comment somewhere else until you are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#673

Post by dang »

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.

Please don't post generic ideological rhetoric to Hacker News. The more generic it is, the less information it contains, and the more off-topic and predictable the discussion gets.

That's not a disagreement with your politics; we just know from long experience what these tangents turn into, and they're all the same.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16851723 and marked it off-topic.

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

#675

Post by dlwdlw »

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…

You might find the film Samsara quite interesting. It's a timeline documentary showing how people live all over the world. Timelapses show the interconnectedness of things that happen too slowly for us to appreciate. Like star trails.

The film evokes a sense of how things are connected and all the suffering we create due to a desire to alleviate suffering.

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

#676

Post by nnain »

phil248 wrote: post #450
Dylan16807 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can have both. Amazon isn't going to implode if they pay some extra pennies for reasonable working conditions.

Why would Amazon pay one more penny than they have to? To win a nice guys award? To get a warm, squishy feeling inside? There is precisely one solution to this problem, and it is us electing leaders who change the rules in favor of the working masses, and enforce those rules mercilessly against exploitative employers.

> To win a nice guys award? To get a warm, squishy feeling inside? Why not? There are plenty of well-natured, kind people in the world. The price of being not nice is quite high.

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

#677

Post by vm »

vm wrote: post #485
nordsieck wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern America favors capital The universe favors capital because capital is more mobile than labor.

This is changing in the software world. Software gives "labor" more scalability and leverage than ever before.

I was referring to software developers having greater leverage in the labor market. Writing useful software gives developers higher economic output for their labor than we’ve had in history. It also creates unique mobility opportunities for remote developers. It is changing the capital vs labor dynamic. This is true for a narrow part of the labor market, which is why I put quotes around the word labor.

Can’t edit my earlier comment but felt I should clarify.

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

#678

Post by tomaskafka »

conanbatt wrote: post #236
temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

The model said that

> large reserve of under-employed workers, or people who didn't previously participate in the labor force, is what enables the most exploitative jobs

This still holds.

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

#679

Post by lovich »

conanbatt wrote: post #663
lovich wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capital in the US currently seems more along the lines of private profits and socialized losses. You don't see labor getting handouts in the form of welfare and then pulling millions of dollars in bonuses the next year. Fighting capital is like fighting your brother for inheritance when your brother won the lottery, you are on welfare cause of a disability, and your brother decides to sue you for the family heirlooms…

> You don't see labor getting handouts in the form of welfare and then pulling millions of dollars in bonuses the next year. Depends on what you consider social expenditures in the us like food stamps, social programs, medicaid , medicare and social security. > Fighting capital is like fighting your brother for inheritance when your brother won the lottery, you are on welfare cause of a disability, and your brother d…

More competition has not lead to better conditions for workers. We are currently at such a low level of employment that economists don't know what the natural level of employment is anymore and this is still happening to employees.

You're argument that "they would have had it worse" assumes that that Amazon wouldn't have employees these people if they were only making billionaires instead of people worth 100s of billions. How is western society making more money and goods than ever but the average worker is doing worse while the richest are getting richer than ever?

Unfettered capitalism doesn't lead to all boats rising because eventually you run against hard limits like how many ISPs can run wires on telephone polls, or how many tons of freight can be physically moved from point a to point b. Someone will eventually take control of one of these natural monoplies and extract as much rent as possible from both employees and consumers unless they are forced to do otherwise.

To state that, in an era of less regulation than in America's golden age where we see the average citizen's life stagnating or even getting worse, we need even less regulation so that the people who are worth more than entire countries can compete better is at best putting your head in the sand and at worst being actively against your fellow man.

Not everyone deserves a fucking Lamborghini and steak every night with our current technology but they certainly don't deserve to have to choose between food and medicine or to have to piss in a fucking bottle to save their bosses a few dollars in exchange for not being made homeless

Edit:your point about the government in Seattle not helping out because they make more money from people asking for regulations is not something I am arguing against, as you certainly have a point there. I think the main problem is that most humans on an instinctual level would value a 1% gain in their resources infinitely higher than preventing a 50% loss in all of societys resources and so we end up with assholes everywhere trying their best to be the quoted example on Wikipedia about the tragedy of the commons

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

#680

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

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…

This is far from being unique to Amazon and from my experience constant pressures like these are prevalent in many low to mid-income paying jobs. I briefly worked as an Insurance Claims Representative for Farmer's Insurance. At the time, I lost my place, my car died and I was running low on funds so I had to take the first thing available. The job offered a free car and the first 4 weeks were spent in training. As someone who had previously only been exposed to the intricacies of white collar work, I found the whole experience to be quite eye-opening. Nearly every claims rep I met looked or acted as if they were chronically stressed, some hid it well while others wore it pretty plainly.

I later found out that they were always on edge because on any given day, one mistake could cost them their chance at a raise, bonus or any cost of living increase for the year. Farmer's had an elaborate points system used to determine eligibility for pay raises (basically cost-of-living increases). We were mobile and had to investigate 3 claims per day without exception. Our daily assignments and locations were algorithimically generated by very substandard software (didn't fully take into account variations in traffic over time and wasn't based on reliable, curent data in the first place). It was in Los Angeles, so traffic and distances between appointments could be immense. Yet, we weren't allowed any exceptions. If we didn't make one of our appointments, depending on the size of the claim, that could disqualify you from a bonus or pay raise. Too many (5-8 per year) could jeopardize your job. The same went for providing iaccurate estimates. So if you missed something (more realisistically paid out too much without trying to deny responsibility) on one flagship luxury or sports car (7 series BMW, S Mercedes, etc.), you'd likely lose your bonus. It's like every day is a chance for you to lose while I feel like for many of us here on HN, each day is a chance for us to earn a bonus.

UPS drivers are under the same pressure. That's why they leave packages outside or in the lobby of buildings. If they don't complete their algorithmically generated deliveries for the day, they're dinged. They can never question the software either. Customer service is another field with similar pressures. Being under that daily constant fear and pressure for such little reward must be so mentally taxing, like if one was still in the food chain

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