Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#101

Post by LanceH » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:31 PM UTC

EliRivers wrote: post #97

mdorazio wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The compensation should reflect the mental and physical stress they put people through. As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market. The fact that Amazon can easily hire as many workers as it wants at $15/hr says that they are paying their employees plenty already. It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for t…

Why should it reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market? What's the axiom upon which you stand to say that is the correct way of things?

The argument would be that they are rational actors and are choosing to be better off when they choose the job.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#102

Post by apendleton » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

reroute1 wrote: post #55

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I read an article last week about a guy who got fired for "unnecessary motion." (will update this comment with a link if I can dig it up.) Here's a story about a patent on a wristband that enables this kind of tracking: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/31/amazon-wa... It is humanly possible. As a teenager, I worked at UPS, where I was expected to stack boxes real-life-Tetris-style into a van at a…

I also did this and have younger friends who still do. I much preferred that job to a customer service one where I had to deal with angry people all day. I was also sorting via zip codes and enjoyed the physical work... I don't understand what people accepting a factory job expect. It is repetitive, non-creative, work. That is the idea.

I'm sure they expect it to be miserable, but expecting a miserable job and being happy about it needn't align. They might not have the necessary skills to be employable in not-miserable work, and might not have the necessary means or time to acquire those skills.

What it ultimately comes down to, I think, is: we have enough wealth as a society that if we wanted to, we could allocate resources and labor in such a way that nobody (even unskilled workers) would have to do work that miserable, at that pace, for that low compensation. But it's not an emergent property of the market, and we'd have to sacrifice some economic growth, and some payout for people higher up the ladder, to do it. We have to collectively decide whether that tradeoff is worth it, and these folks (understandably) are arguing that it is, and asking the rest of us to have some empathy.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#103

Post by dv_dt » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

enlyth wrote: post #15

I agree with the worker in the video, they should be treated as human beings. One of the issues is doing a simple, monotonous task every 8 seconds, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, without creating anything of value, is going to be dehumanizing and unfulfilling regardless. Robots carrying out this work would probably be for the best for everyone involved, although Amazon should do right by the workers carrying them ove…

Maybe the human work will shift to robot technicians, and how many blown servomotor assemblies or control boards you can swap out in an hour, but there will always be human standards that need help enforcing in some industries.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#104

Post by bduerst » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

ngold wrote: post #10

nerdjon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... it's happening. So either we continue to deny it isn't or we actually start those conversations now and figure out how we live in that world. And there is a correlation between actions like this and the desire to have a more automated workforce. Not saying that as blame because there are many other reasons and you can look at the reasons their jobs are so bad right now anyways. But we can't ignore it.

When this was science fiction it was assumed we could all work less, not fewer people working more for less pay.

Job demand isn't zero sum, but a function of supply. Idle worker time ends up unlocking new types of jobs that weren't previously possible (usually service related) and people fill them.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#105

Post by marcusverus » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

fao_ wrote: post #47

jerf wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeff's net worth isn't in cash. It's going to be affected much more strangely than your analysis suggests. If Amazon has to raise its labor costs that much, Wall Street will react in a way that is difficult to predict the magnitude, but easy to predict the direction. Normally I'd suggest analyzing that 13.2B in terms of the profits of the company, which for instance last Jan 2019 was ~$3 billion, which if projected o…

If a company cannot pay it's workers properly then, to be honest, it really shouldn't exist.

Reducing demand for labor to increase wages? What could go wrong?

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#106

Post by theothermkn » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #49

enlyth wrote: post #15

I agree with the worker in the video, they should be treated as human beings. One of the issues is doing a simple, monotonous task every 8 seconds, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, without creating anything of value, is going to be dehumanizing and unfulfilling regardless. Robots carrying out this work would probably be for the best for everyone involved, although Amazon should do right by the workers carrying them ove…

> The compensation should reflect the mental and physical stress they put people through. As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market. The fact that Amazon can easily hire as many workers as it wants at $15/hr says that they are paying their employees plenty already. It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for t…

> As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market.

The odiousness of the use of the word "should" has been pointed out elsewhere, and I reiterate it, but there is another point to be made about this analysis: It neglects that Amazon is a monopsony or near-monopsony. As Amazon replaces other supply chains, the demand for supply-chain labor is increasingly concentrated in one buyer of labor, Amazon. We should reasonably expect a distortion in the market to occur wherein Amazon leverages their power to either reduce wages or demand more labor for the equivalent wage.

In effect, the market conditions to which the OP appeals are eroded away by Amazon's cornering of this sector of the labor market. $15/hr may be good PR, but it's not a "fair" or "market" wage if Amazon can just burn through employees with adverse working conditions (ostensibly valued at a higher rate in a real market) because of their position as the sole buyer of labor.

If we're going to apply market theory to this, we have to go all the way, and not just stop when it suits our purposes.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#107

Post by EliRivers » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

tryptophan wrote: post #100

EliRivers wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market? What's the axiom upon which you stand to say that is the correct way of things?

If wages are not set by a market, ie not supply and demand, they will be mispriced. Mice-pricing represents a loss of efficiency in the economy, and makes everyone worse off over time. If wages were set lower than equilibrium, obviously the workers would be lose out on this. If wages were set above equilibrium, the consumers would lose out due to the higher costs being transferred over to them. The market price repre…

"makes everyone worse off"

Sounds like this axiom then, is some kind of utilitarian functions; the idea is to do whatever makes the most people better off, in aggregate? That it's ok to screw over someone if a greater amount of benefit then goes to someone else.

I'm not convinced, however, that an efficient market is the same as this utilitarianism. Do you have any evidence that efficient markets produce the best outcome for the most people overall?

Seems to me that an efficient market could easily consist of a large underclass barely staying alive; why would the most efficient market not have everyone in that situation? Surely that would be perfect efficiency; the entire population being paid just enough to keep going? No surplus, no excess; surely that's far more efficient - but that's in direct conflict with the idea of making everyone better off and giving everyone a nicer life.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#108

Post by rstupek » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

qwsxyh wrote: post #92

rstupek wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one in this thread made any jokes about the situation and characterizing the comments as such is disingenuous.

> Cue Amazon putting in more robots!

That wasn't a joke it was a statement of the reality of the situation which is that the labor performed by the people striking will likely be moved to automation, eliminating the job entirely.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#109

Post by fwip » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

somethoughts wrote: post #98

mdorazio wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The compensation should reflect the mental and physical stress they put people through. As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market. The fact that Amazon can easily hire as many workers as it wants at $15/hr says that they are paying their employees plenty already. It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for t…

Tangentially one thing that I've pondered is the the Amazon Fulfillment Centers are typically on the periphery exurban areas such that they will have the benefits of the minimum wage legislation of the urban area but that wage will go a lot farther and they will have a lot shorter commute then if they were located in the urban area itself as a normal retail job would. That seems smart. For instance, $15 an hour goes…

Stockton, CA is not subject to San Francisco minimum wage laws.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#110

Post by EliRivers » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

LanceH wrote: post #101

EliRivers wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market? What's the axiom upon which you stand to say that is the correct way of things?

The argument would be that they are rational actors and are choosing to be better off when they choose the job.

Is that an axiom that leads to the principle that their wages should reflect supply and demand? A moral judgement is being made here when someone says this is how things should be, this is what's right.