Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#141

Post by LeifCarrotson » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 9:19 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…

The market equilibrium price may be the most efficient, but efficiency doesn't care about morals and ethics and "shoulds".

Human beings should be treated humanely, ascribed intrinsic value, and moral considerations should be applied to interactions with them. Neither economics nor physics cares about human rights, but systems can be built to accommodate other value systems than the defaults that stem from raw theory.

Maybe wages set above equilibrium will result in consumers losing out. That's inefficient, but not necessarily immoral. I strongly believe that utility functions are not evenly distributed. Giving Jeff Bezos $1B and 100k workers $10,000 each is not as good as an outcome where Jeff gets $500M and workers get $15,000 each; it's not even as good as Jeff getting $400M and workers still getting $15,000 each.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#142

Post by viraptor » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 9:21 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…

"The market" is not intelligent, moral, or nice to people. "The market" decided that slaves are a pretty efficient way of farming. You can hate the game not the player, but the player is still responsible at some point.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#143

Post by matz1 » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

just_myles wrote: post #121

matz1 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is appeal to empathy is imo ineffective.

What do you mean? From an approach perspective? Shouldn't the first thing you do to understand the problem is to see it from the other persons perspective? Empathy is not the end all be all. It's a start.

I'm criticizing the approach. Government is the only entity more powerful than amazon. You want change ? Imo more effective to do it through government compared with advocating boycott.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#144

Post by capkutay » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

Slightly unrelated but there is something weirdly consistent about how Amazon treats their workers and people who have to work with them. I remember just exhibiting an AWS conference was the most time-intensive grueling event I've ever worked in the tech industry.

Obviously not as hard as a factory-working job, but they hold the only event in the industry that has you working from 7 am to 7 pm w/ no break if you want to exhibit.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#145

Post by wutbrodo » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #78

Someone1234 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As automation keeps on improving and productivity gets more centralized will there be a shortage of jobs? The above poster makes a fair point that this is work well suited to automation. In the broader sense with retail closing and Amazon taking market share, centralizing productivity (i.e. reducing retail jobs to fewer picker jobs), and then automating those fewer jobs away entirely, are we going to have a hole in s…

No, because job demand is not a zero-sum game but a function of supply. For every job that gets "destroyed" by technology, several new ones are created. The problem is we, as humans, are terrible at predicting the future - for example, try explaining a mobile app developer job to someone thirty years ago in 1989. Now try imagine what jobs we will have 30 years from now, keeping in mind how off a person in 1989 would…

I don't think a mobile app developer would be too difficult to explain to someone from the 80s: they already understood the concept of computer programmers and software, and "everyone has a pocket computer" existed for decades in science fiction by that time.

A better analogy would be explaining something like social media consultants (or for that matter, social media influencers). Hell, _I_ still don't understand the user behavior underpinning the social media economy, and I've lived in it for a decade.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#146

Post by lallysingh » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 9:24 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…

> It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for their labor practices rather than demonizing the market conditions that have led to Amazon warehouses being a place people are willing to work.

That's about as useful a statement as "Thoughts and prayers."

To change the labor market you go after the parties you can affect. Amazon is one. There are many others on the demand side. Retaining the workforce would be a much lower % return for the investment.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#147

Post by untog » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #138

JudgeWapner wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for Why does it bother you when people empathize with the poor and castigate billion dollar corporations that don't even allow employees enough time to urinate without it harming the employees metrics making them slip towards the back of the rank and closer to being fired? That bothers you ...think about that.

While I voted you up for the general point, I also think that perhaps cutting off the parent quote where you did is a little unfair: > rather than demonizing the market conditions that have led to Amazon warehouses being a place people are willing to work. It's appropriate to "demonize" Amazon, but isn't that observation also correct? Amazon's taking advantage of desperate people, and no matter the job market conditi…

Both observations are correct. There's no need for the "rather than" either/or the OP presented, though. We can protest both.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#148

Post by rpvnwnkl » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #140

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…

> As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market. The market has no moral compass. If you decide that the market dictates what we should do, then your actions will reflect the morals of the market, i.e., none. Supply and demand is a statement of what "is", not what "should be". To some approximation.

It looks like you’re both arguing for the same thing: a higher federal minimum wage.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#149

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #146

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…

> It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for their labor practices rather than demonizing the market conditions that have led to Amazon warehouses being a place people are willing to work. That's about as useful a statement as "Thoughts and prayers." To change the labor market you go after the parties you can affect. Amazon is one. There are many others on the demand side. Retaining the workforce…

Or you just raise the minimum wage. We arrived at this point because those with money use it to influence government to their exclusive benefit.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#150

Post by reroute1 » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

apendleton wrote: post #102

reroute1 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

OK but I'm saying I wasn't miserable and it was a better job than working retail to me.

I agree it would be great to divide resources and labor in a more intelligent way I'm very open to ideas, but for now the reality is that some jobs are shitty and some are far better. And all the perks and benefits tend to come through hard to attain and coveted jobs. In my opinion you can't just create a system of equality, true equality will never exist. So why not just let it play out naturally? Drawing a line and effectively taking from people higher up is an astonishingly difficult line to draw and the overhead from a change like that could be devastating in itself, especially considering how Govt's are run in general.