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Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#361

Post by icebraining »

sneak wrote: post #328
icebraining wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the libertarian's response would be that organizations like UL (which already does work for OSHA) would get hired by the company to certify their workplace, which would then serve as enticement for job candidates. This would essentially make job safety another "perk", like flex time and friday pizza - available to some, based on the scarcity of their skills.

As the “libertarian” (not my label) in question in this thread, the response is that use of violence or violent coercion is morally untenable. Spreading of information so that people can make choices: good Using sticks and guns and shackles to force people to do as you demand: bad Safety can be engineered. Do not bake something unsafe (state enforcement via violence) into the system.

As someone who would call myself left-libertarian, I have some sympathy for your position. The thing is that the whole society - including the very existence of Amazon - is currently predicated on state violence, and therefore focusing specifically on the small part that provides worker protections looks unseemly.

Not to mention that an opposition to state enforcement of minimum wages does not justify the claim that Amazon should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#362

Post by xapata »

jasonhansel wrote: post #181
dymk wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other system results in an efficient market?

Is "an efficient market" the only goal?

No. But an efficient market is the best technology we have to allocate society's assets. Maybe someday we'll discover a better technique.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#363

Post by C1sc0cat »

oceanplexian wrote: post #196
azernik wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Amazon can easily hire people at $15/hr at its current abysmal working conditions does not mean that they morally should . The market conditions let Amazon get away with it, and collective action changes market conditions.

Costco provides health insurance and pays its employees well, and employee satisfaction is high. Chick-fil-A pays its workers $17 an hour minimum and provides health insurance and benefits. There are plenty of other examples of successful businesses that pay above "market conditions". These places are also high on satisfaction and people are treated like human beings. The problem is working for a business owner who's…

That's not really the same job you would have to compare other Amazon with other warehouse workers (not that amazon works should not have good working conditions.

The Q is how does Amazon compare to similar Jobs and in the UK JB Sports seems to have similar problems with hundreds of workers taken to hospital over 4 years.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/29/140-jd-spor...

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#364

Post by sschueller »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #149
lallysingh wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sadly companies have found loop holes like forcing people into 1099 positions or just sub-contracting jobs to firms that then pay below minimum wage.

So you will find companies that claim they already pay way above minimum wage but it's just PR.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#365

Post by C1sc0cat »

dpwm wrote: post #279
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…

I was at a graduate careers fair in a city where Amazon had just opened offices. Naturally, Amazon had a stall at this careers fair. The person running their stall was telling an audience of maybe six or seven other people that Amazon was the kind of company where if you could find a path around their warehouse that would shave even a single second off a warehouse worker's journey, they'd make them walk it. The audie…

Um this is standard Time and Motion stuff from 1920's this is SOP for any factory production line going back a hundred years or more.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#366

Post by C1sc0cat »

povertyworld wrote: post #336

Oh, it's so nice to see all these rich tech guys are concerned about the plight of Amazon workers. Suppose if one of these Amazon workers applied to be a programmer at your company even though they didn't go to a top twenty school or have 5-7 years experience with the trendiest stack, but merely did a bootcamp, and published some apps on their own, would you hire them and spend your money (as opposed to Jeff Bezo's m…

I haven't seen any one in this debate saying anything like that.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#367

Post by dpwm »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #365
dpwm wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at a graduate careers fair in a city where Amazon had just opened offices. Naturally, Amazon had a stall at this careers fair. The person running their stall was telling an audience of maybe six or seven other people that Amazon was the kind of company where if you could find a path around their warehouse that would shave even a single second off a warehouse worker's journey, they'd make them walk it. The audie…

Um this is standard Time and Motion stuff from 1920's this is SOP for any factory production line going back a hundred years or more.

Yes, and the criticisms of Taylorism are fairly well-developed. In fact, a lot of the criticisms of Amazon's practices are much the same. With Amazon's level of data collection on individual warehouse and logistic workers, it puts them in a place that Taylorists of the 80s could only dream of.

At least in the UK, they've found a way to make sure that they are in no way directly financially responsible for any of the externalities of what their approach does to workers, chiefly by pulling tricks like having their workers hired on an agency basis through subcontractors.

I'm not saying this is wrong, it's just what they've done. They have spent the money and found a way to operate that is more efficient. It's what they do, and it's how they sold themselves to a group that included me.

I also found the whole thing to be a bit contradictory: software engineers at a multiple of the pay of warehouse engineers working on optimizing the warehouse that is probably almost near optimal.

Perhaps if I had been quicker-witted, I'd have asked if we found a way to make the software engineers working on shaving a second off the path around the warehouse more efficient, would they make them do it.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#368

Post by _khau »

rayiner wrote: post #288
anigbrowl wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh dear no. Capitalism is a miracle for people who are on the winning side, of the equation, it's awful for people who are not and are mostly trapped on the wrong side of that divide. As environmental degradation encroaches, that latter group will gradually swallow more and more people. It's not a matter of empathy vs rationality as you suggest, but of under what conditions empathic strategies are efficient and self-…

Capitalism has been a miracle for everyone, not just a few. It’s true that inequality has increased over the last 30 years: https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/bangladesh/income-distribut... . The income share of the top 10% has grown from 22% to 28%. And the share of the bottom 20% has dropped from 10% to 8%. But 8% of a number that’s 6x bigger is way better than 10% of a number that’s 1/6 the size.

> Capitalism has been a miracle for everyone, not just a few.

Capitalism has had demonstrably terrible effects for many people all over the world without the luck of being born in a country or even a social class with enough economic clout to dictate favourable terms in trade agreements.

The conflict and genocide in East Timor was driven by capitalist Indonesia (a US ally) and colonial greed. Of course this conflict was ignored at the time because it was more important to focus on the Khmer Rouge, so the US and its brand of capitalism could save face:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_invasion_of_East_Ti...

As was the privatisation of water supply in Bolivia that led to conflict and massacres:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_Water_War

Plus the US-backed militias and crackdowns in various South American nations to prop up and entrench its business interests:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars

These are just three examples. There are countless other examples of the destruction and death caused by capitalist policies all over the world. This kind of greed, corruption and harm is not limited to totalitarian states, they're just less reported on by western media. Deliberately so.

Calling it a 'miracle for everyone' is an obscenely narrow-minded claim.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#369

Post by ionised »

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.

That's the homo-economicus argument and it's fallen flat a great many times.

Humans act irrationally all the time.

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