Lots of interesting and worthwhile detail, none of which undermines reporting about what goes on in warehouses in which the author does not work, nor does it undermine the argument that paying $30,000 a year for full time work in California is only possible because America maintains a permanent underclass willing to work for next to nothing.
I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento
11–20 of 289 posts
Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento
#12I love this article. It’s so hard to find moderate voices, especially when algorithmic curation tends to surface outrage first.
As the author puts it:
“I don’t object to journalists writing about the trials and tribulations of Amazon employees. I only wish they would do so fairly.
Just because a journalist has found an Amazon employee somewhere who got sprayed with bear repellant, that doesn’t mean Amazon employees spend their days in mortal fear of a chemical attack.
...we need fair-minded and accurate reporting about the companies we patronize, not scaremongering polemics preaching a black-and-white gospel of tyranny and exploitation. ”
Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento
#13John Oliver did not say that Amazon had an employee die. John Oliver started off talking about Amazon and then switched the discussion to the companies trying to keep up with Amazon (in the order fulfillment business) which is where said death occurred. These competitors apparently have far worse employee treatment than Amazon but claim they have to in order to keep prices down due to Amazon's efficiency.
I believe the specific incident is xpo logistics
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/21/business/preg...
For example, last October, a 58-year-old woman died of cardiac arrest on the warehouse floor after complaining to colleagues that she felt sick, according to a police report and current and former XPO employees. In Facebook posts at the time and in recent interviews, employees said supervisors told them to keep working as the woman lay dead.
Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento
#14> or that workers somewhere in Iceland (360,000) have been required to work around a fallen co-worker. But neither of these things, if they happened, would be proof that working conditions in Luxembourg or Iceland are appalling.
They would however be proof that working conditions in a company in Iceland are appalling.
Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento
#15I especially liked the points about how often we vary our criticism of journalism based on the topic. Reminded me a lot of Gell Mann amnesia, which I catch myself suffering from a little too often: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
This is great, we all do this too.
Even when you try not to you’re still bombarded with ‘news’ all the time and can only invest so much cognitive effort to each. So we end up deferring so much of common knowledge to news sites. Only a small percentage of those are trained journalists with time and budgets.
Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento
#16The author seems to very much worry that negative press is going to be the cause of him losing his job due to automation: >Just about every job in my sortation center could probably be done by a robot. In fact, it amazes me that Amazon hasn’t simply automated the entire facility. [...] If I had to guess, I’d say that Amazon continues to employ lots of human beings because, by putting money into the pockets of working…
About what I'd expect from Quillette, which publishes articles on phrenology and calls it science.
Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento
#17As David Runciman has pointed out in his book How Democracy Ends and on the Talking Politics podcast - https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/blog/2017/71-how-demo... - if you could only ask one question of someone you'd never met before, which would give you the best possibility of guessing whether they'd voted for Brexit, it would be whether they went to university (Remain) or not (Leave). He argues that, in the UK…
I think when it comes down to it labor conditions are in the details, and it depends on the work. External pressure can help workers get a better deal, but often, especially if there is a collective bargaining agreement in place, coverage that's more salacious than accurate can harm their ability to negotiate.
It's like the guy who had the made up story about Foxconn on NPR, with whole bits about how they were flagrantly violating child labor law. It doesn't mean conditions at Foxconn are good, but the lack of accuracy means the company can't and won't make concessions where there's a real problem.
Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento
#18I especially liked the points about how often we vary our criticism of journalism based on the topic. Reminded me a lot of Gell Mann amnesia, which I catch myself suffering from a little too often: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
The Gell-Mann thing is dangerous pseudo science, stay away. It's not even invented by a scientist. It's the excuse people go to to disbelieve something they see in coverage, or to win arguments about "the media" or "fake news". If you want to dismiss something as a falsehood, you have to do it with evidence, not quips. This article is an excellent example.
Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento
#19> or that workers somewhere in Iceland (360,000) have been required to work around a fallen co-worker. But neither of these things, if they happened, would be proof that working conditions in Luxembourg or Iceland are appalling. They would however be proof that working conditions in a company in Iceland are appalling.
Not really, since they are single events you don't know anything about the frequency and how it compares to the frequency in other locations.
The law of large number causes unusual events to happen every day, which means the more globally your news operates the more freak events you can accumulate. Your town newspaper regularly reporting that someone had to work next to a corpse would be concerning. BBC world news reporting that this happened somewhere in the world might be statistical blips.
Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento
#20I especially liked the points about how often we vary our criticism of journalism based on the topic. Reminded me a lot of Gell Mann amnesia, which I catch myself suffering from a little too often: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
The Gell-Mann thing is dangerous pseudo science, stay away. It's not even invented by a scientist. It's the excuse people go to to disbelieve something they see in coverage, or to win arguments about "the media" or "fake news". If you want to dismiss something as a falsehood, you have to do it with evidence, not quips. This article is an excellent example.
Most fallacies weren’t coined by scientists, they were coined by philosophers. This one was coined by a writer. That makes it intrinsically invalid?
Your criticisms of the effect are pretty vague, can you give an example here where it’s been misapplied?