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I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

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Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#41

Post by m0zg »

reaperducer wrote: post #34
m0zg wrote: post #25

I (and people I directly worked with) have been interviewed a couple of times by what one would call "mainstream press". Once by a NY Times columnist and another time by TechCrunch. The resulting articles bore very little semblance to what we said, omitted crucial facts, and contained the kinds of exaggerations that neither I nor any of the people interviewed would ever make. I'm talking "breaking the laws of physics…

I was going to ask if you contacted The Times about this. It used to take such things very seriously. Then after I did a search for the Times' ombudsman, I came across an article stating that it eliminated its Public Editor position in 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/public-editor/liz-spayd-f... While The Times is prolific in its corrections, all I can find now is this sentence: "Messages on news coverage ca…

What would be the point? We got our "free PR", and nobody reads retractions anyway.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#42

Post by jdietrich »

ajross wrote: post #18
brownbat wrote: post #5

I 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.

The Gell-Mann amnesia effect doesn't say "all news is bunkum", it says "the news media consistently make obvious errors when they report on physics, they probably make similar errors when they report on your field of expertise, so take what they say about other things with a pinch of salt". There's a world of difference between cynicism and scepticism.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#43

Post by toasterlovin »

anigbrowl wrote: post #16
vore wrote: post #7

The 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.

Citation needed.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#44

Post by ilaksh »

m0zg wrote: post #25

I (and people I directly worked with) have been interviewed a couple of times by what one would call "mainstream press". Once by a NY Times columnist and another time by TechCrunch. The resulting articles bore very little semblance to what we said, omitted crucial facts, and contained the kinds of exaggerations that neither I nor any of the people interviewed would ever make. I'm talking "breaking the laws of physics…

State propaganda is a key function of mainstream outlets like the New York Times. Same in all countries. People just grow up brainwashed into thinking that their country has made a break from history.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#45

Post by throwawayjava »

awkward wrote: post #8

I worked as a union picker for a warehouse in 2001 - I was just there until I went to college, but if I had stayed for a year the 12.50 an hour I was making would have been raised to 16.50, and subject to raises as I stayed longer. Nearly 20 years later, and under a tighter labor market, amazon has raised the minimum for pickers to $15 an hour. It's great that this guy likes his job, but I have no doubt that amazon h…

Anecdotal, but I have a pretty good before/after view on a community that got an Amazon fulfillment center.

As far as I can tell, there hasn't been much impact on wages in either direction in that particular local labor market. Without strong unions, the labor market keeps warehouse wages at "just high enough that you can have a slightly better life than what you could get working in the service industry". There's always excess supply because warehouse work -- although physically demanding -- is relatively accessible.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#46

Post by tw2019072089237 »

awkward wrote: post #8

I worked as a union picker for a warehouse in 2001 - I was just there until I went to college, but if I had stayed for a year the 12.50 an hour I was making would have been raised to 16.50, and subject to raises as I stayed longer. Nearly 20 years later, and under a tighter labor market, amazon has raised the minimum for pickers to $15 an hour. It's great that this guy likes his job, but I have no doubt that amazon h…

Meanwhile, over 6 years ago, when the economy had barely even started bouncing back, Walmart was paying me—and other newish employees with short tenure—over $17/hr for this type of work. But look at mainstream attitudes towards the two companies and try measuring opinion about willingness to say something like "I bought it at Walmart" vs "I bought it from Amazon".

There's more, though. And I write all this as a pro-social, anti-libertarian leftist:

The obsession with trying to "help" the workers in these jobs—and in industries like Uber—mirrors a lot of the arguments you'll see in the pro-life vs pro-choice debate. People are fond of pointing out that conservatives care disproportionately about unborn fetuses when measured against how willing conservatives are to let infants be thrown to the wolves after birth. I see the public outcry that something has to be done about these companies (so as to help their workers, but comparatively little care for what's in store for those workers after the movement's immediate goals are met) as the left's own paradox (to call it by a charitable term; "hypocrisy" if you're less worried about hurting anyone's feelings).

Shouldn't be surprising. Most "opinion" is accounted for as a bunch of dumb trends and fashion and idpol talking points more than it is arrived at by thoughtful consideration.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#47

Post by vharuck »

I like the author's take on warehouse work, probably because it squares with mine. I went to high school with almost entirely white peers, was going to college without having to take on any loans, and I got the warehouse job because my dad worked in the offices. I met people who lived in completely different environments and believed completely different things, and it was awesome.

One thing I don't agree with:

>If Bloodworth believes Amazon is inhumane for looking askance at a worker who asks for a sick day during his first three weeks on the job, then he and I live by different work ethics.

If a person's sick, they're sick. If they're faking, they're faking. Days with the company doesn't affect the ethics.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#48

Post by seibelj »

blueboo wrote: post #38
seraphsf wrote: post #12

I 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 s…

[flagged]

> Or it’s the kind of vile right-wing strawman-bestrewn ass-covering FUD typical of Quillete.

This is the precise type of commentary that is extremely off-putting to me. I consider myself a critical reader and what you wrote is the type of argument I immediately dismiss.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#49

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

frereubu wrote: post #3

As 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…

Firstly, this is factually incorrect. The biggest predictor was age, not education. Up to age 24, there was a huge preference for Remain. Up to age 35 there was a slightly smaller but still significant preference. Over 65 the preference swung the other way.

Education was significant, but not decisive.

But in fact the dirty secret of all politics is that democracy is decided almost entirely by the C2 political class. Everyone else votes fairly predictably. But with the right rhetoric, C2s can be persuaded to vote against the status quo - whatever that is.

The university educated class is most accurately represented by the B class, who tend to lean progressive and are more likely support pro-worker politics than other classes.

The A class - the true elite who own things - leans reactionary, and uses media ownership to propagate grudge and paranoia rhetoric against convenient victims (unions, foreigners, immigrants, non-conformists of more minor kinds) to herd the C2s into voting against their immediate interests.

That's exactly what happened with both Trump and the Brexit vote - although the Trump vote was complicated by the fact that Clinton ran a spectacularly ineffectual and tone deaf campaign which alienated C2s who might otherwise have supported her, and who would almost certainly have supported Sanders.

But other than that - the same class that created austerity as an institutionally abusive political dogma used its media leverage to channel anger away from itself and towards perennially reliable by-the-numbers xenophobia.

It's not a stretch to suggest Amazon benefits from the same pattern, albeit in a less partisan way. Bezos has made it clear he's interested in efficiency, and not in the working conditions in Amazon's warehouses.

Amazon as a company could easily afford to run an operation that's famous for being a world leader in humane employment - but it doesn't, because it chooses not to.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#50

Post by AnthonyMouse »

vore wrote: post #7

The 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…

> It's as plain as day that Amazon isn't keeping manual labor around out of the goodness of their hearts. There is no bottom line calculation other than the cost of manual labor vs the cost of automation, and no amount of deflection about the working conditions of warehouse work (whether better than Home Depot or not) is going to keep your job once the scale tips in the other direction.

Be that as it may, agitating for rules that make it more expensive to employ people can make the scale tip the other way sooner. It's not unreasonable to prefer a $15 job to a "$25 job" that promptly gets automated away because the automation threshold is currently e.g. $22 (and will be $19 in five years).

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