It's a shame that there aren't unions in China and the United States.
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine
31–40 of 209 posts
Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine
#32It strikes me that these sort of manual warehouse picking jobs will be completely gone in a few years as robots automate the picking process (as seen here with Diapers.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zXOW6v0c8s )
Also check out this excellent TEDx talk:
The Hidden World of Box Packaging
http://www.ted.com/talks/mick_mountz_the_hidden_world_of_box...
Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unions are disastrous for the competitiveness of a company on the global market. We do need worker protections of some form (perhaps greater informational transparency about working conditions would help?), we don't need the techniques that unions use to obtain unsustainably high wages for their workers.
I'm not a big fan of unions in general (especially with regards to years = seniority in pay & firing), but on ergonomics I'm with them. It doesn't cost much to implement the warehouse in an ergonomic way, but clearly this company and many like it aren't doing that at all. That has a really important effect on the difficulty of the job.
well... it costs them something more than it cost to have it the way it is now, and since they don't have to pay for the effect on the workers working in the non-ergonomic warehouse, what's the point? If they had to pay for the health/welfare of their workers directly, they'd have an incentive to ergonimicize the place.
Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another less extreme alternative to soviet communism is a unionized workforce similar to what we had in the US 30 years ago before Democrats gave up the fight and American capitalists started shipping jobs overseas in order to break up unions.
Why is this guy being downvoted? If automation were so imminent, then why weren't the robots brought in five or ten years earlier? Why did business interests work so hard for China to get "most favored nation" trading status during the Clinton administration? Why do people go on and on about the human capital of China (iPhone factories and so forth) if not for the assembly-line grunt work?
He's being downvoted because knee-jerk unionism is bad for discussion, just as any other kind of knee-jerk politics is bad for discussion.
Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine
#35If you ever find yourself in a situation where static electricity is a problem as in this article, find a regular wooden pencil, break it in half, sharpen both ends and then blunt them a bit so they don't poke you. As you approach the metal object, touch the end of the pencil to it first. Make sure you are in good contact with the other end. The graphite "lead" is a conductor. You won't feel the shock.
Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine
#36I worked at a company developing the warehouse management software. This was back in the mid '90s, but we didn't have a single customer that ran his warehouse like the one in the article. Picking is a crappy job, and everyone knows it, so pickers weren't expected to move too fast. If you showed up to work for a few weeks as a picker you'd get promoted to another position. Most of the people who got hired were ex-cons…
I would guess that the current economic climate provides an incentive for management to push workers harder than before, since there's a greater pool of replacements and a worse fate awaiting those who can't keep up.
Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine
#37It strikes me that these sort of manual warehouse picking jobs will be completely gone in a few years as robots automate the picking process (as seen here with Diapers.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zXOW6v0c8s )
Diapers is not a seasonal business. The problem with full automation is that your capacity has to be whatever peak load is - and peak load can be two orders of magnitude above your normal steady-state. That's a lot of robots sitting around doing nothing, whereas manual labor can be just as seasonal as the demand they are meant to fulfill.
Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> costs of corporate capitalism But under non-capitalist systems such as in the USSR you were machine gunned or bayoneted for refusing to work (starting with the Kronstadt Rebellion and ending with Solidarity), and had no option to quit or leave the country. Capitalism hasn't yet completely eradicated all drudgery from the world, but Mother Jones isn't about to acknowledge that it's better that 4000 marginal workers…
But under non-capitalist systems such as in the USSR you were machine gunned or bayoneted for refusing to work (starting with the Kronstadt Rebellion and ending with Solidarity), and had no option to quit or leave the country. Actually no. In anything, the socialist states were infamous for people not-working-that-much. The Kronstadt Rebellion and Solidarity had nothing to do with "refusing to work", and all to do wi…
> the reason US has a slightly more advanced economy than, say, Sweden, is not due to harsh working conditions. It's has more to do with human capital, a large unified market PLUS tons of military might abused to ensure cheap oil and resources.
Russia: huge human capital. Check. Large unified market. Check. Tons of Military Might abused to ensure cheap access to ressources. Check. Oh wait, I can do the same thing for China, too.
Of course those are NOT the only factors to predict how rich people are going to be. The economic system is the only KEY differenciator to build an economy. That should have been obvious by now, after we had so many great examples in the 20th century. Let's not spread the old false myths around.
Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's unions and unions. I don't have a problem with such organizations as representatives of working people's collective interests, but the relationship between unions and business in the US can be terribly adversarial such that 'collective bargaining' often ends up looking more like mutual attrition. It might be that historically the diversity of the US is partly responsible; where there is wide social and cultur…
Upvote for "There's unions and then there's unions." I live in Michigan and have known people who personally attest to all of the negative stereotypes about the Teamsters and the UAW. On the other hand, Germany manages to have a world-class economy based on manufacturing highly-sought factory-made goods, and they do it all with high-wage union labor. I'm a red-blooded American, so I prefer as few regulations as neces…
It's an interesting system. Workers actually have votes on corporate governance; in fact, a 50/50 split with shareholders if I recall correctly.
I wouldn't be surprised if that led to a less antagonistic labor/management relationship.
Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine
#40It always comes down to price. The vast majority of people in the world aren't so self-righteous that they'll pay $10 more for something that was produced "the right way." This has always been the nature of these kinds of businesses, and until robots and technology take those jobs away completely (which opens up a whole other can of worms), it will just keep happening
"Economists dismiss costs that aren't included in price. For them the cost that matters is the price paid by consumers."
- Paul Craig Roberts, Which Is Worse: Regulation Or De-Regulation?
Sadly, customers often act the same way as economists on this issue.
EDIT: Punctuation