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I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

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71–80 of 209 posts

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#71
post #6

These conditions aren't unique to warehouse jobs; the customer call-center industry is similar in many ways. Time is tracked down to the second, you are being recorded and/or monitored at all times, tardiness and absenteeism are ruthlessly enforced with no excuses, and there is relentless pressure to "hit your numbers", which are often nearly impossible. And of course, you're still expected to "always put the custome…

Of course, customer support is different from packing goods, which makes this flawed. I think a lot of the problems comes from companies treating customer support as a cost.

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#72
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

...PLUS tons of military might abused to ensure cheap oil and resources. Wait, what? Does the US pay less to import oil or steel than Sweden or something?

Are you kidding? The US has had its hands on oil and other resources the world over, ensuring favorable prices, preferential treatment and US petrol companies' control over oil springs. To the point of overthrowing governments, including Iran's democratic one back in the day, when they took a oil policy they didn't like. Here's a small example:

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days. The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article21325...

or:

The Carter administration – the most “idealist” of the post-World War II presidencies in terms of its rhetoric – openly acknowledged in National Security Directive (NSD) 63 (and after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) the need to ensure “the availability of oil [from the Middle East] at reasonable prices.” Carter’s administration announced that any “attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States. It will be repelled by the use of any means necessary, including military force.” This policy of targeting unfriendly governments that reside in regions tangential to the Middle East was further reinforced in other official policy documents. In discussing U.S. policy, the Reagan administration explained in NSD 27 the need “to ensure the U.S. access to foreign energy and mineral forces” as a key aspect of “national security” priorities. Carter established a similar concern in NSD 63, discussing U.S. interest in dominating Middle Eastern oil as also extending to the “horn of Africa.”

(...)

Policy motivations – simply put – have long been driven by concern with dominating Middle Eastern oil supplies by force, and with support for repressive, U.S.-friendly regimes in geographic areas (such as North Africa) that are tangential to the Middle East. With regard to oil concerns, President George H. W. Bush articulated U.S. policy toward the Middle East, explaining in National Security Directive 26 that: “Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to United States national security. The United States remains committed to its vital interests in the region, if necessary and appropriate through the use of military force, against the Soviet Union or any other force with interests inimical to our own.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/24/what-the-establishmen...

or this:

http://www.salon.com/2011/06/11/libya_9/singleton/

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#73
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Another key difference is that the set of thoughts whose public expression could get a person killed, and the actual danger from expressing them, has been much smaller in the US than in those two countries for the past hundred years or so. We've had our inquisitions here, but I think people tend to recognize them and call them what they are pretty quickly. See Eleanor Roosevelt's very public comments about McCarthyis…

I think freedom of expression plays a role somewhere, but not sure how critical it is in order be successful economically. If you take a look at China, again, if you vocally oppose the government you would end up in prison pretty fast, but that does not prevent people from engaging in commerce with relative large freedom. Commerce and Freedom of expression are not necessarily tied together.

Though, on a libertarian point of view, I agree that freedom makes sense in all aspects of life, not only in economic affairs.

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#74
post #68
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia: huge human capital. Check. Large unified market. Check. Tons of Military Might abused to ensure cheap access to ressources. Check. Russia is only about 100-110 million people. One third of the US. So the "large unified market" is much smaller, as is the "human capital" pool, by which I don't mean people, but scientists, inventors, etc. And the military might that Russia has and uses to gain cheap access to re…

Oh yeah, China is doing rather well NOW. How about China, like 20 or even 30 years ago ? It was a poor country, underdeveloped. And you know what changed ? Their economic system. Just that. It was so sudden in China you can easily trace the roots of their economic boom. It supports my argument, rather than yours.

  > And you know what changed ? Their economic system.
So the thing that we should all aspire to as a species is the venerable Chinese sweatshop? The 'perfect storm' of capitalism, anti-unionism, and corporatism?

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#75
post #46
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. 4000 people @ 11/hr for a month? even without overtime that's 1.7 million. The automation can't be nearly that expensive.

Let's assume that you would need 1000 machines to have as much throughput as 4000 people. WAG, but I'd wager that each of those machines would cost $500k. That means 100 million in immediate outlays. WAG 2: fuel/electricity/maintenance is $200/month, and you need a team of 20 engineers to watch over them at $10k/engineer/month. So recurring costs come to $400k. Which brings us to: 100M/1.3M = 77 months, or between 6…

This article: http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/09/smallbusiness/kiva_robots/in... says that 1000 robots costs $15-20 million, not the $500 million that 500k a piece would run. Also what is there to indicate such a hefty need for engineering oversight? 20 engineers constantly overseeing the machines sounds like they are either constantly breaking down, or need a significant amount of custom programming per unit as upkeep, both of which just sounds like a quality control issue on Kiva's side. It makes sense that there's a lot of initial planning/programming for each installation, but I'd expect it to be mostly self-running after that. I would be curious about the energy needs per unit, though. They seem to be carrying around more weight per package shipped than with a human picker carrying just what goes in one package, but then again their use of energy might be more efficient than humans.

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like an opportunity for a standardized, flexible industrial robot platform geared towards rentals.

Why not go one step further and have elastic fulfillment centers? Nobody keeps inventory around for that long. Unless you're speculating on the future supply of a product you're only keeping stuff in stock for the buffer between when a whole palette comes in and when you need another one. So you can rent "fulfillment instances" as you need to order more inventory.

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#77
post #70
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's truly incredible. I didn't realize anyone had reached this point. I'm excited to see this stuff progress, but I can't help but wonder what sort of social problems this might create as the unskilled jobs of an economy are slowly chipped away at. This sort of work surely creates more jobs in tech sectors and in maintenance, but skills learned in boxing are not transferable to any of the jobs that might be c…

Machines have been replacing jobs for over 200 years now, but I don't think there's been a huge increase in unemployment over that period. We've always managed to invent more meaningless and repetitious tasks for ourselves to do. One might say that most office jobs nowadays are like that, too. Factories replaced farms, cubicles replaced factories. But usually this happened over generations, so people had a chance to…

"we might finally get a chance to rethink the age-old rule that a person must work in order to survive."

i m a stern believer that people has to produce value. And until a person can produce value merely by living, people will have to work to survive. Value right now is measured by money, and money has a limited capability in measuring things that are very subjective (how do you measure the value a nice person brings to a community?).

But i dont believe there ever will be a day when a person can live without outputting an iota of value as measured by the standards of the day. At least, not until we have a source of free, and unlimitd energy.

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#78
post #70
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's truly incredible. I didn't realize anyone had reached this point. I'm excited to see this stuff progress, but I can't help but wonder what sort of social problems this might create as the unskilled jobs of an economy are slowly chipped away at. This sort of work surely creates more jobs in tech sectors and in maintenance, but skills learned in boxing are not transferable to any of the jobs that might be c…

Machines have been replacing jobs for over 200 years now, but I don't think there's been a huge increase in unemployment over that period. We've always managed to invent more meaningless and repetitious tasks for ourselves to do. One might say that most office jobs nowadays are like that, too. Factories replaced farms, cubicles replaced factories. But usually this happened over generations, so people had a chance to…

I think the main difference is that computers are a lot cheaper than they were 200 years ago.

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's nothing knee jerk about his comment, he's pointing out that there's a middle ground between these warehouses and Soviet bayonets.

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#80
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume that you would need 1000 machines to have as much throughput as 4000 people. WAG, but I'd wager that each of those machines would cost $500k. That means 100 million in immediate outlays. WAG 2: fuel/electricity/maintenance is $200/month, and you need a team of 20 engineers to watch over them at $10k/engineer/month. So recurring costs come to $400k. Which brings us to: 100M/1.3M = 77 months, or between 6…

This article: http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/09/smallbusiness/kiva_robots/in... says that 1000 robots costs $15-20 million, not the $500 million that 500k a piece would run. Also what is there to indicate such a hefty need for engineering oversight? 20 engineers constantly overseeing the machines sounds like they are either constantly breaking down, or need a significant amount of custom programming per unit as upkeep,…

1000 robots needing just 30 minutes of preventative maintenance per week is 500 hours of PM a week. That sounds like about the amount of PM a staff of 20 engineers can supply, once you account for admin, PTO, training, travel between robots, and doing the actual work.

Engineer does not solely mean "one who creates software".

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