The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday • Hacker News Board

Re: The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday

#41

Post by beachstartup » Sat, Nov 30, 2013, 9:15 PM UTC

rjohnk wrote: post #13

Every year the same article. No one is forced to work at a temp agency or retail. If it sucks so much, find a different job. Yes, yes, I know, it's not that easy. But it actually is.

as a business owner and employer of several skilled high tech and unskilled call center workers, i think you're wrong.

it's not easy finding a better job, and it's also not easy hiring better people. in fact it's real hard to do either of those things.

if you have, in fact, solved this fundamental problem of labor market efficiency, please go ahead and collect your nobel prize and be sure to explain it real slow for us dumb underachieving slackers during your acceptance speech.

when the number of people far outpaces the number of jobs, "just try harder" is not a solution to this problem. i'm pretty sure, in fact, that NEITHER conservatives or liberals think this is the solution to a massive correction in the number of jobs like the one the US just went through in the past 3 years.

Re: The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday

#42

Post by trentmb » Sat, Nov 30, 2013, 10:17 PM UTC

eplanit wrote: post #25

nsxwolf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or be replaced by robots. All I could think of reading that is why they haven't figured out how to fold and tape a cardboard box with a robot yet. They should get on that, and then those people won't have to be subjected to those conditions anymore.

Agreed. The automobile manufacturers were very successful in improving quality and efficiency via robotics, and were also encouraged to do so by enormous drags from labor unions. Warehouses have also increased automation, but clearly they can improve more. Beyond the warehouse, I'm eager to see their deployment in retail stores and fast-food. Consumers will benefit from efficiencies, and the unhappy workers will be f…

> and the unhappy workers will be free to find jobs more to their liking.

At that level, it's not about find a job you like, it's about making enough money to survive.

Re: The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday

#43

Post by stefan_kendall » Sat, Nov 30, 2013, 10:23 PM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #15

nsxwolf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unemployed, but more importantly, unexploited.

Does being unexploited pay the heating bill? That's all minimum wage workers really care about. Not some nebulous ivory tower view on economics.

Every luddite fights technological improvement.

The hoe displaced farm workers. Machines replaces lots of farm workers.

Shipping containers destroyed the massive labor requirement and theft of the shipping industry. Several orders of magnitude of jobs destroyed.

People don't just wither and die; the efficiencies offered by technological change turn into new industries and higher quality of life for everyone. Would you really be better off if everyone had to farm or hunt their own food?

But hey, at least everyone would be employed.

Re: The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday

#44

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 30, 2013, 10:23 PM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #37

EliRivers wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it actually is. Hell yeah. Get off your lazy ass, and go spend tens of thousands of dollars getting an education that makes you employable (just put aside for the moment the fact that your years of compulsory education left you good for nothing better than packing boxes). It's that easy, everyone. Economy down? Well maybe you should invest massively in industry and spark a boom so there are more jobs. If you aren…

Why don't they just move into the tech industry, an industry filled with those that proclaim the worthlessness of a degree and a low barrier to entry? Or are they not fit for tech? Is there something that sets them apart and makes them lesser than your typical dot commer?

[deleted]

Re: The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday

#45

Post by earnestfeedback » Sat, Nov 30, 2013, 10:25 PM UTC

cynicalkane wrote: post #19

raganwald wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labour unions are a lot like everything else that works in our society. (Hold your vituperation!) Labour unions, like democracy and capitalism, are the worst things we've ever tried, except for everything else that failed. We simply don't have a better way to appoint leaders except democracy. It's obviously broken in many ways, but the alternatives are worse. Economically, capitalism is deeply broken, but everything…

The power of labor unions for low-paid workers is not as strong as you think. Where I went to school (U Chicago), there was a very active mostly student-organized university workers' labor union, but workplace violations were still routine. The power to strike is no help when you depend on your paycheck to survive, and the union's legal clout was no help when the laws were hard to enforce and deep-pocketed employers…

Whoa- there's no need for you to have name dropped U Chicago. We could have parsed your post just fine without knowing that you attended the world's most elite university.

Re: The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday

#46

Post by username223 » Sat, Nov 30, 2013, 10:29 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #39

knowitall wrote: post #21

Perhaps Amazon could add a checkbox to the shopping cart: [] pay 10% more that will go directly into the pockets of the packers. I wouldn't even mind a picture gallery of everybody who handled my package.

They already have this: http://smile.amazon.com/

What the fuck does that have to do with paying the people who pack my orders? 1/200 of what I spend on "eligible purchases" (whatever those are) goes to some other organization.

Re: The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday

#47

Post by icelancer » Sat, Nov 30, 2013, 10:30 PM UTC

stefan_kendall wrote: post #43

icelancer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does being unexploited pay the heating bill? That's all minimum wage workers really care about. Not some nebulous ivory tower view on economics.

Every luddite fights technological improvement. The hoe displaced farm workers. Machines replaces lots of farm workers. Shipping containers destroyed the massive labor requirement and theft of the shipping industry. Several orders of magnitude of jobs destroyed. People don't just wither and die; the efficiencies offered by technological change turn into new industries and higher quality of life for everyone. Would yo…

I actually agree with you; my point was more driving towards the need for a basic income as productivity continues to improve.

Re: The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday

#48

Post by yetanotherphd » Sat, Nov 30, 2013, 10:42 PM UTC

I don't see a big issue here.

It's not the fault of the industry that certain kinds of labor are cheap. In fact it's nobody's fault, it's just the nature of the market.

The only kinds of response to this situation that make sense are to increase welfare (and reduce the barriers/conditions to obtaining it) and decrease taxes for people on low incomes. Anything else misses the essence of the problem, which is that a large number of people, for whatever reasons, do not produce enough value to earn a decent wage.

Enforcing various laws might help too, but given that all manual work is by nature dangerous, it's not clear that this industry is especially bad.

Re: The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday

#49

Post by yetanotherphd » Sat, Nov 30, 2013, 10:45 PM UTC

Amadou wrote: post #12

rayiner wrote: post #4

> After waiting twenty minutes, we are ushered into a room upstairs. A woman from the agency hands each of us a time sheet. For the sign-in, she tells us to write 8:30. “I know you were told to be here at 8:15,” she says, anticipating a protest that never comes, “but that was just to make sure you got here early.” And, like that, fifteen minutes are lopped from our paycheck. It’s a small but important lesson in what…

I see it as a yin-yang situation. Corporations are a way to organize capital for the benefit of the capital owners, unions are a way to organize labor for the benefit of the labor "owners." In a healthy capitalist system, both are necessary in order to maintain balance. That's the ideal. In the real world, both types of organizations will seek ways to exploit any advantage in their favor. But that's life.

Corporations and labor unions are not really equivalent.

If you view them purely from the point of view of market power, then yes, they are the same thing. Both create an oligopoly in the market for buying/selling labor.

But corporations also are the way that both capital and labor are organized to produce an actual product. There is no analogous role for unions, except some special unions that play a large role in management.

Re: The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday

#50

Post by vectorpush » Sat, Nov 30, 2013, 10:50 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #11

rayiner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're going to be replaced by robots either way. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be treated decently in the meantime.

So we can give them a living wage, which will accelerate the development of a robotic replacement, so that they can earn a bit more in the meantime, before their inevitable unemployment?

As opposed to what? Deliberately staggering progress in an effort to maintain a society of contrived busywork so people can slave away for pennies? You might as well just give away the pennies rather than deliberately embrace inefficiency in an effort to keep these jobs in existence.