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Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

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Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future of work is shitty jobs like this, but a la Uber you "get your side-hustle on" AKA have no rights or security as an employee ever anywhere. e: Which, speaking of Marxism, this situation will keep you permanently alienated from your coworkers and will forever prevent community bonds from forming with them.

What do you think these people were doing being being drivers for uber?

Probably struggling from the previous 40 years of union busting, rights erosion, offshoring, financial manipulation, and discrimination.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#192

My fear is that the future of work for most people is not unemployment, but shitty jobs like this. My feeling is that in order to avoid this and prosper, the people need to own the robots that do all the work (Marxism heyy). If robots provide huge productivity gains, then they will provide those gains for their owners. If it’s the big corporations that own them, they will see the gains. But as long as people are trea…

or learn electronics and coding and be the guy/person who fixes the robot.

When these robots arrive, you will most likely have plug and play electronics inside. There will be no user serviceable parts inside.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#193
I have a friend who used to work at a fulfillment center.

In December, she took a week of medical leave. Last month, they retroactively denied her leave and then fired her for having a negative UPT balance. She'd worked there for years.

It's an awful, abusive company, and even though Trump's reasons for going after Amazon are the wrong reasons, I hope he successfully gets them shut down anyway.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#194

My fear is that the future of work for most people is not unemployment, but shitty jobs like this. My feeling is that in order to avoid this and prosper, the people need to own the robots that do all the work (Marxism heyy). If robots provide huge productivity gains, then they will provide those gains for their owners. If it’s the big corporations that own them, they will see the gains. But as long as people are trea…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#195
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future of work is shitty jobs like this, but a la Uber you "get your side-hustle on" AKA have no rights or security as an employee ever anywhere. e: Which, speaking of Marxism, this situation will keep you permanently alienated from your coworkers and will forever prevent community bonds from forming with them.

> AKA have no rights or security as an employee ever anywhere. I get what you are saying, but somehow this attitude also rubs me the wrong way sometimes. It's like "Hey, I'll pay anyone a nickle per piece of trash they pick up in the local forests" Soon: "NiceNature is the worst company ever! They exploit their workers to pick up garbage without proper protection, the employees have no rights or securities and are fo…

That's not a good analogy to something like Uber, because there's no profit motive. What you described is essentially a government works program, which is a great idea! But that's not what anyone seems to be talking about.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#196
I tend to personally view things from the owner's point of view. I also know that once the popular narrative has bitten down on the story of a successful company running slave factories, they won't let go. Whether these are exaggerated or isolated cases doesn't matter, there will be story after story until Amazon makes some show of changing practices.

However, I know there's another side. At some point, a company the size of Amazon begins consuming all available oxygen. I don't know what the tipping point is, but I know workers in some areas have about as much choice in where to work as I do in cable providers. That's obviously undesirable, because without a competitive labor market, Amazon is in practice able to treat employees however they choose, because the one emergency brake built into the loop is gone.

I wish there were some simple way to codify regulations about employee treatment once you become as powerful as a small nation that don't also encumber 150-employee plastic tubing manufacturers. At that level, pure laissez faire is desirable to me, because you do have options as an employee, and no reasonable case can be made that you've got to bog down your employer in a regulatory mess. Then, once you've got some single digit of the GDP in resources, you can be expected to operate with increased oversight and expectations, as a tax for the opportunity cost your mere presence visits upon other firms.

If that inhibits growth of megacorps... well, that's OK.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#197
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm trying to understand what compels them to be so toxic in their work environment. Their warehouse employees are extremely replaceable and amazon knows this.

That shouldn't be an excuse for anyone with a shred of humanity or decency.

and so? it's a power inequity and the mid-1800s into the early 1900s were marked by the workers who were treated like this struggling to take power back to force via the law better treatment. We mostly call those people "socialists" or "the labor movement" today.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#198
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future of work is shitty jobs like this, but a la Uber you "get your side-hustle on" AKA have no rights or security as an employee ever anywhere. e: Which, speaking of Marxism, this situation will keep you permanently alienated from your coworkers and will forever prevent community bonds from forming with them.

> AKA have no rights or security as an employee ever anywhere. I get what you are saying, but somehow this attitude also rubs me the wrong way sometimes. It's like "Hey, I'll pay anyone a nickle per piece of trash they pick up in the local forests" Soon: "NiceNature is the worst company ever! They exploit their workers to pick up garbage without proper protection, the employees have no rights or securities and are fo…

The problem with your framing is that a lot of companies like to pretend they are about making the world a better place, when what they are actually about is making their owners money.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#199
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future of work is shitty jobs like this, but a la Uber you "get your side-hustle on" AKA have no rights or security as an employee ever anywhere. e: Which, speaking of Marxism, this situation will keep you permanently alienated from your coworkers and will forever prevent community bonds from forming with them.

> AKA have no rights or security as an employee ever anywhere. I get what you are saying, but somehow this attitude also rubs me the wrong way sometimes. It's like "Hey, I'll pay anyone a nickle per piece of trash they pick up in the local forests" Soon: "NiceNature is the worst company ever! They exploit their workers to pick up garbage without proper protection, the employees have no rights or securities and are fo…

This is a ridiculous comparison. How would you be enriching yourself by paying people to pick up trash? Did you get a contract from the government or the owner to pick up the trash? If you did, then yes you should probably take some of that money you made and hire some people to do the work or do it yourself.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I do already own some of the robots. I have Amazon stock in my 401k. That's what "the people owning the robots" looks like. What you're getting at is that there are many people right now who are too poor (and are going to be too poor) to ever own any part of the robots. This century's great debate is forming up to be whether or not we should give them some anyway even though they can't "earn" it for whatever movi…

> I have Amazon stock in my 401k. It's weird seeing someone writing this in a thread about how Amazon exploits its workers for profits (ie. in part for its shareholders).

As a thought experiment I wonder if it will be better or worse when Amazon eventually automates all those jobs (yes, maybe even the programmers' jobs one day).
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