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Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#371

Post by nine_k »

jedberg wrote: post #357
spamizbad wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's funny is even if you hate unions, surely the demographics who frequent HN at least has a solid grasp of the capital investments and R&D costs necessary to "replace them with robots" - We are talking about delivery station roles here. You gotta build something that, amortized, can do it for less than $500/day in a climate where Wall Street is putting pressure on tech stocks to control costs. Have at it. We hear…

> We heard this same argument about automation in food service. Have you been to a fast food joint lately? Even at peak traffic they have maybe three people working when they used to have 7-10. Now you walk in and you have to order from the kiosk, which is literally the iPhone app on a vertical touch screen. You don't even talk to a human until they hand you the food.

Ordering from a machine actually makes sense, and, crucially, is easy to implement.

Replacing the actual burger-fliping workers, or order-assembling workers is much harder. An adequate robot, even if built with today's technologies, will likely never pay for itself.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#372

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ciabattabread wrote: post #249
rsanek wrote: post #152

10k is about 0.7% of their total employee count. I wonder if this will have any effect.

I wonder that too. They been doing this for a while now around the big shopping holidays. And yet, I never hear about any major disruptions. Maybe the union needs to change tactics?

The amount of leverage workers have is proportional to how hard it is for the company to replace them. Replacing unskilled workers isn't that hard so those workers don't have much leverage.

The only real solution is to become skilled workers. Which, almost ironically, is to do the thing the company threatens to do -- find a way to automate work like this, so the people working at the warehouse are robotics technicians etc.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#373

Post by pm90 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #296
greesil wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum wage != Livable wage I don't think it's worth considering the comparison. But sure, maybe working at a distribution center pays well enough where you're located. Likely that's not the case where these strikes are happening. It's expensive out there. Also, what you wrote gives the impression of "I've got mine already so I don't care what happens to you."

Everyone deserves the opportunity to earn a livable income, but not all jobs can or should be paying a "living wage." Some jobs by their nature are part time and some people only want to work part time.

That doesn’t seem like a contradiction. Full time jobs should offer livable wages, part time could offer less. However, you can’t do some shenanigans like force workers to be part time by making them work less than 40 hours a week just so they don’t get classified as full time.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#374

Post by crote »

n144q wrote: post #138
nine_k wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the key feature of Amazon is the fast delivery with Prime. Do other merchants offer fast delivery often enough? Regarding credit cards, I started using privacy dot com for virtual, merchant-locked cards. It protects against (rare) card details leaks, but, of course, does not give you any points or cashback.

Do you actually care that much about fast delivery? My Prime membership ended 3 years ago. These days I just put items in the cart, and place order whenever it reaches $35. If I need an item in a hurry -- which rarely happens -- I go to a store to buy it. This barely affected me, and I ended up with much fewer impulse purchases. What's funny though is that the "standard" delivery often takes 5 calendar days. But AliE…

I really wish there was a non-rush way to order with a guaranteed delivery moment.

Usually I'm not in a huge hurry, and I would happily wait a few days extra if it means workers don't have to pee in a bottle during their night shift. However, a "3-5 days" delivery means there's a pretty decent chance I won't be home and have to go to the other side of town to pick it up - and that's incredibly annoying. So I end up choosing next-day delivery and order it when I know I'll be home the next day.

Why can't I just place an order on Monday with a guaranteed delivery on Saturday? Ordering on Friday with a guaranteed delivery on Saturday is already possible, so what's stopping them?

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#375

Post by themaninthedark »

cloverich wrote: post #261
themaninthedark wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much carbon emissions went into making that available to be delivered tomorrow? You have a a large fleet of 18 wheelers, delivery vans and forklifts. Then the warehouses that go into making the supply chain work.

Which are definitely more efficient than having every individual that needs something hop in a car and drive for 20+ minutes. One delivery person with goods for 100 people in their truck is literally one truck replacing one hundred drivers. It is absolutely much more efficient carbon wise. All of the warehouses and 18 wheelers exist either way, since the local shops still need all the same supplies, although presumab…

They didn't exist prior to Amazon deciding to offer 2day delivery, that's my point. Why else would they invest all that money, when they could use the already existing services that deliver to people's houses fairly quickly: FedEx, UPS and DHL or the slightly slower but goes everywhere every day USPS?

Your one person is a truck delivering to 100 homes ignores the fact that at least 80% of the people in those homes have a car that they use everyday, often passing a grocery store and most other local shops.

I have a longer reply talking about the Carbon usage below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42463832

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#376

Post by asah »

switch007 wrote: post #339
asah wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, Amazon cuts delivery times, improves reliability and makes returns 10x easier.

They're also 10x more efficient at providing counterfeits

I hear people complain about this but maybe I'm just better at serving fake goods.

I grew up in a place and time where scams were everywhere. I now invest in garage stage startups, and endlessly amused.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#377

Post by mckn1ght »

crazygringo wrote: post #251
dartos wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And you really think the local shopowner kept all the profit in their community? E.g. they didn't send their kids to college in another state? Imagine spending money and having that money allow people in your local community to afford college. Then imagine thinking that’s a bad thing. Obviously it’s complicated, but the gist is longer money stays in a local area, the better off that area is going to be. It’s better…

> Then imagine thinking that’s a bad thing. You seem to have missed my point entirely. I'm not saying that's a bad thing -- but I'm saying that by your logic, you seem to think it is. You're looking at money like it's some kind of zero-sum thing that ought to be hoarded by every local community. You say: > but the gist is longer money stays in a local area, the better off that area is going to be That is contrary to…

> when communities trade between each other

> it comes back according to whatever goods and services you produce

Extractive industry like Amazon kill the local producers and siphon the money out of smaller areas and concentrate it in richer areas. When there are no local producers or wealth left, what is there to circulate or trade?

Amazon is an Internet-myelinated version of the Wal-Mart effect, with more packaging waste.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#378

Post by nickff »

vel0city wrote: post #365
nickff wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most companies’ largest expense is labor/wages (usually somewhere on the order of 25-50%), and profit margins are usually on the order of 0-5%. Increasing pay or benefits substantially would increase costs by a lot more than 0.5%.

Sure, 0.5% is hyperbole on my part. Sorry. It's not like a 20% bump in costs for these workers would result in a 20% bump in prices or anything like that. Their margin on that retail item is probably 30-40% of the cost of that product though. Let's assume the workers' benefits and wages in question here are 35% of Amazon's costs. If there was a 20% increase of that labor cost, that's going from 35% to 42% of the tota…

I don't understand how you got down from 7% down to 1.6%. I think you are not counting COGS as an expense, and that's where the error comes from. If your assumptions are otherwise correct, I think you'd get roughly a 7% increase in prices to sustain the 20% bump in wage expense.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#379

Post by crote »

vel0city wrote: post #304
maccard wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free returns aren't free. We need to de-normalize this practice of people buying so much junk just to immediately return it. One of the things you lose from online shopping is sizing. Shoes run in different sizes, lengths, widths. How do you suggest you order shoes to find the right size if shopping online?

> How do you suggest you order shoes to find the right size if shopping online? Don't shop for shoes online? Unless you're happy with most of those shoes you tried on but returned going to the landfill.

That's not an option for a lot of people. For example, the vast majority of physical shoe stores simply don't carry my size. There is literally only a handful of stores in my country I could go to - and I don't even have an incredibly unusual size!

Physical stores increasingly cater to the average. They would rather stock 20 different items in 5 sizes than 10 different items in 10 sizes. All of the long-tail stuff is only available online, so you are forced to buy online.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#380

Post by ekianjo »

sterlind wrote: post #360
webdood90 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of Americans deserve more money. This is pedantic but I strongly dislike when people say anyone deserves anything. I support an equitable system that allows citizens to move up in economic class (which we don't currently have) but I don't subscribe to the idea that everyone inherently deserves anything.

That puts you at odds with the tradition of natural rights. The Declaration of Independence says everyone deserves life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Does not mean that they deserve a specific fixed income...
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