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Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#51

Post by Unosolo »

nicpottier wrote: post #39

"Desk jockey does manual labor and his feet hurt, story at 11" I worked the graveyard shift as a picker at Amazon back around '00. Back then Amazon was so nervous about anybody introducing a bug in the site that all software engineers were put to work either at warehouses or as customer service agents during the holidays. I worked customer service one year and picked for two years, both times during graveyard shifts.…

At a job like this one's mind is free to ponder on whatever matters it considers important. Certainly so after the period of initial accustomisation which can be physically hard until one learns the ropes and how to pace oneself through the day. I had a chance to work in a warehouse of a jewelry store, operate a spot welder at an automotive manufacturer and act as do-it-all in a kitchen of a 600 sit venue catering for large functions working up to 18 hour shifts (normally 12-14 hours, 7 day weeks).

Programming and analysis jobs come with their own hidden health hazards physical and anxieties alike, but worse developers are essentially paid to sit and think whole day very intensely and deeply on topics set by others. This can be disturbing and have a profound impact not only on the physical and mental state, but family life.

That's why I can understand when a 52 year old web celebrity and university professor decides to apply for a job of as a USPS letter carrier. [1]

That's why Paul Grahams advice [2] resonates especially well with me: "A palliative care nurse called Bronnie Ware made a list of the biggest regrets of the dying. Her list seems plausible. I could see myself—can see myself—making at least 4 of these 5 mistakes.

If you had to compress them into a single piece of advice, it might be: don't be a cog. The 5 regrets paint a portrait of post-industrial man, who shrinks himself into a shape that fits his circumstances, then turns dutifully till he stops."

1. http://goo.gl/uVwXL8 - Google Translate, original: http://postbote.lj.ru

2. http://www.paulgraham.com/todo.html

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#52

Post by nicpottier »

panacea wrote: post #49
nicpottier wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employees aren't in jail, they aren't slaves, they have choice. I worked there, it wasn't that bad. The article is sensational.

"The employees aren't in jail, they aren't slaves, they have choice." Care to outline the choice they have (you forgot the "s", as belies your worldview)? What are the choices outside of jail, slavery or the work conditions described in the article? I suspect that many of them can't get another job and they need to feed themselves or dependents like children. "The article is sensational." If you disagree with the art…

Fuckwit? Asshole? Seriously?

You can disagree, that's cool, we can have different opinions, but aren't we supposed to strive to a slightly higher level of discourse on HN?

You don't know me, so lay off the ad-hominem, this isn't the forum for it. We apparently disagree on what kinds of choices people have in the Midwest. We are coming from different places in our experience, and I happen to think I hold the edge on this particular topic.

Let's keep it civil though ya?

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#53

Post by ada1981 »

Which headline is more likely in the next 5-10 years?

"Amazon improves lives of 5,000 manual pickers by introducing fully automated robotic supply chain. Workers now free to find other employment."

Or

"Profit crazed Amazon to employ 5,000 android robot zombies, lays off entire human workforce."

Manual labor of this sort isn't exciting or creative for most people. You don't really have room for creativity with this sort of job unless you are iterating on the system level -- and I'm most certain they have a way for pickers to contribute ideas to that. Then again, people play Candy Crush saga for hours a day and PAY for the privilege.. At least these guys get paid and get to walk around.

Once the cost of automating people out completely is less than human labor, it will happen almost instantly.. That is the bigger social issue folks should be looking at -- what will we do when General Human Labor is more expensive than General Machine Labor? Combine this with General Artificial Intelligence and human labor becomes worth less and less.. As someone formally trained as an Urban Planner, this was the biggest issue I saw in grad school as a rapidly approaching social concern.

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#54

Post by pc86 »

panacea wrote: post #49
nicpottier wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employees aren't in jail, they aren't slaves, they have choice. I worked there, it wasn't that bad. The article is sensational.

"The employees aren't in jail, they aren't slaves, they have choice." Care to outline the choice they have (you forgot the "s", as belies your worldview)? What are the choices outside of jail, slavery or the work conditions described in the article? I suspect that many of them can't get another job and they need to feed themselves or dependents like children. "The article is sensational." If you disagree with the art…

I flagged and downvoted both of your comments because there is absolutely no reason to resort to intentionally misunderstanding the poster's intent and petty name calling. It's not worthy of a forum where people supposedly think critically about the material presented. This isn't the comments section of some hack political blog.

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#55

Post by Mikeb85 »

kolektiv wrote: post #43
nicpottier wrote: post #39

"Desk jockey does manual labor and his feet hurt, story at 11" I worked the graveyard shift as a picker at Amazon back around '00. Back then Amazon was so nervous about anybody introducing a bug in the site that all software engineers were put to work either at warehouses or as customer service agents during the holidays. I worked customer service one year and picked for two years, both times during graveyard shifts.…

There are some rather key differences though don't you think? I imagine as a reasonably valued software engineer you weren't likely to face disciplinary action or loss of employment for not picking fast enough, thus negating a huge cause of stress/anxiety. You also had the knowledge of a definite finite term of employment followed by more relaxing/agreeable work, another rather significant difference. You also talk a…

Have you ever worked manual labour? Like a real labour job?

When the recession hit, I was unemployed, but got a decent paying construction job from a friend. It involved lifting a hundred pounds at a time, working in dangerous areas (near elevator shafts, on the edge of a 45-story office tower, under cranes) in cold weather (up to minus 40 degrees celcius), and with plenty of dangerous equipment (cranes, concrete pumps, excavators, etc...). The typical work week was 70 hours of gruelling physical work, with even more hours available if you wanted them (and some people would take as many as 100 hours per week).

And that job was quite mild, compared to all the oilfield jobs people take up north, where the weather is consistently much colder, and the hours even longer.

If working at Amazon was so terrible, there wouldn't be 5000 people employed there. Or the demand for jobs there would be so low, the wages would be much higher. But let's face it, there's much worse jobs even in our western countries.

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#56

Post by Mikeb85 »

panacea wrote: post #44
nicpottier wrote: post #39

"Desk jockey does manual labor and his feet hurt, story at 11" I worked the graveyard shift as a picker at Amazon back around '00. Back then Amazon was so nervous about anybody introducing a bug in the site that all software engineers were put to work either at warehouses or as customer service agents during the holidays. I worked customer service one year and picked for two years, both times during graveyard shifts.…

Empathy redundancy detected! "Yes, you are a mechanical turk in the strictest sense of the word, being dispatched by your hand scanner to go find something and put it in a cart, but it isn't hard work, just a bit boring." Would you like to be a permanent 'mechanical turk'? As in... you had zero choice in the matter and no chance to change things ever? That's not 'a bit boring'... that's soul crushing (and I mean 'sou…

> Would you like to be a permanent 'mechanical turk'? As in... you had zero choice in the matter and no chance to change things ever? That's not 'a bit boring'... that's soul crushing (and I mean 'soul' in a non-religious sense). Studies have shown that sort of stress causes heart disease over 'good stress' (you're manning the Very Important controls).

You have choice. To work there or not to.

By the way, welcome to pretty much every construction job ever. And depending on your priorities in life, it's not necessarily soul-crushing. The ability to leave your job at work when you go home every evening is quite under-rated...

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#58

Post by buro9 »

csmuk wrote: post #16
ck2 wrote: post #9

Average people get all upset about unions when they see them applied to jobs that don't seem too too demanding. But places like Walmart and Amazon are exactly why unions should exist, to counterbalance the inhumane over-optimization and maltreatment of people. Amazon could probably make work less toxic by hiring 10% more people, but that would make things cost a few cents more.

Yes and no. This subject somewhat angers me. Yes people like Walmart and Amazon workers need protection form maltreatment. Definitely. This should be built into the law though, not into unions. And no because the existing unions don't really protect people. If you look at RMT, Unison and NUT they regularly pop up just to cause trouble. From a perspective of people having to consume services offered by their staff reg…

> This should be built into the law though, not into unions.

But how do the low-paid and exploited workers get the kind of representation and voice that results in the law makers and policy makers hearing it?

If the workers are not valued enough to be paid well, do you think the employers themselves value the employees enough to listen?

That is the point of the union.

Some unions do indeed give the entire concept a bad rep, but the fundamentals of "workers coming together to acquire a collective voice to be heard" isn't a bad one.

The output of that voice is law. Such as equality in the workplace, safety regulations, working hour regulations, etc, etc.

Few of those laws would have come to pass without the worker being able to have a representative and voice.

I see parallels between democratic representation in society and representation against powerful employers. To some extent, given globalisation, multi-national corporations and the power of corporations in political lobbying I'm becoming more of the view that multi-national unions need to come into existence.

And not to hit the "strike" button every 10 seconds. Withdrawal of labour is a nuclear option and likely no-one will ever win when it occurs. But... to have that kind of representation and voice against corporations that increasingly cannot be held to account by sovereign governments and local lawmakers seems an important check.

We remain people. Work isn't the be-all and end-all, and people should be valued. If a business cannot sustain itself by valuing people fairly and with respect...then the business is at fault. We shouldn't create human misery, and people who work for us (entrepreneurs, leaders, decision makers in companies) do deserve a voice and representation to hold us to account and constrain us (to some extent).

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#59

Post by mjn »

csmuk wrote: post #16
ck2 wrote: post #9

Average people get all upset about unions when they see them applied to jobs that don't seem too too demanding. But places like Walmart and Amazon are exactly why unions should exist, to counterbalance the inhumane over-optimization and maltreatment of people. Amazon could probably make work less toxic by hiring 10% more people, but that would make things cost a few cents more.

Yes and no. This subject somewhat angers me. Yes people like Walmart and Amazon workers need protection form maltreatment. Definitely. This should be built into the law though, not into unions. And no because the existing unions don't really protect people. If you look at RMT, Unison and NUT they regularly pop up just to cause trouble. From a perspective of people having to consume services offered by their staff reg…

Denmark has something that sort of works like this, but imo it works okay and is usually not exploitative, partly because of several differences:

1. It's not completely free to businesses or completely unpaid: the person continues to receive pay in the form of benefits from the unemployment fund, but the company kicks in 17% on top of that as a pension contribution. This is partly to ensure the company takes it seriously, and partly because making sure everyone has a funded pension is in the state's interest.

2. The job must actually provide relevant training, not just gruntwork. The company must propose a training programme and learning outcomes, and there are periodic evaluations of the company's performance in fulfilling these.

3. It's opt-in; you are never required to do it. It's an option offered to people who are deemed to be having trouble finding a job because of lack of in-demand skills. One option among several: others include vocational courses run by the municipality, going back to school for an adult masters degree, etc.

4. The benefits are at a reasonably high level, so things like paying for transit are not a problem. Minimum benefit is around $1800/mo, I think.

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#60

Post by panacea »

nicpottier wrote: post #52
panacea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The employees aren't in jail, they aren't slaves, they have choice." Care to outline the choice they have (you forgot the "s", as belies your worldview)? What are the choices outside of jail, slavery or the work conditions described in the article? I suspect that many of them can't get another job and they need to feed themselves or dependents like children. "The article is sensational." If you disagree with the art…

Fuckwit? Asshole? Seriously? You can disagree, that's cool, we can have different opinions, but aren't we supposed to strive to a slightly higher level of discourse on HN? You don't know me, so lay off the ad-hominem, this isn't the forum for it. We apparently disagree on what kinds of choices people have in the Midwest. We are coming from different places in our experience, and I happen to think I hold the edge on t…

I apologise for the name-calling. (Particularly the egregious terms I used... and it's no excuse that in my circle of friends we use them in conversation, but subtleties are lost in translation, even amongst English speakers)

My broader point is this (if you care beyond taking offence at the language I have used), people desperate for a job to feed themselves and their dependents, should not have to subjugate themselves at the feet of Amalgamated Internet Co. in order to live a fulfilling life... and saying 'it's a bit boring but suck-it-up stranger' doesn't display any empathy.

However your feelings are entitled to be respected?

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