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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

#631

Post by lovich »

conanbatt wrote: post #586
rectang wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look forward to capital peeing in a bottle in solidarity with labor. :) Naturally capital and labor collaborate and both produce wealth. That doesn't mean their interests are 100% aligned.

> I look forward to capital peeing in a bottle in solidarity with labor. :) It does. Capital evaporates in risky endeavors all the time. It rusts by itself as well. Sure interests arent perfectly aligned, but fighting capital is like fighting your brother for inheritance. Meanwhile, landowners see all that from afar, evict people into the streets, and those same people go pay taxes to get their food. Capital is not t…

Capital in the US currently seems more along the lines of private profits and socialized losses. You don't see labor getting handouts in the form of welfare and then pulling millions of dollars in bonuses the next year.

Fighting capital is like fighting your brother for inheritance when your brother won the lottery, you are on welfare cause of a disability, and your brother decides to sue you for the family heirlooms because they feel they deserve it more. Yea it'd be better if we all worked together but labor wasn't the one that kicked people off the clearances, sent pinkertons to shoot people instead of negotiate, destroyed the environment, or any other of the great many ills that are happening on a daily basis.

Look at the article your even commenting on! The workers had to pee in bottles because they couldn't even take care of biology. What did the workers do to the capital owners in this case? Deprive them of a few more dollars in profit because they had the gall to not be perfectly efficient machines?

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

#632

Post by gonvaled »

conanbatt wrote: post #608
zasz wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahahah, so that's why capital called in the cops to kill members of the first labor unions in America, out of brother hood?

The cops? Cops aren't capital. They are State.

In this context, Cops are not State, but a tool, used by Capital.

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

#633

Post by isostatic »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #592
isostatic wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly, UBI or negative income tax (which is probably easier to administer) may be required, but it may not. In India, they still employ someone to sit on a chair in a lift pressing the button. Even in the western world we employ doormen. Of course while people vote against their best interests (the false belief that hard work guarantees success) I'm sure that those with the power will continue to exploit those wit…

> In India, they still employ someone to sit on a chair in a lift pressing the button. A culture of makework can be harmful in that it would push some people to do pointless jobs when they might actually do something beneficial for society (but perhaps not profit-generating) if they were given free time. For example, I am fortunate to work remotely in a job that pays me a lot of money, but I am in a country with low…

Yes, pushing buttons or boxing amazon deliveries is a waste of humanity's time. The question is will society allow us to move to a system where we work 20 hour weeks doing the same amount of productive work we do now.

I would like to think we will. I suspect we'll have people doing 60 hora a week of breaking rocks for no reason other than making those higher up the food chain think they aren't hetting a free ride.

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

#636

Post by Karishma1234 »

hutzlibu wrote: post #509
rectang wrote: post #441

We can't. Labor and capital need each other, but they are forever at odds. Good wages and working conditions can only be won through negotiating from strength. Modern America favors capital. Elections have consequences.

I don't think it is a problem that can be changed with different politics or labour unions. The main problem is the extreme unbalance in the world. Highly develepoed robotic societys meet hungry, poor masses who cam only offer their physical labour. Mst of them in countrys far away, bu also a lot in the industrilized states. Demand and supply. The demand for unskilled labour goes down, yet the supply of it goes up. M…

Labour unions are like leeches they suck productivity and promote mediocrity. If people are unhappy with the job they should simply resign and take up another.

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

#637

Post by lotyrin »

hutzlibu wrote: post #509
rectang wrote: post #441

We can't. Labor and capital need each other, but they are forever at odds. Good wages and working conditions can only be won through negotiating from strength. Modern America favors capital. Elections have consequences.

I don't think it is a problem that can be changed with different politics or labour unions. The main problem is the extreme unbalance in the world. Highly develepoed robotic societys meet hungry, poor masses who cam only offer their physical labour. Mst of them in countrys far away, bu also a lot in the industrilized states. Demand and supply. The demand for unskilled labour goes down, yet the supply of it goes up. M…

It's entirely power imbalance, and that can be addressed by policy. Fundamentally, Capital needs Labor as much as Labor needs Capital. There's no economic reason a capitalist contributing nothing should not expect to starve, but a laborer who contributes nothing should expect to, it's just the current market climate and political policy that these are the case such that the imbalance of power perpetuates itself.

It seems you could have the opposite case from today, with Labor concentrated into large unions which lobby for and win things like overly (but not disastrously) high Basic Income or slightly too relaxed intellectual property law, strong-arming a capital class made of small mom-and-pop firms and individual retiree-investors, avoiding providing the returns that would be seen in a more efficient and balanced market.

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

#638

Post by knuththetruth »

staticassertion wrote: post #77
knuththetruth wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, him and the people higher up the food chain that enable him. Tech workers at Amazon could organize to prevent this kind of mistreatment of warehouse employeees. If the AWS team alone walked off the job in protest, the resulting panic and media coverage would squeeze Amazon to improve.

Sad to see this post downvoted when it seems obvious. If you work for Amazon as a developer make this issue known. Few people have as much power to impact the company as a group of developers - we all know what a pain in the ass it is to hire. I'd never work at Amazon knowing how it treats its workers. Given the market we're in I don't get why others would - if you work for Amazon you should be able to jump ship for…

Part of what they’re so highly compensated for is also to turn a blind eye to the poor people who suffer under these conditions, to ignore the abuse that undergirds their work.

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

#639

Post by conanbatt »

gonvaled wrote: post #632
conanbatt wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cops? Cops aren't capital. They are State.

In this context, Cops are not State, but a tool, used by Capital.

Really, the guys with batons and guns are not the problem, it is capital that entices them to do it?

How seductive capital is, that even lawful violents follow they every will! We must surely give those lawful violents more and more power to resist the allure of capital!

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

#640

Post by blindwatchmaker »

Karishma1234 wrote: post #636
hutzlibu wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is a problem that can be changed with different politics or labour unions. The main problem is the extreme unbalance in the world. Highly develepoed robotic societys meet hungry, poor masses who cam only offer their physical labour. Mst of them in countrys far away, bu also a lot in the industrilized states. Demand and supply. The demand for unskilled labour goes down, yet the supply of it goes up. M…

Labour unions are like leeches they suck productivity and promote mediocrity. If people are unhappy with the job they should simply resign and take up another.

A cursory glance at the history of the industrial revolution, or even conditions today in several places including Amazon, will tell you what happens when labor's right to organize is crushed.
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