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What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

theatlantic.com

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Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#71

Post by s73ver_ »

garybro wrote: post #23

A common theme I see with these articles is how "grueling" the work is. People need some perspective on what grueling work is. I worked at a UPS hub during college, where I'd load, unload, and sort the contents of trailers. What they do seems pretty easy compared to what I did at UPS. Picking and packing orders is a lot less grueling than unloading trailers full of 60 pound paper boxes, or loading hundreds of package…

"But it's better than no job at all."

If that's all you have to defend it with, then you have nothing to defend. People expect better of Amazon, as they should. The company turned the owner into the richest man on the planet; there is zero excuse for short changing the workers.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#72

Post by dv_dt »

whatshisface wrote: post #53
dv_dt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's better than no job at all. I think questioning this idea is the whole point of the article. It's a job, but does the job pay enough to improve the lot of the individual worker? Maybe that isn't fully obvious to the worker because they're worried about no job at all, but if the city of the business and residence of the workers isn't collectively benefiting, then maybe that's a hint that low-skill jobs don't…

If they're more willing to pay better wages, why wouldn't the employees go and work there instead?

You can't work for a business which has been driven out of the market. And that is how markets can work for good, by selecting efficient businesses (but also bad - the market itself doesn't care), but if you look at businesses in the market, if they all race to subsistence wages then businesses willing to pay more can't operate and the city around the market declines. If the wages stay higher, the cost of goods are higher, but other opportunities rise, and the city as a whole can prosper. If the wages are way too high, then that can also be bad that can also cause a decline.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#73

Post by deegles »

amarkov wrote: post #20
krapp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a middle ground between "barely subsistence wages" and "high-paying, middle class wages" that Amazon could meet, and still be profitable.

Is there? Amazon's retail business runs on a razor-thin profit margin, and in fact Amazon was famous for not being profitable until a few years ago.

... and most of their profit comes from AWS.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#74

Post by southphillyman »

garybro wrote: post #23

A common theme I see with these articles is how "grueling" the work is. People need some perspective on what grueling work is. I worked at a UPS hub during college, where I'd load, unload, and sort the contents of trailers. What they do seems pretty easy compared to what I did at UPS. Picking and packing orders is a lot less grueling than unloading trailers full of 60 pound paper boxes, or loading hundreds of package…

I too worked at UPS during college. First as a loader and then as a part time supervisor managing loaders. I made about $1500 a month in the early 2000s for working about 20-30 hours a week. Not bad for a student.

What you describe is accurate, we use to get entire trucks of "Total Gym" boxes that weighed 70+ lbs each. Turn over was high and there was accountability similar to what I read in this article but with two key differences. Hourly workers at UPS were unionized and the carrot at the end of the stick seemed much more realistic as numerous guys were promoted to supervisors and drivers who could make 6 figures. I was promoted to my part time supervisor role after a couple of months in fact.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#75

Post by s73ver_ »

whatshisface wrote: post #53
dv_dt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's better than no job at all. I think questioning this idea is the whole point of the article. It's a job, but does the job pay enough to improve the lot of the individual worker? Maybe that isn't fully obvious to the worker because they're worried about no job at all, but if the city of the business and residence of the workers isn't collectively benefiting, then maybe that's a hint that low-skill jobs don't…

If they're more willing to pay better wages, why wouldn't the employees go and work there instead?

Not everyone can up and move like that.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#76

Post by amarkov »

dv_dt wrote: post #72
whatshisface wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're more willing to pay better wages, why wouldn't the employees go and work there instead?

You can't work for a business which has been driven out of the market. And that is how markets can work for good, by selecting efficient businesses (but also bad - the market itself doesn't care), but if you look at businesses in the market, if they all race to subsistence wages then businesses willing to pay more can't operate and the city around the market declines. If the wages stay higher, the cost of goods are h…

Right, but this doesn't seem to describe what happened here. Before Amazon moved in, people in San Bernadino weren't working for efficient businesses paying great wages; they just didn't work.

How long should we have kept them unemployed to wait for a new high-paying business to show up?

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#77

Post by AlexandrB »

amarkov wrote: post #46
AlexandrB wrote: post #11

It frequently seems to be the case that when tech companies interact with unskilled labor, the unskilled labor gets a worse deal than they would before the tech economy. See Uber, Amazon, Blue Apron, and many others. In me this inspires a high-level of cynicism. Now when I hear a startup wanting to "change the world" I'm always curious whose underpaid labor is going to subsidize that change. Underneath all the Silico…

Does Amazon offer a significantly worse deal to its warehouse staff than Walmart? My impression is that it doesn't, so I don't think this is a problem with tech companies specifically.

Probably not [1]. But shouldn't we reach for something better?

Really, I'm just upset about my own disillusionment. As a little kid I thought Silicon Valley was going to usher in a new era of technology and plenty. Something like Star Trek's utopian ideal of a society where scarcity is a thing of the past.

What I see instead is the same old corporate bullshit of maximum exploitation for maximum profit.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/walmart-warehouse-workers...

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#78

Post by s73ver_ »

wand3r wrote: post #57
mhneu wrote: post #14

These Amazon jobs are most useful to think about by comparison. Four decades ago, analogous jobs (manual labor, no college degree) were in the car industry: at Ford and GM. Those jobs were good middle-class jobs with good salaries. On those jobs, one could raise a family with a 40 hour work week, and do very well working 50-60 hours a week. Today, the similar jobs are in Amazon warehouses. What is different? A big on…

> Jeff Bezos is a multi-billionaire and his workers are living in near-poverty. I think a living wage is important and ideally Amazon could pay a decent wage plus benefits. That said, I absolutely hate the argument you made and it makes me cringe every time I hear it. It's apples and oranges. There is a world of difference between building an entire company that is one of the largest in the entire world and sorting b…

It's not at all apples and oranges. Jeff Bezos became the richest person in the world in a large part due to short changing his employees. The two are linked together.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#79

Post by krapp »

FC_Associate wrote: post #68
krapp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with fulfillment center work is, you tend to do one specific job all the time. If you stow, pick, move carts around, move stuff from a cart onto a conveyor belt, you do that all day, every day, until you're told to do something else. Even though many jobs might not be "grueling," at least in warehouses where the inventory tends to be lightweight, the repetition and requirement to meet rate will ensure that…

Disclaimer: I work at an Amazon delivery station and briefly worked at a FC prior. From my experience the managers at my warehouse are very open to moving people around to fill different roles if you request it. This is obviously anecdotal but from my experience people tend to want to stick to one specific job rather than move around.

Fair enough, the logistics of different facilities might allow more leeway in some than others - but in the FC where I work now, they're not very flexible about moving people around unless immediate business needs and stow rates allow it (for indirect roles at least.)

Still, I don't think employees should have to ask at all - Amazon should regularly rotate their FC employees through various roles, even within a workday. Doing so would improve performance, attentiveness and morale across the board, reduce repetitive strain injuries, and give each employee an idea of how various roles interrelate.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#80

Post by andrewjl »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #26
mhneu wrote: post #14

These Amazon jobs are most useful to think about by comparison. Four decades ago, analogous jobs (manual labor, no college degree) were in the car industry: at Ford and GM. Those jobs were good middle-class jobs with good salaries. On those jobs, one could raise a family with a 40 hour work week, and do very well working 50-60 hours a week. Today, the similar jobs are in Amazon warehouses. What is different? A big on…

I think the biggest ones are cheaper transportation to and from areas of the world with lower production costs and drastic increases in automation, both which lower the demand for human labor in the USA (and other developed countries). You can regulate all you want, but it would be better to focus on getting as much of the population ahead of the curve as possible as opposed to leaving them behind. At the end of the…

It's interesting to see this reduction in labor demand is coupled with new lows in the unemployment rate.

There's a shortage of labor but employers don't seem to be willing to pay more to incentivize more people to enter the workforce (which is partially reflected in the so called "shadow" unemployment rate, which is higher). An increase in the minimum wage will cause one of two things to happen, both net good IMO: either employers to invest more in capital / automation or cause them to give all current and new employees a raise.

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