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What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

theatlantic.com

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Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#81

Post by s73ver_ »

Mitchhhs wrote: post #6

I feel like journalists are just trying every way possible to create an anti-tech sentiment. Crazy how fast things can change from all hail the tech titans to oh these tech companies are creating a dystopia. Theres way too much noise in every aspect of information these days to help society focus on the problems that actually matter.

You're saying this like the tech companies aren't actually doing these things. Like they're somehow misunderstood; that they're not really eroding worker protections or anything like that.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#82

Post by jen20 »

groby_b wrote: post #56
lotsofpulp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> At the end of the day, we just don't need secretaries, travel agents, We keep telling ourselves that, but it's a story. (Presumably so we can feel good about income inequality) A good secretary, or a good travel agent, are amazing . I'd pay good money to have either one available, and so would many other people. All we've done is put that work on people who already have another job, the people who used to be custom…

I travel a lot (~150 flights some years) and find that the disadvantages of booking through a travel agent usually outweigh the benefit for business travel.

You usually end up on tickets with very restrictive conditions which cannot be modified other than via the travel agent themselves, often for more money than a less restrictive ticket could be bought directly with the airline. If you are many time zones away and can forsee irregular operations there is no way to pre-empt them until the agency has staff available. In addition, many loyalty programmes (particularly for hotels) do not allow you to accrue or make use of benefits if booked via a third party.

That said, for vacations with a lot of co-ordination involved (think family trips with people coming from different origin points, different dates etc) a travel agent can be useful and worth accepting the more restrictive nature of what can be booked.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#83

Post by s73ver_ »

_rpd wrote: post #49
wehadfun wrote: post #21

I think the best people for jobs like this are those that just want supplemental income. Teenagers, College Kids, Part-time or temp workers.

I think it is pretty clear that we should automate box packing as soon as possible. It is a waste of human talent to have people doing this.

The problem is, those people need to have jobs.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#84

Post by FC_Associate »

krapp wrote: post #79
FC_Associate wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 workd…

I'm in compete agreement with you regarding moving people through different roles. This is actually what I've requested and now have varying duties on my different shifts, it makes the work much more enjoyable to me. With that being said I personally probably wouldn't enjoy being moved to different roles throughout one shift on a regular basis. I've had that happen to me before when we were short on staff and it can be more stressful.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#85

Post by ocschwar »

clebio wrote: post #65
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 don't think physical labor is a big deal -- indeed us computer-and-desk workers think a lot about how to stay active -- and I don't take that to be the crux of the article at all. In fact, I'm surprised that none of the comments here have yet mentioned what I see as the worst, and tangibly different aspect of Amazon warehouse work: the gamification of the tasks. > blue bars on the scanner count down the amount of t…

The biggest problem, I am willing to bet, is that the gamification and the parameter changes are being done by desk jockeys who have never worked the floor at one of these warehouses.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#86

Post by southphillyman »

I couldn't help but to think about basic income while reading this article. It seems like the vast majority of people in these Amazon warehouse stories hate working there but really have no other options at the moment. Basic income would allow these individuals to perhaps work at lower paying companies that prioritize worker morale over profitability.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#87

Post by sp332 »

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?

Because they're too busy working their current jobs to spend time looking, applying, and interviewing for other jobs.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#88

Post by ars »

s73ver_ wrote: post #71
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.

> If that's all you have to defend it with, then you have nothing to defend.

Sure. No problem. They'll just have no job. And you can continue to believe that.

> The company turned the owner into the richest man on the planet

Because of the value of his stock. NOT income from sales! Amazon does not have extra money from sales to raise wages with. Their retail business runs at a loss actually. Raising wages would make things even worse.

> there is zero excuse for short changing the workers.

That's not what short changing is. Short changing is not delivering what was promised.

There is no magic fairy that can go around giving people money, as you seem to think "just give them more money".

There's a reason we tell students to finish high school, and go to college or a trade school - to avoid these kinds of jobs.

You actually want to help them? Figure out how to give them more education. Complaining that Amazon is helping them, but "not enough" is worthless.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#89

Post by ars »

AlexandrB wrote: post #77
amarkov wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It did. Sort of.

Even someone poor has a magic device in his pocket that can show almost any video ever, can talk to anyone, and give directions.

People today have never been better off. A poor person today lives better than a king of old.

Except that people always compare to each other. And that's never going to change.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#90

Post by dv_dt »

amarkov wrote: post #76
dv_dt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If we systematically select businesses that pay subsistence wages, the concern is that better employment may never show up, and the overall economy becomes more and more unstable over time. But it's hard to know for sure and that is one of many different outcomes.

But still it's not an area you want to move forward with no introspection.

Edit: If low-workers are paid such a low margin that they have no personal buffer for uncertainties such as automation in warehouses, then we also guarantee that the government ends up paying for that transition (or we get unrest and/or economic malaise). If they're paid a higher margin, the economy ends up more efficient at flexibility transitioning from changes like warehouses becoming fully automated. (because offset workers can make individual transition choices that that make local sense instead of trying to apply slowly responding gov't policy).

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