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Very few parents say: "I hope my child can get a shipping center job stacking bins, day after day, and hold that job for 40 years." Shipping-center automation

by GCA10 9y ago

Very few parents say: "I hope my child can get a shipping center job stacking bins, day after day, and hold that job for 40 years." Shipping-center automation is going to move people out of rote jobs in the same way that farm automation sent a lot of workers off the land. From this story, it sounds as if the people working at Amazon shipping centers have found mildly more palatable jobs that could lead (with more training) to better paying careers in industrial operations, design, etc. We can (and should!) argue about how fast "better" jobs are taking shape. We can explore ways of making that happen more systematically so that children of pallet stackers have a brighter future. But it's a dim world if we think rote labor like pallet stacking ought to be preserved as long as possible.

notatoad 9y ago
nobody says they want their kid to have a job stacking bins, but there is a need for low-skill, low-training jobs. "Industrial operations, design, etc" are jobs for skilled employees who want a career. Not everybody wants a career, or wants to go to school. Some people are just looking to stack bins for a few months to fund their travel or surfing or whatever.
jdietrich 9y ago
>Very few parents say: "I hope my child can get a shipping center job stacking bins, day after day, and hold that job for 40 years." For a lot of parents, the possibility of their children having a secure full-time job is a lofty aspiration. Millions of Americans are trapped in cycles of unemployment or in low-wage jobs with no security and no benefits. Vast swathes of the US are blighted by long-term unemployment, crumbling infrastructure and a lack of inward investment. Amazon aren't buying these robots out of some altruistic desire to lighten the burden of their workers. Their treatment of warehouse staff is notoriously dreadful. If Bezos could fire every single worker in his warehouses, I have absolutely no doubt that he would. Better jobs would be great, but at the moment we just need jobs. http://articles.mcall.com/2011-09-18/news/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917_1_warehouse-workers-heat-stress-brutal-heat http://articles.mcall.com/2011-09-18/news/mc-allentown-amazo... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/amazon-devastating-expose-accuses-internet-retailer-of-oppressive-and-callous-attitude-to-staff-10458159.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/amazon-devas...
- sol_remmy 9y ago
  If you work in a software company, why don't you stop using calculators and hire a team of 20 women to do computations on slide rules? That's 20 jobs for salt of the earth, hard workin' families. Your on a PROGRAMMING forum and your advocating for doing things less efficiently just to keep people employed
- GCA10 9y ago
  It's a big enough economy that we can both find lots of examples to support our different world views. Probably not worth arguing that at length. Still, the U.S. economy has created about 12 million net new jobs since 2012. (BLS data.) The unemployment rate is at 4.3% now, down from about 8%. For people willing to hunt for something better, the hunt is getting easier.
Chardok 9y ago
I can certainly agree to that sentiment; we are not moving forward as a society if we artificially preserve jobs for the sake of the job itself. However, the theme of this article seems to be "Automation came to Amazon and no jobs were lost, so don't worry about that pesky automation issue!", which seems blatantly misleading. While new jobs like robot maintenance will be created, I can imagine they will only be a small portion of the jobs that were replaced, and that is going to leave a lot of people unemployed and even potentially unemployable. That is an issue we certainly need to acknowledge and discuss.

by GCA10 9y ago

notatoad 9y ago

nobody says they want their kid to have a job stacking bins, but there is a need for low-skill, low-training jobs. "Industrial operations, design, etc" are jobs for skilled employees who want a career. Not everybody wants a career, or wants to go to school. Some people are just looking to stack bins for a few months to fund their travel or surfing or whatever.

jdietrich 9y ago

>Very few parents say: "I hope my child can get a shipping center job stacking bins, day after day, and hold that job for 40 years." For a lot of parents, the possibility of their children having a secure full-time job is a lofty aspiration. Millions of Americans are trapped in cycles of unemployment or in low-wage jobs with no security and no benefits. Vast swathes of the US are blighted by long-term unemployment, crumbling infrastructure and a lack of inward investment. Amazon aren't buying these robots out of some altruistic desire to lighten the burden of their workers. Their treatment of warehouse staff is notoriously dreadful. If Bezos could fire every single worker in his warehouses, I have absolutely no doubt that he would. Better jobs would be great, but at the moment we just need jobs. http://articles.mcall.com/2011-09-18/news/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917_1_warehouse-workers-heat-stress-brutal-heat http://articles.mcall.com/2011-09-18/news/mc-allentown-amazo... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/amazon-devastating-expose-accuses-internet-retailer-of-oppressive-and-callous-attitude-to-staff-10458159.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/amazon-devas...

sol_remmy 9y ago
If you work in a software company, why don't you stop using calculators and hire a team of 20 women to do computations on slide rules? That's 20 jobs for salt of the earth, hard workin' families. Your on a PROGRAMMING forum and your advocating for doing things less efficiently just to keep people employed
GCA10 9y ago
It's a big enough economy that we can both find lots of examples to support our different world views. Probably not worth arguing that at length. Still, the U.S. economy has created about 12 million net new jobs since 2012. (BLS data.) The unemployment rate is at 4.3% now, down from about 8%. For people willing to hunt for something better, the hunt is getting easier.

Chardok 9y ago

I can certainly agree to that sentiment; we are not moving forward as a society if we artificially preserve jobs for the sake of the job itself. However, the theme of this article seems to be "Automation came to Amazon and no jobs were lost, so don't worry about that pesky automation issue!", which seems blatantly misleading. While new jobs like robot maintenance will be created, I can imagine they will only be a small portion of the jobs that were replaced, and that is going to leave a lot of people unemployed and even potentially unemployable. That is an issue we certainly need to acknowledge and discuss.