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> My understanding is that they are moving towards it, but raising the price of human labor shift the frontier where changing to automation makes sense. Human
by dunpeal 8y ago
> My understanding is that they are moving towards it, but raising the price of human labor shift the frontier where changing to automation makes sense.
Human labor is so far behind machine labor, that raising its cost by a little bit won't make much of a difference.
When it comes to manual labor, machines are so much cheaper, more efficient, cheaper, less risky (medically, legally, criminally), stable, and reliable, that there's no comparison really.
Big companies like Amazon therefore automate wherever they can already.
Based on articles about their fulfillment centers, the only jobs remaining there are those robots don't do very well right now. These will eventually disappear regardless of the passage of provocatively-titled PR-focused laws (which probably won't pass anyway in current congress).
I'm not sure I understand your second point, especially how relevant it is to the current discussion. This is about Amazon compensating employees with such minimal and pay and benefits that they must seek welfare assistance and thus effectively are paid by the taxpayer. Working conditions have nothing to do with that, although (obviously) the same weak employees (or "contractors") who receive so little pay will receive little consideration in these and other regards as well.
- bertil 8y agoWorking conditions are directly related to pay: they are paid less not because Amazon is going against the letter of the law on minimum wage but because the agencies providing the workforce use extortionate techniques. They make sure not to hit work-hour thresholds to owe employees full benefits. In some areas, they demand that employees use a work-van to get there, and they have to pay the driver absurd amounts to use that “service”. Working conditions are so dire that the temp workers can’t offer suggestion on working conditions, conditions that would help Amazon integrate better automation in their current system, and make paying workers more comfortably more sensical. You can’t extract work problems from their context.
- dunpeal 8y ago> Working conditions are so dire that the temp workers can’t offer suggestion on working conditions, conditions that would help Amazon integrate better automation in their current system, and make paying workers more comfortably more sensical. Not sure I follow. From reading articles about it, the "working conditions" are "dire" because Amazon can press workers to work very hard (fill quotas) in large warehouses that are barely suitable for human habitation. Both of these are related to Amazon squeezing pennies out of employees/contractors who have zero leverage. The problem isn't that these employees can't offer "suggestions". Amazon knows very well that if it lowered quotas, allowed more breaks, and added air-conditioning to warehouses, working conditions will improve. It doesn't do these things because these employees have zero leverage so Amazon makes more money by not offering these improvements.
- bertil 8y agoI don't think we disagree, but I'm not sure I get where you want to take this discussion.
- dunpeal 8y agoMy point is that it's not some trivial issue of Amazon "not listening", or anything else that is easy to fix. The fundamental problem is that unskilled labor is very low value, and as automation increases, will get even lower.