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It's disgusting because it's undignified. Workers should receive a decent wage for work performed, not pressured to perform as fast as possible for gimmicks in

It's disgusting because it's undignified. Workers should receive a decent wage for work performed, not pressured to perform as fast as possible for gimmicks in an ever quicker race to the bottom to see who can wreck their health the fastest. It's not as if Amazon can't afford to provide decent working conditions.

time-domain0 8y ago
Amazon UK had bathrooms outside of airport-style security where workers had to regularly pee in soda bottles because their minimum performance goals didn't allow time for the distant odyssey and security theater required for a bathroom break.
- shubb 8y ago
  So power hours are actually the hour before lunch, and everyone is running around because they are desperately trying to hold it in?
orbifold 8y ago
They literally can’t afford it, they have razor thin margins. Their business model depends on inhumane working conditions, which is why I would be glad to see them go (not that this will happen, but at least in Germany they have received some pushback against their practices)
- krapp 8y ago
  They raised base pay across the entire network just to avoid bad PR. I suspect Amazon could find the money if they wanted to.
  - onetimemanytime 8y ago
    >>I suspect Amazon could find the money if they wanted to. Or they can close down the shop if they can't find the money to do the right /required thing.
    - krapp 8y ago
      Which, ironically, is exactly what a lot of people would have predicted had someone said Amazon should raise base pay to $15/hr. They would have said margins are too thin, that it's impossible to pay more, that menial labor doesn't deserve more, that paying more would result in immediate widespread layoffs, that warehouse employees have little recourse but to accept their lot or quit because that's just how the market works. But that argument assumes Amazon, or any business, pays some objective measure of what a job is "worth", or as much as the market will allow. They don't, they often pay as little as they can get away with. So yes, Amazon could close down the shop, but Amazon could always close down the shop. They could also afford to pay their warehouse employees more. They don't, not because they can't, but because they prefer not to.
- suprfsat 8y ago
  CEO $150 billion Bathroom breaks $4 Someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this, my warehouse floor is covered in piss.
- chimprich 8y ago
  Amazon the company made a profit of billions this year. Amazon the store is nowhere near as profitable as AWS etc. but they can still afford it. The lack of profits in retail is from choices of going for aggressive expansion and going for those thin profit margins. They don't need these sort of demeaning gimmicks.
  - orbifold 8y ago
    They made no or almost no profit with their retail business for years, that was the only way they could expand so quickly.
    - jsjohnst 8y ago
      Taking no profits in retail was a very intentional decision they made. Bezos has talked publicly at length about it.
- cmrdporcupine 8y ago
  You've been downvoted a bunch and I can see why but I also somewhat agree with your point. It's not Amazon that creates this situation. It's the market system itself and it will always exist, because if Amazon doesn't do it some other employer will -- in some jurisdiction or scenario in which they can get away with it -- and gain a competitive advantage. Unless there's a labour shortage, or government action, it's a race to the lowest common denominator or worse. And that's why the formation of a union across the whole sector is imperative.
mruts 8y ago
Who are you to call it undignified? How about you let employees make their own choices. Clearly, if you accept a job, you believe the compensation to be fair. If it wasn’t fair, you wouldn’t take the job. It’s as simple as that.
- cuban-frisbee 8y ago
  You are literally commenting on an article about the workers doing just that (making their own choices). You know you can try to actually improve your situation in other ways than quitting right? Even in a collective fashion that will benifit other people.
- viraptor 8y ago
  > you believe the compensation to be fair Or it's your only choice. We're not talking about skilled labour with lots of options.
  - gluelogic 8y ago
    Working at Amazon is literally no one's "only choice" in the US. In fact, I would bet on it being a better option than most of what is available to low or unskilled workers.
    - moate 8y ago
      Just to take this down a certain path: having your foot amputated is better than having your whole foot cut off, but nobody is going to describe either as good choices. Picking between running madly around an amazon warehouse for 15 dollars an hour or taking some other low skill job for less seems fine, until Amazon realizes that the workers are all interchangeable and the company benefits more by burning through them quickly and replacing them with fresh bodies than it does by continued support for its staff with long term plans of employment. The second they decide to exploit their labor for their sole benefit, rather than something that can be seen as mutually beneficial for both in the long term, that's when people start to feel you should be doing better. Also, just to address a theme that gets thrown around a lot. >>Working at Amazon is literally no one's "only choice" in the US. What does this mean? The US is a massive country with huge differences from one region to the next, never mind the difference between the urban and rural areas within a region. To try and pretend its a unified country with unified value systems and a unified equally distributed economic system is asinine. On top of that, who the fuck knows what's going on in "Joe Random-US-Citizen"'s life. Maybe it is his only option because he also has to take care of his dying father and is racked with student debt from a failed attempt at getting his BA. IDK what anyone's value choices represent, but this whole "you can always just do better if you really wanted" is a lie I'm sick of being peddled. The US is economically more advanced than many countries. There's still people living in relative poverty. There's still massive social problems. Any time someone says any broad group (Americans, Gays, Engineers) all face the same situations, I have to roll my eyes because it's never true. Sorry if this came across as a personal attack on your views (it isn't, I don't really know them from your 2 sentences), it's just something I see get brought up and this was me finally responding.
prepend 8y ago
“decent wage for work performed, not pressured to perform as fast as possible for gimmicks in an ever quicker race to the bottom to see who can wreck their health the fastest.” These are not exclusive options. Workers can make a decent wage and be incentivized by bonus programs. I’m not sure how this is undignified or how to have enough dignity in such a program. It’s a challenge to try to maximize productivity and having elective programs where individuals can choose to put in extra effort than they normally would could certainly be structured in a way that isn’t compulsory and reduces the risk of someone harming themself. It certainly would award workers who work harder and produce more than others. And there could be valid reasons for lower productivity (ie, poor health) that are outside of worker control. But I think the aim is not to evenly distribute wages across all workers, but to allocate wages to the most productive workers. Manual labor is a challenge to manage.
- colde 8y ago
  It's undignified because it's prizes to the highest performer, instead of bonuses to everyone meeting a certain goal. They are essentially pitting employees against each other, because if i sabotage someone else, i have a better shot at winning. If they did it by saying "everyone that meets this specific standard gets a bonus of X" then i don't think anyone would really complain. But because they are overworking themselves to have a chance to maybe get a prize, it seems unnecessarily exploitative.
  - zeroname 8y ago
    > It's undignified because it's prizes to the highest performer, instead of bonuses to everyone meeting a certain goal. That's not how a raffle works. You earn tickets which increase your chances of winning. The highest performer isn't necessarily the winner. That also limits how much effort people are going to put into it. I agree that getting rewarded for actual work performed is strictly better, but in the end the workers get to decide if they want to play that game or not. > They are essentially pitting employees against each other, because if i sabotage someone else, i have a better shot at winning. I guess the possibility that warehouse workers are going to sabotage each other and risk getting fired over raffle tickets wasn't considered in the planning. I'm not saying it won't happen, but it sounds far-fetched.

time-domain0 8y ago

Amazon UK had bathrooms outside of airport-style security where workers had to regularly pee in soda bottles because their minimum performance goals didn't allow time for the distant odyssey and security theater required for a bathroom break.

shubb 8y ago
So power hours are actually the hour before lunch, and everyone is running around because they are desperately trying to hold it in?

orbifold 8y ago

They literally can’t afford it, they have razor thin margins. Their business model depends on inhumane working conditions, which is why I would be glad to see them go (not that this will happen, but at least in Germany they have received some pushback against their practices)

krapp 8y ago
They raised base pay across the entire network just to avoid bad PR. I suspect Amazon could find the money if they wanted to.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  >>I suspect Amazon could find the money if they wanted to. Or they can close down the shop if they can't find the money to do the right /required thing.
  - krapp 8y ago
    Which, ironically, is exactly what a lot of people would have predicted had someone said Amazon should raise base pay to $15/hr. They would have said margins are too thin, that it's impossible to pay more, that menial labor doesn't deserve more, that paying more would result in immediate widespread layoffs, that warehouse employees have little recourse but to accept their lot or quit because that's just how the market works. But that argument assumes Amazon, or any business, pays some objective measure of what a job is "worth", or as much as the market will allow. They don't, they often pay as little as they can get away with. So yes, Amazon could close down the shop, but Amazon could always close down the shop. They could also afford to pay their warehouse employees more. They don't, not because they can't, but because they prefer not to.
suprfsat 8y ago
CEO $150 billion Bathroom breaks $4 Someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this, my warehouse floor is covered in piss.
chimprich 8y ago
Amazon the company made a profit of billions this year. Amazon the store is nowhere near as profitable as AWS etc. but they can still afford it. The lack of profits in retail is from choices of going for aggressive expansion and going for those thin profit margins. They don't need these sort of demeaning gimmicks.
- orbifold 8y ago
  They made no or almost no profit with their retail business for years, that was the only way they could expand so quickly.
  - jsjohnst 8y ago
    Taking no profits in retail was a very intentional decision they made. Bezos has talked publicly at length about it.
cmrdporcupine 8y ago
You've been downvoted a bunch and I can see why but I also somewhat agree with your point. It's not Amazon that creates this situation. It's the market system itself and it will always exist, because if Amazon doesn't do it some other employer will -- in some jurisdiction or scenario in which they can get away with it -- and gain a competitive advantage. Unless there's a labour shortage, or government action, it's a race to the lowest common denominator or worse. And that's why the formation of a union across the whole sector is imperative.

mruts 8y ago

Who are you to call it undignified? How about you let employees make their own choices. Clearly, if you accept a job, you believe the compensation to be fair. If it wasn’t fair, you wouldn’t take the job. It’s as simple as that.

cuban-frisbee 8y ago
You are literally commenting on an article about the workers doing just that (making their own choices). You know you can try to actually improve your situation in other ways than quitting right? Even in a collective fashion that will benifit other people.
viraptor 8y ago
> you believe the compensation to be fair Or it's your only choice. We're not talking about skilled labour with lots of options.
- gluelogic 8y ago
  Working at Amazon is literally no one's "only choice" in the US. In fact, I would bet on it being a better option than most of what is available to low or unskilled workers.
  - moate 8y ago
    Just to take this down a certain path: having your foot amputated is better than having your whole foot cut off, but nobody is going to describe either as good choices. Picking between running madly around an amazon warehouse for 15 dollars an hour or taking some other low skill job for less seems fine, until Amazon realizes that the workers are all interchangeable and the company benefits more by burning through them quickly and replacing them with fresh bodies than it does by continued support for its staff with long term plans of employment. The second they decide to exploit their labor for their sole benefit, rather than something that can be seen as mutually beneficial for both in the long term, that's when people start to feel you should be doing better. Also, just to address a theme that gets thrown around a lot. >>Working at Amazon is literally no one's "only choice" in the US. What does this mean? The US is a massive country with huge differences from one region to the next, never mind the difference between the urban and rural areas within a region. To try and pretend its a unified country with unified value systems and a unified equally distributed economic system is asinine. On top of that, who the fuck knows what's going on in "Joe Random-US-Citizen"'s life. Maybe it is his only option because he also has to take care of his dying father and is racked with student debt from a failed attempt at getting his BA. IDK what anyone's value choices represent, but this whole "you can always just do better if you really wanted" is a lie I'm sick of being peddled. The US is economically more advanced than many countries. There's still people living in relative poverty. There's still massive social problems. Any time someone says any broad group (Americans, Gays, Engineers) all face the same situations, I have to roll my eyes because it's never true. Sorry if this came across as a personal attack on your views (it isn't, I don't really know them from your 2 sentences), it's just something I see get brought up and this was me finally responding.

prepend 8y ago

“decent wage for work performed, not pressured to perform as fast as possible for gimmicks in an ever quicker race to the bottom to see who can wreck their health the fastest.” These are not exclusive options. Workers can make a decent wage and be incentivized by bonus programs. I’m not sure how this is undignified or how to have enough dignity in such a program. It’s a challenge to try to maximize productivity and having elective programs where individuals can choose to put in extra effort than they normally would could certainly be structured in a way that isn’t compulsory and reduces the risk of someone harming themself. It certainly would award workers who work harder and produce more than others. And there could be valid reasons for lower productivity (ie, poor health) that are outside of worker control. But I think the aim is not to evenly distribute wages across all workers, but to allocate wages to the most productive workers. Manual labor is a challenge to manage.

colde 8y ago
It's undignified because it's prizes to the highest performer, instead of bonuses to everyone meeting a certain goal. They are essentially pitting employees against each other, because if i sabotage someone else, i have a better shot at winning. If they did it by saying "everyone that meets this specific standard gets a bonus of X" then i don't think anyone would really complain. But because they are overworking themselves to have a chance to maybe get a prize, it seems unnecessarily exploitative.
- zeroname 8y ago
  > It's undignified because it's prizes to the highest performer, instead of bonuses to everyone meeting a certain goal. That's not how a raffle works. You earn tickets which increase your chances of winning. The highest performer isn't necessarily the winner. That also limits how much effort people are going to put into it. I agree that getting rewarded for actual work performed is strictly better, but in the end the workers get to decide if they want to play that game or not. > They are essentially pitting employees against each other, because if i sabotage someone else, i have a better shot at winning. I guess the possibility that warehouse workers are going to sabotage each other and risk getting fired over raffle tickets wasn't considered in the planning. I'm not saying it won't happen, but it sounds far-fetched.