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I believe Amazon has built a somewhat more dreadful work environment than traditional factories. First, it seems like they have optimized every last detail to

I believe Amazon has built a somewhat more dreadful work environment than traditional factories. First, it seems like they have optimized every last detail to the point where people are robbed of their individuality. If your wrist watch tells you when to pee, that leaves traces not just in your underwear, but in your psyche. Second, traditional blue-collar work came with a social support network, build-in. There was a sense of belonging that can be described as anything from “class consciousness” to just the typical camaraderie of working a job, any job, with the same team for years. Amazon actively works against this when, for example, working against the formation of unions. They also inadvertently prevent it through their reliance on temporary work, and rapidly changing assignments, work procedures, etc.

ataturk 8y ago
People have choices. You don't have to be a beat down slave all your life. You can revolt. It's just that the will to revolt hasn't risen in recent times. But it would be interesting to see it happen again because I simply can't see how contemporary culture can continue a whole lot longer. What I basically found out trying to "retire early" is that there are the "high" paying career jobs in offices and everything else is $10-$15/hr. crap work. There is barely anything in between, mirroring what is happening to the middle class--it is being hollowed out so that there will only be rich and poor and nothing else. Places like Mexico are already like this. It is sad and completely avoidable, but oligarchs and autocrats don't want it that way. So revolution it will be. Only a matter of time and hunger.
- badpun 8y ago
  What about skilled trades? Electricians, carpenters or plumbers (esp. self-employed) must be making more than $10-$15/h.
freddie_mercury 8y ago
> I believe Amazon has built a somewhat more dreadful work environment than traditional factories. I kinda feel like you are comparing highly paid, often unionized factories with Amazon. Of course Amazon will come up short. But when I read, say, about how modern chicken processing plants work, Amazon doesn't sound so horrible. Here's the 2017 list of worst OSHA violations; Amazon doesn't appear on it. https://www.safetyandhealthmagazine.com/articles/16362-oshas-top-10-most-cited-violations-for-2017 https://www.safetyandhealthmagazine.com/articles/16362-oshas...
rpeden 8y ago
This kind of dehumanization isn't at all new in factory-type environments. Frederick Taylor's The Principles of Scientific Management[1] was very popular 100 years ago, and included things like time and motion studies[2] which served to optimize processes as much as possible and remove individual variations as much as possible. The whole point was pretty much to make every worker a replaceable cog in the industrial machine. I'd argue that this is actually pretty much what happened - and as the abilities of robots and other forms of automation grew, it was easy to replace humans because so much of the work had already been precisely measured and systematized. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Scientific_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Scientific_M... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_and_motion_study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_and_motion_study

ataturk 8y ago

People have choices. You don't have to be a beat down slave all your life. You can revolt. It's just that the will to revolt hasn't risen in recent times. But it would be interesting to see it happen again because I simply can't see how contemporary culture can continue a whole lot longer. What I basically found out trying to "retire early" is that there are the "high" paying career jobs in offices and everything else is $10-$15/hr. crap work. There is barely anything in between, mirroring what is happening to the middle class--it is being hollowed out so that there will only be rich and poor and nothing else. Places like Mexico are already like this. It is sad and completely avoidable, but oligarchs and autocrats don't want it that way. So revolution it will be. Only a matter of time and hunger.

badpun 8y ago
What about skilled trades? Electricians, carpenters or plumbers (esp. self-employed) must be making more than $10-$15/h.

freddie_mercury 8y ago

> I believe Amazon has built a somewhat more dreadful work environment than traditional factories. I kinda feel like you are comparing highly paid, often unionized factories with Amazon. Of course Amazon will come up short. But when I read, say, about how modern chicken processing plants work, Amazon doesn't sound so horrible. Here's the 2017 list of worst OSHA violations; Amazon doesn't appear on it. https://www.safetyandhealthmagazine.com/articles/16362-oshas-top-10-most-cited-violations-for-2017 https://www.safetyandhealthmagazine.com/articles/16362-oshas...

rpeden 8y ago

This kind of dehumanization isn't at all new in factory-type environments. Frederick Taylor's The Principles of Scientific Management[1] was very popular 100 years ago, and included things like time and motion studies[2] which served to optimize processes as much as possible and remove individual variations as much as possible. The whole point was pretty much to make every worker a replaceable cog in the industrial machine. I'd argue that this is actually pretty much what happened - and as the abilities of robots and other forms of automation grew, it was easy to replace humans because so much of the work had already been precisely measured and systematized. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Scientific_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Scientific_M... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_and_motion_study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_and_motion_study