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That's certainly one way of looking at it but I would worry if your answer to "those workers are being abused!" is always "make them redundant via automation".
by oliwarner 7y ago
That's certainly one way of looking at it but I would worry if your answer to "those workers are being abused!" is always "make them redundant via automation".
Amazon's warehouse workers were abused because Amazon, not because those jobs should have been automated. They could have had more break time. They could have had lower targets. Pay them more. Paternity leave. So many things you can do to improve working conditions.
- EugeneOZ 7y ago> Pay them more Why, if Amazon can replace them by robots?
- oliwarner 7y agoThen Amazon eliminates yet another cost that other retailers have to burden, further out-competing them. I have no love for retail —it was my Saturday job growing up— but it does employ a huge pile of people, from warehousing through to the shop floor. As consumers, we bitch and whine about the cost this adds, and the hassle of mooching into a busy town to go and get something... So we sit back and use Amazon instead. This is killing retail and it could also kill off manual warehousing. Retail employment in the UK us 10% of the workforce. So what happens when Amazon replaces them too? Fewer and fewer jobs for unskilled workers. Across the board. Much more desperate people. Much more abuse.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoHow does Amazon stack up against other warehousing jobs in those areas?
- sneak 7y agoIn such a way that people choose to work for Amazon instead of those other employers, so Amazon’s jobs must be fairly attractive to them.
- JaimeThompson 7y agoIf the alternative is no job the math works out differently. I think that a considerable number of people on this site don't really know what it like to not have employers fighting over them. Sometimes you take what you can get to feed yourself and your kids.
- sneak 7y agoSo having an Amazon job is better than their other options - which is what my comment was saying (albeit poorly).
- JaimeThompson 7y agoYou said "fairly attractive" to them which might not be the best way to say that. Eating worms while lost in the woods isn't something that the vast majority would consider attractive but they would do it anyway to survive.
- amibang 7y agoAmazon is attractive to consumers. Workers... have to go with that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]