17 ms·

I agree with the worker in the video, they should be treated as human beings. One of the issues is doing a simple, monotonous task every 8 seconds, 10 hours a d

by enlyth 7y ago

I agree with the worker in the video, they should be treated as human beings. One of the issues is doing a simple, monotonous task every 8 seconds, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, without creating anything of value, is going to be dehumanizing and unfulfilling regardless. Robots carrying out this work would probably be for the best for everyone involved, although Amazon should do right by the workers carrying them over this difficult transition period where they're still required for part of the menial manual labour tasks. The compensation should reflect the mental and physical stress they put people through.

vorpalhex 7y ago
So the fix to this is Amazon laying off all their workers?
- Someone1234 7y ago
  As automation keeps on improving and productivity gets more centralized will there be a shortage of jobs? The above poster makes a fair point that this is work well suited to automation. In the broader sense with retail closing and Amazon taking market share, centralizing productivity (i.e. reducing retail jobs to fewer picker jobs), and then automating those fewer jobs away entirely, are we going to have a hole in society where those jobs once existed? I genuinely have no idea how society would work if you simply eliminated 20% of jobs tomorrow. Mass poverty? Artificially created jobs? A larger rich/poor divide?
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    It's highly unlikely that 20% will disappear overnight. Every other case where we've seen automation/innovation eliminating jobs has been a gradual process, so I see no reason for this not to continue. Amazon has been testing cashierless grocery stores, yet they haven't completely eliminated their competition where they're available. I'm sure they'll become popular, but they'll likely roll out relatively slowly. We already have self checkout, yet some people prefer to checkout with a human, and I doubt that will change. Manufacturing jobs have been using more and more automation, yet manufacturing jobs are still available, just different. Many jobs that used to be minimum wage jobs have been replaced by higher paying jobs with specialists; there are fewer of them, sure, but they pay better. As labor jobs get replaced by automation, we'll invent new jobs to take advantage of the increased labor pool. That's just the way innovation goes.
  - bduerst 7y ago
    No, because job demand is not a zero-sum game but a function of supply. For every job that gets "destroyed" by technology, several new ones are created. The problem is we, as humans, are terrible at predicting the future - for example, try explaining a mobile app developer job to someone thirty years ago in 1989. Now try imagine what jobs we will have 30 years from now, keeping in mind how off a person in 1989 would have been. Perfect world solution here is that Amazon retrains their workers, but as we're not in a perfect world, that typically falls to the state. As human labor becomes more valuable to fill niche and volatile job markets, due to automation taking large scalable jobs, retraining is going to become even more important.
    - wutbrodo 7y ago
      I don't think a mobile app developer would be too difficult to explain to someone from the 80s: they already understood the concept of computer programmers and software, and "everyone has a pocket computer" existed for decades in science fiction by that time. A better analogy would be explaining something like social media consultants (or for that matter, social media influencers). Hell, _I_ still don't understand the user behavior underpinning the social media economy, and I've lived in it for a decade.
      - bduerst 7y ago
        True, but even a keyboardless PC in your pocket would have been hard to comprehend, as you would have to explain everything from touch LCD screens to the internet. Also talk about online-only businesses or even drop shipping. In 1989 you didn't even have the internet, much less anyone purchasing things online. There are catalog analogies, but the concepts are so foreign it makes it difficult to visualize 30 years from now without projecting our own biases onto it.
        jodrellblank 7y ago
        even a keyboardless PC in your pocket would have been hard to comprehend Given there were two pocket sized PCs released in 1989 - the Poqet PC and Atari Portfolio, that seems unlikely, except in a "the future is here but not evenly distributed" sense. "How would you use one without a keyboard?" "You'd touch the screen directly" "oh, ok". But even then, LCD pocket calculators were common by 1989. Wearable computing had been around since 1981 (Steve Mann) for anyone following tech developments. Seiko had released a wearable computer watch in 1984. In 1989 you didn't even have the internet, much less anyone purchasing things online But you had telephone ordering. And you could have had fax ordering. Back to the Future 2 came out in 1989 and they were predicting a future world of 2015, which included a kind of tablet computer, head mounted displays, flat-screens, implicit voice recognition[3]. OK it's not PCs, smartphones or the internet but it's enough that a blockbuster Hollywood movie expected people to understand "pay by putting your thumb on this portable device", and not find it "hard to comprehend". (Terminator was from 1984 and that was a mobile, keyboardless computer, in a sense). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poqet_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poqet_PC [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Portfolio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Portfolio [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future_Part_II#Depiction_of_the_future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future_Part_II#Dep...
  - malandrew 7y ago
    > are we going to have a hole in society where those jobs once existed? This wouldn't be the first time. Happened with farming 100-150 years ago. It's going to be a painful adjustment, but until all human needs are met, I'm sure humans that still have jobs can come up with work they want performed in exchange for money so long as politicians don't legislate against the existence of those jobs.
- traderjane 7y ago
  Perhaps the state should be responsible for the roughness of economic transition, especially for work-affecting phenomena which is global? Such as through polishing the unemployment program.
  - polotics 7y ago
    Perhaps the state should ensure Bezos pays taxes at the level a CEO paid taxes in the 1960's: America's best decade so far...
    - RHSeeger 7y ago
      > the 1960's: America's best decade so far. Why do you say that?
      - polotics 7y ago
        Civil rights, Apollo, total cultural leadership, leading decolonisation the world over, Bretton Woods still on, net exporter still, pre local peak-oil...
  - malandrew 7y ago
    That would be okay so long as any solution is temporary with clear criteria for sunsetting the government's involvement. Last thing we need is yet another agency that succumbs to the Shirky Principle and citizens become dependent on the government instead of taking up one of the new jobs that appear in the next few decades. https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/
OscarCunningham 7y ago
> without creating anything of value That's not the right way of phrasing it. They're producing a substantial amount of value, in the real sense that the world is a better place because of the work they've done.
- cfqycwz 7y ago
  And in the sense that Amazon generates tremendous profit for its owners, which has to come from somebody's labor!
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    And also value in the worker's wages as well as customer value.
mdorazio 7y ago
> The compensation should reflect the mental and physical stress they put people through. As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market. The fact that Amazon can easily hire as many workers as it wants at $15/hr says that they are paying their employees plenty already. It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for their labor practices rather than demonizing the market conditions that have led to Amazon warehouses being a place people are willing to work.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Market conditions are set by regulation and market participants (there is no such thing as a pure free market except in an economist's textbook). Congress (the Senate specifically, conservatives/republicans) have failed to raise the federal minimum wage ($7.25, unchanged since 2009) to reflect the required wage to survive with increased costs of living (housing, broken healthcare, etc). This caused Senator Sanders to have to shame Amazon into paying a higher wage to Amazon's warehouse workers (which Amazon not only agreed to do, but also stated they would lobby for raising the federal minimum wage as well). Why shouldn't one of the wealthiest companies in the world (a labor market participant) be demonizied for worker abuse, even if it is "legal"? If you don't understand what Amazon fulfillment workers experience, I encourage you to take a vacation day or two and apply for a job at a warehouse as a runner. You'll only need a day or two to appreciate the experience. There is no college course or bootcamp for compassion and empathy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9m7d07k22A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9m7d07k22A (Warehouses: HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver)
  - mdorazio 7y ago
    1) Because it's not an Amazon problem, it's a fulfillment center/warehouse employee problem that applies to just about every company in the industry I'm aware of. 2) Because Amazon is a for-profit company, not a charity, and its responsibility is not to pay employees more than it has to or give them more benefits/easier working conditions than are necessary. Are you also demonizing your own employer for not paying everyone as much as it possibly can without going bankrupt? 3) Because in many areas where Amazon warehouses operate, they are a significantly better job prospect than other options, working conditions be damned. 4) Because competitive markets don't let companies pay their workers whatever they want to. If you pay your workers too much, a competitor will pay theirs less, pass the savings on to customers, and take market share from you. Amazon is one of the wealthiest companies in the world because it doesn't pay all 600,000+ of its warehouse workers an amazing salary and let them work in better conditions. A lot of people who are angry at Amazon are really angry at the outcome of unchecked capitalism. These are the frustrations that should be applied to voting, not to perfectly legal corporate policies.
dv_dt 7y ago
Maybe the human work will shift to robot technicians, and how many blown servomotor assemblies or control boards you can swap out in an hour, but there will always be human standards that need help enforcing in some industries.
noobermin 7y ago
If they didn't "create anything of value" why are they there doing it? Why does Amazon have them doing what they do in the first place? The point is they do in fact play an important role in the generation of the value by Amazon and they are asking for their fair share.
rayiner 7y ago
> I agree with the worker in the video, they should be treated as human beings. One of the issues is doing a simple, monotonous task every 8 seconds, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, without creating anything of value, is going to be dehumanizing and unfulfilling regardless. If it’s a task that can’t easily be automated and needs to be done, the doing it is creating value.
pathseeker 7y ago
> without creating anything of value, Delivery creates significant value. What are you talking about?
dpwm 7y ago
I was at a graduate careers fair in a city where Amazon had just opened offices. Naturally, Amazon had a stall at this careers fair. The person running their stall was telling an audience of maybe six or seven other people that Amazon was the kind of company where if you could find a path around their warehouse that would shave even a single second off a warehouse worker's journey, they'd make them walk it. The audience were quite impressed by this. I suddenly found myself the other side of having said "what an awful place to work," and receiving a mix of bewildered and hostile looks from every other person around that stall. I'm pretty sure the claim was hyperbole – the practical side of getting people to walk a particular path would have been my follow-up question, if I'd thought of it in time. Even so, the claim revealed a mentality of workers as robots that I think helped explain some of the news stories of extraordinary conditions of their warehouse workers.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Um this is standard Time and Motion stuff from 1920's this is SOP for any factory production line going back a hundred years or more.
  - dpwm 7y ago
    Yes, and the criticisms of Taylorism are fairly well-developed. In fact, a lot of the criticisms of Amazon's practices are much the same. With Amazon's level of data collection on individual warehouse and logistic workers, it puts them in a place that Taylorists of the 80s could only dream of. At least in the UK, they've found a way to make sure that they are in no way directly financially responsible for any of the externalities of what their approach does to workers, chiefly by pulling tricks like having their workers hired on an agency basis through subcontractors. I'm not saying this is wrong, it's just what they've done. They have spent the money and found a way to operate that is more efficient. It's what they do, and it's how they sold themselves to a group that included me. I also found the whole thing to be a bit contradictory: software engineers at a multiple of the pay of warehouse engineers working on optimizing the warehouse that is probably almost near optimal. Perhaps if I had been quicker-witted, I'd have asked if we found a way to make the software engineers working on shaving a second off the path around the warehouse more efficient, would they make them do it.

by enlyth 7y ago

vorpalhex 7y ago

So the fix to this is Amazon laying off all their workers?

Someone1234 7y ago
As automation keeps on improving and productivity gets more centralized will there be a shortage of jobs? The above poster makes a fair point that this is work well suited to automation. In the broader sense with retail closing and Amazon taking market share, centralizing productivity (i.e. reducing retail jobs to fewer picker jobs), and then automating those fewer jobs away entirely, are we going to have a hole in society where those jobs once existed? I genuinely have no idea how society would work if you simply eliminated 20% of jobs tomorrow. Mass poverty? Artificially created jobs? A larger rich/poor divide?
- beatgammit 7y ago
  It's highly unlikely that 20% will disappear overnight. Every other case where we've seen automation/innovation eliminating jobs has been a gradual process, so I see no reason for this not to continue. Amazon has been testing cashierless grocery stores, yet they haven't completely eliminated their competition where they're available. I'm sure they'll become popular, but they'll likely roll out relatively slowly. We already have self checkout, yet some people prefer to checkout with a human, and I doubt that will change. Manufacturing jobs have been using more and more automation, yet manufacturing jobs are still available, just different. Many jobs that used to be minimum wage jobs have been replaced by higher paying jobs with specialists; there are fewer of them, sure, but they pay better. As labor jobs get replaced by automation, we'll invent new jobs to take advantage of the increased labor pool. That's just the way innovation goes.
- bduerst 7y ago
  No, because job demand is not a zero-sum game but a function of supply. For every job that gets "destroyed" by technology, several new ones are created. The problem is we, as humans, are terrible at predicting the future - for example, try explaining a mobile app developer job to someone thirty years ago in 1989. Now try imagine what jobs we will have 30 years from now, keeping in mind how off a person in 1989 would have been. Perfect world solution here is that Amazon retrains their workers, but as we're not in a perfect world, that typically falls to the state. As human labor becomes more valuable to fill niche and volatile job markets, due to automation taking large scalable jobs, retraining is going to become even more important.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    I don't think a mobile app developer would be too difficult to explain to someone from the 80s: they already understood the concept of computer programmers and software, and "everyone has a pocket computer" existed for decades in science fiction by that time. A better analogy would be explaining something like social media consultants (or for that matter, social media influencers). Hell, _I_ still don't understand the user behavior underpinning the social media economy, and I've lived in it for a decade.
    - bduerst 7y ago
      True, but even a keyboardless PC in your pocket would have been hard to comprehend, as you would have to explain everything from touch LCD screens to the internet. Also talk about online-only businesses or even drop shipping. In 1989 you didn't even have the internet, much less anyone purchasing things online. There are catalog analogies, but the concepts are so foreign it makes it difficult to visualize 30 years from now without projecting our own biases onto it.
      - jodrellblank 7y ago
        even a keyboardless PC in your pocket would have been hard to comprehend Given there were two pocket sized PCs released in 1989 - the Poqet PC and Atari Portfolio, that seems unlikely, except in a "the future is here but not evenly distributed" sense. "How would you use one without a keyboard?" "You'd touch the screen directly" "oh, ok". But even then, LCD pocket calculators were common by 1989. Wearable computing had been around since 1981 (Steve Mann) for anyone following tech developments. Seiko had released a wearable computer watch in 1984. In 1989 you didn't even have the internet, much less anyone purchasing things online But you had telephone ordering. And you could have had fax ordering. Back to the Future 2 came out in 1989 and they were predicting a future world of 2015, which included a kind of tablet computer, head mounted displays, flat-screens, implicit voice recognition[3]. OK it's not PCs, smartphones or the internet but it's enough that a blockbuster Hollywood movie expected people to understand "pay by putting your thumb on this portable device", and not find it "hard to comprehend". (Terminator was from 1984 and that was a mobile, keyboardless computer, in a sense). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poqet_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poqet_PC [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Portfolio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Portfolio [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future_Part_II#Depiction_of_the_future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future_Part_II#Dep...
- malandrew 7y ago
  > are we going to have a hole in society where those jobs once existed? This wouldn't be the first time. Happened with farming 100-150 years ago. It's going to be a painful adjustment, but until all human needs are met, I'm sure humans that still have jobs can come up with work they want performed in exchange for money so long as politicians don't legislate against the existence of those jobs.
traderjane 7y ago
Perhaps the state should be responsible for the roughness of economic transition, especially for work-affecting phenomena which is global? Such as through polishing the unemployment program.
- polotics 7y ago
  Perhaps the state should ensure Bezos pays taxes at the level a CEO paid taxes in the 1960's: America's best decade so far...
  - RHSeeger 7y ago
    > the 1960's: America's best decade so far. Why do you say that?
    - polotics 7y ago
      Civil rights, Apollo, total cultural leadership, leading decolonisation the world over, Bretton Woods still on, net exporter still, pre local peak-oil...
- malandrew 7y ago
  That would be okay so long as any solution is temporary with clear criteria for sunsetting the government's involvement. Last thing we need is yet another agency that succumbs to the Shirky Principle and citizens become dependent on the government instead of taking up one of the new jobs that appear in the next few decades. https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/

OscarCunningham 7y ago

> without creating anything of value That's not the right way of phrasing it. They're producing a substantial amount of value, in the real sense that the world is a better place because of the work they've done.

cfqycwz 7y ago
And in the sense that Amazon generates tremendous profit for its owners, which has to come from somebody's labor!
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  And also value in the worker's wages as well as customer value.

mdorazio 7y ago

> The compensation should reflect the mental and physical stress they put people through. As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market. The fact that Amazon can easily hire as many workers as it wants at $15/hr says that they are paying their employees plenty already. It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for their labor practices rather than demonizing the market conditions that have led to Amazon warehouses being a place people are willing to work.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Market conditions are set by regulation and market participants (there is no such thing as a pure free market except in an economist's textbook). Congress (the Senate specifically, conservatives/republicans) have failed to raise the federal minimum wage ($7.25, unchanged since 2009) to reflect the required wage to survive with increased costs of living (housing, broken healthcare, etc). This caused Senator Sanders to have to shame Amazon into paying a higher wage to Amazon's warehouse workers (which Amazon not only agreed to do, but also stated they would lobby for raising the federal minimum wage as well). Why shouldn't one of the wealthiest companies in the world (a labor market participant) be demonizied for worker abuse, even if it is "legal"? If you don't understand what Amazon fulfillment workers experience, I encourage you to take a vacation day or two and apply for a job at a warehouse as a runner. You'll only need a day or two to appreciate the experience. There is no college course or bootcamp for compassion and empathy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9m7d07k22A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9m7d07k22A (Warehouses: HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver)
- mdorazio 7y ago
  1) Because it's not an Amazon problem, it's a fulfillment center/warehouse employee problem that applies to just about every company in the industry I'm aware of. 2) Because Amazon is a for-profit company, not a charity, and its responsibility is not to pay employees more than it has to or give them more benefits/easier working conditions than are necessary. Are you also demonizing your own employer for not paying everyone as much as it possibly can without going bankrupt? 3) Because in many areas where Amazon warehouses operate, they are a significantly better job prospect than other options, working conditions be damned. 4) Because competitive markets don't let companies pay their workers whatever they want to. If you pay your workers too much, a competitor will pay theirs less, pass the savings on to customers, and take market share from you. Amazon is one of the wealthiest companies in the world because it doesn't pay all 600,000+ of its warehouse workers an amazing salary and let them work in better conditions. A lot of people who are angry at Amazon are really angry at the outcome of unchecked capitalism. These are the frustrations that should be applied to voting, not to perfectly legal corporate policies.

dv_dt 7y ago

Maybe the human work will shift to robot technicians, and how many blown servomotor assemblies or control boards you can swap out in an hour, but there will always be human standards that need help enforcing in some industries.

noobermin 7y ago

If they didn't "create anything of value" why are they there doing it? Why does Amazon have them doing what they do in the first place? The point is they do in fact play an important role in the generation of the value by Amazon and they are asking for their fair share.

rayiner 7y ago

> I agree with the worker in the video, they should be treated as human beings. One of the issues is doing a simple, monotonous task every 8 seconds, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, without creating anything of value, is going to be dehumanizing and unfulfilling regardless. If it’s a task that can’t easily be automated and needs to be done, the doing it is creating value.

pathseeker 7y ago

> without creating anything of value, Delivery creates significant value. What are you talking about?

dpwm 7y ago

I was at a graduate careers fair in a city where Amazon had just opened offices. Naturally, Amazon had a stall at this careers fair. The person running their stall was telling an audience of maybe six or seven other people that Amazon was the kind of company where if you could find a path around their warehouse that would shave even a single second off a warehouse worker's journey, they'd make them walk it. The audience were quite impressed by this. I suddenly found myself the other side of having said "what an awful place to work," and receiving a mix of bewildered and hostile looks from every other person around that stall. I'm pretty sure the claim was hyperbole – the practical side of getting people to walk a particular path would have been my follow-up question, if I'd thought of it in time. Even so, the claim revealed a mentality of workers as robots that I think helped explain some of the news stories of extraordinary conditions of their warehouse workers.

C1sc0cat 7y ago
Um this is standard Time and Motion stuff from 1920's this is SOP for any factory production line going back a hundred years or more.
- dpwm 7y ago
  Yes, and the criticisms of Taylorism are fairly well-developed. In fact, a lot of the criticisms of Amazon's practices are much the same. With Amazon's level of data collection on individual warehouse and logistic workers, it puts them in a place that Taylorists of the 80s could only dream of. At least in the UK, they've found a way to make sure that they are in no way directly financially responsible for any of the externalities of what their approach does to workers, chiefly by pulling tricks like having their workers hired on an agency basis through subcontractors. I'm not saying this is wrong, it's just what they've done. They have spent the money and found a way to operate that is more efficient. It's what they do, and it's how they sold themselves to a group that included me. I also found the whole thing to be a bit contradictory: software engineers at a multiple of the pay of warehouse engineers working on optimizing the warehouse that is probably almost near optimal. Perhaps if I had been quicker-witted, I'd have asked if we found a way to make the software engineers working on shaving a second off the path around the warehouse more efficient, would they make them do it.