8 ms·

Amazon's Surveillance Infrastructure and Revitalizing Worker Power

110 points by 0xmohit 6y ago

tgv 6y ago
The corporate bullshit (quotes at the end of the article) is again off the charts. Who are they trying to fool?
vemv 6y ago
Needless to say, it's inhumane to let staff work to exhaustion, which is the only sound strategy when the targeted rate is kept secret.
bovermyer 6y ago
I'm now going to other sources whenever I need anything I would normally get from Amazon. If it's buying retail products, I look at Etsy or Walmart, or smaller sources if possible. If it's digital infrastructure, I opt for Digital Ocean most often. I'm increasingly uncomfortable with everything about Amazon and its subsidiaries.
- badRNG 6y ago
  I am increasingly skeptical that "voting with your pocketbook" is anything more than an expression of one's moral values (though there is certainly value in that.) Choosing not to do business with the Carnegie Steel of online shopping just isn't going to change Amazon's market position. There will never be enough people boycotting Amazon due to its inhuman treatment of its workers to offset the value Amazon receives from doing so. The only solution that I think has a chance of working is public policy, which seems increasingly less likely as political parties are ever further beholden to the interests of their corporate benefactors. It's a bleak outlook, but as the allusion to Carnegie Steel suggests, it isn't the first time the US has found itself in this position. In fact, the parallels between the political economy of the early 20th century and today seem increasingly more aligned.
  - bovermyer 6y ago
    I don't disagree with you. However, choosing to go elsewhere isn't meant to sink Amazon - it's meant to support alternatives, to encourage others to support alternatives or at least think about the situation, and yes, to make me feel better about my choices.
    - NoOneNew 6y ago
      Yup. Also, while supporting the "competition", you allow them to play the long game to find and fund ways of taking ground from Amazon when there are missteps. But at the same time, I find it really weird to go, "I morally can't stand for a single thing you're doing and I think you're a generally ill hearted company. Here, take more of my money to help you fund your ill-doings."
      - badRNG 6y ago
        >But at the same time, I find it really weird to go, "I morally can't stand for a single thing you're doing and I think you're a generally ill hearted company. Here, take more of my money to help you fund your ill-doings." I can get behind boycotting companies we know do bad things, however I wouldn't delude myself into thinking that this is a means to ending the abuse of their workers, or a means of making the world a better place. This is a political problem, not a consumer problem. Being an ethical consumer seems to be Sisyphean task, as to do so responsibly we'd need to ensure the alternatives we purchase from aren't treating their workers even worse to hold some market share. When we factor in the complexity of supply chains, environmental considerations, and labor practices across the globe (and the relations between core and peripheral nations,) a consumer simply cannot reasonably fit their purchasing decisions within a consistent ethical framework. This is probably the reason behind the phrase "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism."
        NoOneNew 6y ago
        That phrase should be "there is no ethical consumption". To pretend capitalism is the sudden problem to the world is a feat of self delusion and dodging having any form of self-accountability. Because the world was a perfect place prior to modern capitalism? I'm not saying it's perfect, but seriously, quit pretending like it's the cause of the world's problems. The cause of all our problems is the fact we are human. That and boycotting is political mob mentality. Needing a random person, you'll never meet or have a coffee with, telling you what to do so you can be a "a good person" in their eyes is bullshit. Do it strictly because you believe in your own ethics.
- quotha 6y ago
  Me too! Actually been without Amazon for about half a year or so, and I was a customer for 20 years!
- gruez 6y ago
  >If it's buying retail products, I look at Etsy or Walmart, or smaller sources if possible. Isn't etsy for handmade/artisan goods? I don't think I ever bought anything handmade/artisan off amazon, but that might just be me. As for walmart, is it any better than amazon? Aren't they also infamous for underpaying their workers?
- manicdee 6y ago
  Remember to also write to your state and federal politicians demanding bans on corporate donations to politicians or political parties. Cap donations at $1000, and impose meaningful penalties on illegal donors (in percentages of revenue, not simply number of zeroes in the number). Voting with your wallet is one half of the solution, voting with your actual vote is the other.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
The extra $2-$3/hr that the Amazon warehouse pays that loading trucks for "Bill's LTL Freight" doesn't isn't for nothing. Putting up with bullshit like this is exactly why they have to pay more. This is the classic trade-off you have to make when choosing between crappy unskilled jobs. BigCo can pay you better but they also can afford to not treat you like a human. It sucks but BigCos are always gonna use their scale advantage to try and come up with process that try to wring out every last penny. It's just what they do.
- iwasakabukiman 6y ago
  > It’s just what they do. Then we should work to change that. As a society, we should find this kind of stuff unacceptable. There should be some baseline level of transparency and dignity employees are treated with.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    It's an infinite game of whack-a-mole. BigCo can walk right up to the legal line and not cross it. Look at the factories of the early 20th century and it was the same. BigCo paid better (e.g. Ford's famous wage increases) and you had to put up with more crap (everything else Ford did). You can progressively tighten the law but in a democracy the law is always going to lag social norms and social norms are a reflection of what a society can afford. Not that we shouldn't talk about this stuff but a pro-worker special interest group getting some legislators in their pocket is no long term solution here.
    - Thlom 6y ago
      The long term solution is of course a strong labor movement that can fight this shit every step of the way. There is no quick fix that solves everything.
      - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        Frankly I think you are just plain wrong. The "strong labor movement" you speak of simply doesn't exist in the parts of any given economic niche where these changes must first take root (because those parts are not trying to wring every cent out of their labor because they don't need to). For any particular scrap of ground the "labor movement" (in italics because there is no such coordinated movement on the timeline and scale by which these things happen) wants to fight for the fight for that scrap ends at low margin BigCos like amazon who will not give it up until legislated (or until it looks like they might be and they can get brownie points by biting the bullet ahead of time). In unionized industries the BigCos are also the unionized workplaces where change happens at the glacial pace of contract negotiations. Changes come about in higher margin and smaller scale parts of the economy first. If you want Amazon and Walmart workers to have an hour break for lunch (or some other particular policy goal) then you are not going to get that until so long after the workers in the Coors warehouse and the McMaster warehouse have had it that the legislators can feel secure in legislating it. Here's an example. Say the UAW manages to negotiate with GM that every third Friday should be pajama Friday. Farcical, right? Of course because it's not within the bounds of what we consider reasonable right now. It has to become reasonable first. If you want pajama Friday or any other specific policy goal it has to be within the bounds of what is reasonable. Before the UAW can even broach the subject there needs to be acceptance elsewhere. The UAW isn't gonna ask for pajama Friday at GM unless they think the policy is not crap and they're not gonna think that unless they've done that at the smaller Ford plant and they're not gonna do that until they've piloted it at the tiny Peterbilt factory where they have a better position in negotiations and can afford big reaches. And they're not gonna try it there unless they've seen the policy play out successfully somewhere else first, say the non-union Cat mining shovel plant down the road where they have the fat margins per worker to do that kind of thing. And the Cat plant isn't even gonna entertain the possibility (and the workers won't push for it) unless it's been proven to work in the even higher margin and smaller scale RV industry plant in the next state over. I'm not going to repeat myself but if you wan workers to have a generous (by our current frame of reference) paid hour lunch break at Amazon's warehouses then the process by which the idea is normalized is basically the same. You can't change policy at BigCo or at the legislative level until you've made that policy = normal and reasonable by doing it other places first. The strength of the "labor movement" is completely and totally tangential to that process and a good argument (though I don't necessarily agree with it) could be made that strong labor institutions (unions) actually hinder the process because they reduce the agility with which decisions can be made by the bigger players. So if you want pajama Friday at GM or you want a paid hour long lunch break legislated upon Amazon and Walmart, or any other change that looks to be big and unprecedented from our vantage point here today, then you're gonna need to plant the seeds of those changes in workplaces of a completely and totally different setting so that when the change does finally come to the GMs and Amazons of the world it comes at the end of a long bunch of incremental steps because that's the only way change comes to those big places that are deeply invested in and optimized for the status quo. Costco, Ocean State Job Lot, and other small scraps of the consumer goods retail economy known for treating their workers well and proving you can make money doing so are doing far, far more for the future of workers in Amazon's warehouse than and "labor movement" can do because what those "generous" employers are doing today is what Amazon will be doing in time.
losthobbies 6y ago
This is sickening.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pentae 6y ago
I wonder if those parading their virtuosity in here could come up with a better system. I'd love to see some of the negative commenters made staff manager of just one busy warehouse for a few months and made responsible for a 500 low skilled workers with no prior systems in place such as these and see what kind of solutions they can come up with on their own that are any better.
- tokai 6y ago
  Treating workers properly is not at all hard or elusive. It just costs money.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- krapp 6y ago
  Are you an Amazon employee? Who are you trying to virtue signal for, here? I would come up with a system that actually informs workers of what their productivity targets are and allows them to monitor their progress with accurate data in real time. I would also not have an automated process for termination, if for no other reason than attrition and retraining are more costly in the long run than underperformance by a fraction of a percent. Particularly given the variables that can affect performance which are out of the employee's control.
  - pentae 6y ago
    No not an Amazon employee, but about 20 years ago I worked in a Warehouse and the guys were absolute deadbeat drug addicts who stole and spent the whole time smoking cigarettes and goofing off. Now of course i'm sure most warehouse workers aren't like that but I can't even imagine what managing 125,000 low-skilled employees like that would be like, and i'm sure the turnover is absolutely massive as well. It's all unicorns and rainbows and posturing until you're the guy who has to actually manage them.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
MereInterest 6y ago
> At the end of the day, warehouse employees are required to go through mandatory screening to check they haven't stolen anything, which "requires waiting times that can range from 25 minutes to an hour" and is not compensated, the report said I'm surprised that the article doesn't also mention the absolute joke of a Supreme Court decision, ruling that Amazon's mandatory security screening does not need to be compensated. Legalized wage theft is what that is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_Inc._v._Busk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_...
- purple-again 6y ago
  This goes so against what I previously believed that there must be some critical underlying fact I am missing. Are the facts below correct? 1) This is stating that Amazon requires its warehouse workers to go through a security screening before they can leave at the end of every shift. 2) This daily process takes 25 minutes to 1 hour 3) Employees are NOT paid for this time 4) Employees are hourly and not salary 5) The supreme court UNANIMOUSLY agreed they do not have to be paid for this work. 6) Their reasoning for this is that the security check is not a critical part of the job and could be eliminated. Those 6 facts either cant be right or I must be missing some critical 7th fact that ties this all together. Can anyone help out?
  - MereInterest 6y ago
    I haven't been able to figure it out either. My best guess is that the "integral and indispensable" was interpreted from the point of view of an employer, when it should have been interpreted from the point of view of the employee. Amazon could eliminate the security check entirely with no adverse effects on the employee's work. From Amazon's point of view, it is easily dispensable. The employee's cannot opt out of the security check without being fired. From the employee's point of view, it is entirely indispensable. Though not stated, I'd guess that there is also an unhealthy amount of efficient market hypothesis thrown in. If I assume that all markets are at equilibrium, then no company would have workers perform unnecessary work, because those workers would then choose to work somewhere that doesn't. Edit: It may also be that the Court wanted to avoid extending existing law, and instead wanted to point out limitations in it for Congress to then amend. I'd have to read the transcripts in detail there, which I haven't done.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ta918371 6y ago
The US has gotten around the prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” by making cruelty usual.
LatteLazy 6y ago
I always feel like these articles are either very badly informed or relying on readers being. Anyone who's worked in a call center or as wait staff will recognize all of these techniques in one form or another. Amazon are just the first ones to apply it to warehouses and delivery staff. Welcome to the shitty end of the employment pool. If you don't want to get stuck here, stay in school kids!
- coldtea 6y ago
  Or, you know, that it happens elsewhere too is (pun intended) neithe here, nor there. "Welcome to the shitty end of the employment pool. If you don't want to get stuck here, stay in school kids!" Is not a solution, it's a personal escape hatch for the few that can follow the advice. Even if everybody "stayed at school" there would still be a need for these jobs, so it would just be that degrees would devaluate so that people are still working those. At worse, they would be done by immigrants who don't have the means or support to "stay at school" anyway. In other words, as long as there are people working those jobs, the answer is not "stay in school to avoid them", but in fixing the horrible conditions. "Stay in school" is a quinteseential individualistic "each to their own" answer. A civilized answer would be legal changes...
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    What you're talking about is redistribution. And I'm in favour of that. But who are you going to redistribute from? Me? No thanks, I'm already supporting a crowd of boomers and farmers and a bloated military sector and billionaire bailouts etc. So you'll have to cut some of those. But good luck doing that under the current politically system. This is why it's so hard at the bottom of the labour market: we spent all our money on corn subsidiaries and free shit for people over 65. There's nothing left for working people. And that includes me. I had to struggle through a shitty under funded school, take poorly paid jobs, pay off a huge student loan and now I'm facing higher income taxes and bloated artificial house prices and a national debt built to record levels giving other people tax cuts for nothing. We can't solve issues like this in isolation because the real issue is that there are no resources left. You have to solve resource distribution. And that's gonna be very very hard. Until then, all any of us can do is try to avoid being in a group that isn't politically important.
badRNG 6y ago
This seems strange, since Amazon's arguably exploited warehouse employees wait 30 minutes to leave due to screenings (to ensure they haven't stolen merchandise.) [1] This was affirmed by the current SCOTUS. [2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340272 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_Inc._v._Busk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_...

110 points by 0xmohit 6y ago

tgv 6y ago

The corporate bullshit (quotes at the end of the article) is again off the charts. Who are they trying to fool?

vemv 6y ago

Needless to say, it's inhumane to let staff work to exhaustion, which is the only sound strategy when the targeted rate is kept secret.

bovermyer 6y ago

I'm now going to other sources whenever I need anything I would normally get from Amazon. If it's buying retail products, I look at Etsy or Walmart, or smaller sources if possible. If it's digital infrastructure, I opt for Digital Ocean most often. I'm increasingly uncomfortable with everything about Amazon and its subsidiaries.

badRNG 6y ago
I am increasingly skeptical that "voting with your pocketbook" is anything more than an expression of one's moral values (though there is certainly value in that.) Choosing not to do business with the Carnegie Steel of online shopping just isn't going to change Amazon's market position. There will never be enough people boycotting Amazon due to its inhuman treatment of its workers to offset the value Amazon receives from doing so. The only solution that I think has a chance of working is public policy, which seems increasingly less likely as political parties are ever further beholden to the interests of their corporate benefactors. It's a bleak outlook, but as the allusion to Carnegie Steel suggests, it isn't the first time the US has found itself in this position. In fact, the parallels between the political economy of the early 20th century and today seem increasingly more aligned.
- bovermyer 6y ago
  I don't disagree with you. However, choosing to go elsewhere isn't meant to sink Amazon - it's meant to support alternatives, to encourage others to support alternatives or at least think about the situation, and yes, to make me feel better about my choices.
  - NoOneNew 6y ago
    Yup. Also, while supporting the "competition", you allow them to play the long game to find and fund ways of taking ground from Amazon when there are missteps. But at the same time, I find it really weird to go, "I morally can't stand for a single thing you're doing and I think you're a generally ill hearted company. Here, take more of my money to help you fund your ill-doings."
    - badRNG 6y ago
      >But at the same time, I find it really weird to go, "I morally can't stand for a single thing you're doing and I think you're a generally ill hearted company. Here, take more of my money to help you fund your ill-doings." I can get behind boycotting companies we know do bad things, however I wouldn't delude myself into thinking that this is a means to ending the abuse of their workers, or a means of making the world a better place. This is a political problem, not a consumer problem. Being an ethical consumer seems to be Sisyphean task, as to do so responsibly we'd need to ensure the alternatives we purchase from aren't treating their workers even worse to hold some market share. When we factor in the complexity of supply chains, environmental considerations, and labor practices across the globe (and the relations between core and peripheral nations,) a consumer simply cannot reasonably fit their purchasing decisions within a consistent ethical framework. This is probably the reason behind the phrase "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism."
      - NoOneNew 6y ago
        That phrase should be "there is no ethical consumption". To pretend capitalism is the sudden problem to the world is a feat of self delusion and dodging having any form of self-accountability. Because the world was a perfect place prior to modern capitalism? I'm not saying it's perfect, but seriously, quit pretending like it's the cause of the world's problems. The cause of all our problems is the fact we are human. That and boycotting is political mob mentality. Needing a random person, you'll never meet or have a coffee with, telling you what to do so you can be a "a good person" in their eyes is bullshit. Do it strictly because you believe in your own ethics.
quotha 6y ago
Me too! Actually been without Amazon for about half a year or so, and I was a customer for 20 years!
gruez 6y ago
>If it's buying retail products, I look at Etsy or Walmart, or smaller sources if possible. Isn't etsy for handmade/artisan goods? I don't think I ever bought anything handmade/artisan off amazon, but that might just be me. As for walmart, is it any better than amazon? Aren't they also infamous for underpaying their workers?
manicdee 6y ago
Remember to also write to your state and federal politicians demanding bans on corporate donations to politicians or political parties. Cap donations at $1000, and impose meaningful penalties on illegal donors (in percentages of revenue, not simply number of zeroes in the number). Voting with your wallet is one half of the solution, voting with your actual vote is the other.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

The extra $2-$3/hr that the Amazon warehouse pays that loading trucks for "Bill's LTL Freight" doesn't isn't for nothing. Putting up with bullshit like this is exactly why they have to pay more. This is the classic trade-off you have to make when choosing between crappy unskilled jobs. BigCo can pay you better but they also can afford to not treat you like a human. It sucks but BigCos are always gonna use their scale advantage to try and come up with process that try to wring out every last penny. It's just what they do.

iwasakabukiman 6y ago
> It’s just what they do. Then we should work to change that. As a society, we should find this kind of stuff unacceptable. There should be some baseline level of transparency and dignity employees are treated with.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  It's an infinite game of whack-a-mole. BigCo can walk right up to the legal line and not cross it. Look at the factories of the early 20th century and it was the same. BigCo paid better (e.g. Ford's famous wage increases) and you had to put up with more crap (everything else Ford did). You can progressively tighten the law but in a democracy the law is always going to lag social norms and social norms are a reflection of what a society can afford. Not that we shouldn't talk about this stuff but a pro-worker special interest group getting some legislators in their pocket is no long term solution here.
  - Thlom 6y ago
    The long term solution is of course a strong labor movement that can fight this shit every step of the way. There is no quick fix that solves everything.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      Frankly I think you are just plain wrong. The "strong labor movement" you speak of simply doesn't exist in the parts of any given economic niche where these changes must first take root (because those parts are not trying to wring every cent out of their labor because they don't need to). For any particular scrap of ground the "labor movement" (in italics because there is no such coordinated movement on the timeline and scale by which these things happen) wants to fight for the fight for that scrap ends at low margin BigCos like amazon who will not give it up until legislated (or until it looks like they might be and they can get brownie points by biting the bullet ahead of time). In unionized industries the BigCos are also the unionized workplaces where change happens at the glacial pace of contract negotiations. Changes come about in higher margin and smaller scale parts of the economy first. If you want Amazon and Walmart workers to have an hour break for lunch (or some other particular policy goal) then you are not going to get that until so long after the workers in the Coors warehouse and the McMaster warehouse have had it that the legislators can feel secure in legislating it. Here's an example. Say the UAW manages to negotiate with GM that every third Friday should be pajama Friday. Farcical, right? Of course because it's not within the bounds of what we consider reasonable right now. It has to become reasonable first. If you want pajama Friday or any other specific policy goal it has to be within the bounds of what is reasonable. Before the UAW can even broach the subject there needs to be acceptance elsewhere. The UAW isn't gonna ask for pajama Friday at GM unless they think the policy is not crap and they're not gonna think that unless they've done that at the smaller Ford plant and they're not gonna do that until they've piloted it at the tiny Peterbilt factory where they have a better position in negotiations and can afford big reaches. And they're not gonna try it there unless they've seen the policy play out successfully somewhere else first, say the non-union Cat mining shovel plant down the road where they have the fat margins per worker to do that kind of thing. And the Cat plant isn't even gonna entertain the possibility (and the workers won't push for it) unless it's been proven to work in the even higher margin and smaller scale RV industry plant in the next state over. I'm not going to repeat myself but if you wan workers to have a generous (by our current frame of reference) paid hour lunch break at Amazon's warehouses then the process by which the idea is normalized is basically the same. You can't change policy at BigCo or at the legislative level until you've made that policy = normal and reasonable by doing it other places first. The strength of the "labor movement" is completely and totally tangential to that process and a good argument (though I don't necessarily agree with it) could be made that strong labor institutions (unions) actually hinder the process because they reduce the agility with which decisions can be made by the bigger players. So if you want pajama Friday at GM or you want a paid hour long lunch break legislated upon Amazon and Walmart, or any other change that looks to be big and unprecedented from our vantage point here today, then you're gonna need to plant the seeds of those changes in workplaces of a completely and totally different setting so that when the change does finally come to the GMs and Amazons of the world it comes at the end of a long bunch of incremental steps because that's the only way change comes to those big places that are deeply invested in and optimized for the status quo. Costco, Ocean State Job Lot, and other small scraps of the consumer goods retail economy known for treating their workers well and proving you can make money doing so are doing far, far more for the future of workers in Amazon's warehouse than and "labor movement" can do because what those "generous" employers are doing today is what Amazon will be doing in time.

losthobbies 6y ago

This is sickening.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pentae 6y ago

I wonder if those parading their virtuosity in here could come up with a better system. I'd love to see some of the negative commenters made staff manager of just one busy warehouse for a few months and made responsible for a 500 low skilled workers with no prior systems in place such as these and see what kind of solutions they can come up with on their own that are any better.

tokai 6y ago
Treating workers properly is not at all hard or elusive. It just costs money.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
krapp 6y ago
Are you an Amazon employee? Who are you trying to virtue signal for, here? I would come up with a system that actually informs workers of what their productivity targets are and allows them to monitor their progress with accurate data in real time. I would also not have an automated process for termination, if for no other reason than attrition and retraining are more costly in the long run than underperformance by a fraction of a percent. Particularly given the variables that can affect performance which are out of the employee's control.
- pentae 6y ago
  No not an Amazon employee, but about 20 years ago I worked in a Warehouse and the guys were absolute deadbeat drug addicts who stole and spent the whole time smoking cigarettes and goofing off. Now of course i'm sure most warehouse workers aren't like that but I can't even imagine what managing 125,000 low-skilled employees like that would be like, and i'm sure the turnover is absolutely massive as well. It's all unicorns and rainbows and posturing until you're the guy who has to actually manage them.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

MereInterest 6y ago

> At the end of the day, warehouse employees are required to go through mandatory screening to check they haven't stolen anything, which "requires waiting times that can range from 25 minutes to an hour" and is not compensated, the report said I'm surprised that the article doesn't also mention the absolute joke of a Supreme Court decision, ruling that Amazon's mandatory security screening does not need to be compensated. Legalized wage theft is what that is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_Inc._v._Busk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_...

purple-again 6y ago
This goes so against what I previously believed that there must be some critical underlying fact I am missing. Are the facts below correct? 1) This is stating that Amazon requires its warehouse workers to go through a security screening before they can leave at the end of every shift. 2) This daily process takes 25 minutes to 1 hour 3) Employees are NOT paid for this time 4) Employees are hourly and not salary 5) The supreme court UNANIMOUSLY agreed they do not have to be paid for this work. 6) Their reasoning for this is that the security check is not a critical part of the job and could be eliminated. Those 6 facts either cant be right or I must be missing some critical 7th fact that ties this all together. Can anyone help out?
- MereInterest 6y ago
  I haven't been able to figure it out either. My best guess is that the "integral and indispensable" was interpreted from the point of view of an employer, when it should have been interpreted from the point of view of the employee. Amazon could eliminate the security check entirely with no adverse effects on the employee's work. From Amazon's point of view, it is easily dispensable. The employee's cannot opt out of the security check without being fired. From the employee's point of view, it is entirely indispensable. Though not stated, I'd guess that there is also an unhealthy amount of efficient market hypothesis thrown in. If I assume that all markets are at equilibrium, then no company would have workers perform unnecessary work, because those workers would then choose to work somewhere that doesn't. Edit: It may also be that the Court wanted to avoid extending existing law, and instead wanted to point out limitations in it for Congress to then amend. I'd have to read the transcripts in detail there, which I haven't done.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ta918371 6y ago

The US has gotten around the prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” by making cruelty usual.

LatteLazy 6y ago

I always feel like these articles are either very badly informed or relying on readers being. Anyone who's worked in a call center or as wait staff will recognize all of these techniques in one form or another. Amazon are just the first ones to apply it to warehouses and delivery staff. Welcome to the shitty end of the employment pool. If you don't want to get stuck here, stay in school kids!

coldtea 6y ago
Or, you know, that it happens elsewhere too is (pun intended) neithe here, nor there. "Welcome to the shitty end of the employment pool. If you don't want to get stuck here, stay in school kids!" Is not a solution, it's a personal escape hatch for the few that can follow the advice. Even if everybody "stayed at school" there would still be a need for these jobs, so it would just be that degrees would devaluate so that people are still working those. At worse, they would be done by immigrants who don't have the means or support to "stay at school" anyway. In other words, as long as there are people working those jobs, the answer is not "stay in school to avoid them", but in fixing the horrible conditions. "Stay in school" is a quinteseential individualistic "each to their own" answer. A civilized answer would be legal changes...
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  What you're talking about is redistribution. And I'm in favour of that. But who are you going to redistribute from? Me? No thanks, I'm already supporting a crowd of boomers and farmers and a bloated military sector and billionaire bailouts etc. So you'll have to cut some of those. But good luck doing that under the current politically system. This is why it's so hard at the bottom of the labour market: we spent all our money on corn subsidiaries and free shit for people over 65. There's nothing left for working people. And that includes me. I had to struggle through a shitty under funded school, take poorly paid jobs, pay off a huge student loan and now I'm facing higher income taxes and bloated artificial house prices and a national debt built to record levels giving other people tax cuts for nothing. We can't solve issues like this in isolation because the real issue is that there are no resources left. You have to solve resource distribution. And that's gonna be very very hard. Until then, all any of us can do is try to avoid being in a group that isn't politically important.

badRNG 6y ago

This seems strange, since Amazon's arguably exploited warehouse employees wait 30 minutes to leave due to screenings (to ensure they haven't stolen merchandise.) [1] This was affirmed by the current SCOTUS. [2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340272 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_Inc._v._Busk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_...