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Amazon Has Turned a Middle-Class Warehouse Career into a McJob

50 points by longdefeat 6y ago

rufus_foreman 6y ago
>> Middle-Class Warehouse Career Middle class warehouse career? As a former member of the warehouse class, this article is complete bullshit.
zaptheimpaler 6y ago
There's a much bigger debate brewing around what the purpose of a company really should be. Turns out that focusing only on the cost to the customer means the majority of people work shitty jobs just so they can buy slightly cheaper stuff from other people working shitty jobs. You have to wonder, maybe what's best for people is to pay slightly more for everything and get better jobs all around instead. Even if purchasing power goes down as a result, a slightly more enjoyable 8 hours could well be worth the tradeoff because we spend most of our waking hours working. If the decreased efficiency anx higher costs were born by the company (i. e mgmt and shareholders) instead of consumers, costs wouldn't necessarily need to go up either.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  How is that slightly more money people are paying for goods going to do anything if people are just paying more for goods? There's one consumer at the end, there are thousands of laborers contributing between extraction of raw materials and delivery of finished product. It seems that in order for appreciably more to be paid for labor, the cost of goods would skyrocket and people would have to learn to have less stuff. > If the decreased efficiency anx higher costs were born by the company (i. e mgmt and shareholders) instead of consumers, costs wouldn't necessarily need to go up either. Doubtful. There's not much juice to squeeze from mgmt and labor. Have you looked at returns relative to investment recently?
  - keeganpoppen 6y ago
    right... think of a supply chain where each one of the steps is 10% less efficient than it used to be... doesn't take large n for 1.1^n to be approximately infinity
- defertoreptar 6y ago
  I would agree that I'd enjoy my job more if I got paid more, but it sounds like you're trying to say this will result in jobs that are just over all better. Why wouldn't it mean the exact same "shitty jobs" but with better pay?
  - zaptheimpaler 6y ago
    Management in any business wants employees to be as efficient as possible to squeeze the max output per dollar paid out. Exceptions exist, but that is roughly the incentive structure created by how companies are valued by markets. If productivity wasn’t the only goal, jobs could get easier in many ways - devs might get longer time to work on a feature, warehouse workers might get less aggressive targets on how many boxes are shipped per day, employees might get more vacation or longer breaks or 4 day work weeks.
    - defertoreptar 6y ago
      > If productivity wasn’t the only goal I think I missed where you explained how to do this.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      > If productivity wasn’t the only goal, jobs could get easier in many ways - devs might get longer time to work on a feature, warehouse workers might get less aggressive targets on how many boxes are shipped per day, employees might get more vacation or longer breaks or 4 day work weeks. then the company would produce less, so they would have less product to sell, leading to a decrease in revenue and therefore a decrease in wages. I'm not sure why this would be a good idea.
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  Jobs are "shitty" only in relation to what the worker can purchase with the wages they receive. As consumer prices go down, the purchasing power of the average salary increases, and jobs become less shitty. It's through this dynamic that wages have grown 20 fold, in inflation adjusted terms, since 1820. Companies finding ways to reduce costs is how that happened. So Amazon reducing consumer prices is in effect a wage hike for everyone. And this same dynamic explains why wage growth has slowed since 1970. Social welfare spending has increased on average 4.8 percent per year between 1972 and 2011: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-is-driving-growth-in-government-spending/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-is-driving-growth-... This was one of the most rapid expansions of social democratic policies in human history. This transformation from a more market-oriented economy to a more politically directed one had the predictable effect of reducing labor productivity growth, which evidence shows was the primary cause of the slowdown in wage growth: http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/12/22-sources-real-wage-stagnation-bosworth http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/12/22-source... In other words, we need MORE profit-motivated capital investments and companies like Amazon flourishing, not less. The seemingly miracalous advancement of income and quality of life since 1800 was because of breakneck rates of industralization. Change, in this context, is good, and anti-capitalist policies that reduce the expansion of capital are bad.
  - tarboreus 6y ago
    This is fine if you're spending all your money on junk ordered through the mail, which admittedly is a perk. Not so great for paying rent, attending college, or going to the hospital. Pushing back comparisons to the 16th, 17th, or 18th century will produce a flattering comparison, and people should be aware of how much things have improved since then, but in a conversation about Amazon it's not relevant. Companies like Amazon and Walmart have led to monopsony (buyer advantage) dynamics that have gutten communities, stifled innovation, and led to stagnant wages. The issue is that these companies wind up not just competing on their own comparative strengths, but take advantage of their size and market advantage. I notice you're not singing the praises of, for example, Spectrum (formely Time Warner), because the obvious market power and complete lack of competence or innovation in that sector is hard to talk around. Amazon's Bezos is actually pretty savvy, and Amazon leads to some lower prices for consumers and occasional innovation, so the damage to competition in various markets is easier to ignore. But these companies are dangerous, in that they can turn market power and cash in hand into political power, and they do. Size matters.
dnissley 6y ago
This is amazingly dishonest: "Six years ago, before the company opened a giant fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey, warehouse workers made $24 an hour on average, according to BLS data. Last year the average hourly wage slipped to $17.50." Guess what? Low-skill immigrants have a similar effect on local economies. But it doesn't mean that those workers are "stealing" higher paid jobs. Seems likely to me that those higher paying jobs are still there, and it's just the average that's gone down.
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> Despite a starting wage well above the federal minimum, the company is dragging down pay in the logistics industry and bracing for a fight with unions. Sadly, the author doesn't seem to realize that those wages come out of the pocket of the consumer. Lower the cost of labor and you lower the cost of the good that is provided.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Consumers should not expect slave labor, but they would happily consume it if regulation did not prevent it. Disclosure: I donate to progressive efforts in this space to drag the minimum wage up, which has not kept pace with inflation for many years.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    Have you considered why there is inflation which always drives down real wages?
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Monetary policy in an economy addicted to debt and the “need” for growth. Easier to steal value from the working class with inflation (ask your average citizen about the impact of expansionary monetary policy on their personal net worth, the result is likely deer in headlights) than appropriately tax the wealthiest and their wealth/assets. Thread topic for another day.
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        > Monetary policy in an economy addicted to debt. Yes, agreed. > properly tax the wealthiest and their wealth/assets. Accounting gimmicks don't solve scarcity. You could expropriate all the wealth in the world, it wouldn't feed people for a year. You can't eat money. > Thread topic for another day. It is directly relevant to this discussion of the cost of labor and the standard of living that a laborer can expect.
ab_testing 6y ago
I think the author has a beef with Amazon. The labor market is based on supply and demand . If the labor supply is more than the demand, then wages will fall. Except for forklift drivers, most warehouse jobs are unskilled Jobs and during times of high unemployment, prices for unskilled labor tends to fall down. The United States also admits close to a million immigrants every year - mostly via the family based categories. Those also tend to have a downward effect on wages as they compete with local talent for the same jobs .
- charlesu 6y ago
  If the labor market is based on supply and demand, why are teacher salaries stagnant in the face of perpetual teacher shortages? Why do nice school districts pay more than bad ones despite having far more applicants?
  - 0xy 6y ago
    This is misleading considering the average teacher salary is 50% higher than the average salary in general. In some states, that's only the starting salary.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - zp33 6y ago
    Because teachers are not operating in a free market. Teacher salaries come from local governments, who may have to cut budgets.
    - krapp 6y ago
      No one is operating in a free market. Free markets don't exist in the real world - all markets have externalities and influences other than those created by the markets themselves, if only due to those markets existing within states under frameworks of law and regulation. Arguments from simple supply and demand never describe reality accurately enough to be useful.
trianglem 6y ago
None of this is going to work. Let the robots do these jobs and bring on the Universal Basic Income. Anything short of that is unsustainable and inconsistent with capitalism.
- 0xy 6y ago
  UBI is inconsistent with basic math, because any notable UBI has a cost that exceeds the entire budget of the U.S. government. Let alone the fact that it'll slash the amount of money spent on disabled and old people (because UBI usually includes the lacking plan of cutting other welfare to pay for it).
- krapp 6y ago
  Thing is, we're going to get the robots and not UBI, so that's going to be a problem.
tsjq 6y ago
There's this documentary from long ago, "Walmart: the high cost of low prices" . Now, Amazon joins the clout

50 points by longdefeat 6y ago

>> Middle-Class Warehouse Career Middle class warehouse career? As a former member of the warehouse class, this article is complete bullshit.

zaptheimpaler 6y ago

There's a much bigger debate brewing around what the purpose of a company really should be. Turns out that focusing only on the cost to the customer means the majority of people work shitty jobs just so they can buy slightly cheaper stuff from other people working shitty jobs. You have to wonder, maybe what's best for people is to pay slightly more for everything and get better jobs all around instead. Even if purchasing power goes down as a result, a slightly more enjoyable 8 hours could well be worth the tradeoff because we spend most of our waking hours working. If the decreased efficiency anx higher costs were born by the company (i. e mgmt and shareholders) instead of consumers, costs wouldn't necessarily need to go up either.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
How is that slightly more money people are paying for goods going to do anything if people are just paying more for goods? There's one consumer at the end, there are thousands of laborers contributing between extraction of raw materials and delivery of finished product. It seems that in order for appreciably more to be paid for labor, the cost of goods would skyrocket and people would have to learn to have less stuff. > If the decreased efficiency anx higher costs were born by the company (i. e mgmt and shareholders) instead of consumers, costs wouldn't necessarily need to go up either. Doubtful. There's not much juice to squeeze from mgmt and labor. Have you looked at returns relative to investment recently?
- keeganpoppen 6y ago
  right... think of a supply chain where each one of the steps is 10% less efficient than it used to be... doesn't take large n for 1.1^n to be approximately infinity
defertoreptar 6y ago
I would agree that I'd enjoy my job more if I got paid more, but it sounds like you're trying to say this will result in jobs that are just over all better. Why wouldn't it mean the exact same "shitty jobs" but with better pay?
- zaptheimpaler 6y ago
  Management in any business wants employees to be as efficient as possible to squeeze the max output per dollar paid out. Exceptions exist, but that is roughly the incentive structure created by how companies are valued by markets. If productivity wasn’t the only goal, jobs could get easier in many ways - devs might get longer time to work on a feature, warehouse workers might get less aggressive targets on how many boxes are shipped per day, employees might get more vacation or longer breaks or 4 day work weeks.
  - defertoreptar 6y ago
    > If productivity wasn’t the only goal I think I missed where you explained how to do this.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > If productivity wasn’t the only goal, jobs could get easier in many ways - devs might get longer time to work on a feature, warehouse workers might get less aggressive targets on how many boxes are shipped per day, employees might get more vacation or longer breaks or 4 day work weeks. then the company would produce less, so they would have less product to sell, leading to a decrease in revenue and therefore a decrease in wages. I'm not sure why this would be a good idea.
CryptoPunk 6y ago
Jobs are "shitty" only in relation to what the worker can purchase with the wages they receive. As consumer prices go down, the purchasing power of the average salary increases, and jobs become less shitty. It's through this dynamic that wages have grown 20 fold, in inflation adjusted terms, since 1820. Companies finding ways to reduce costs is how that happened. So Amazon reducing consumer prices is in effect a wage hike for everyone. And this same dynamic explains why wage growth has slowed since 1970. Social welfare spending has increased on average 4.8 percent per year between 1972 and 2011: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-is-driving-growth-in-government-spending/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-is-driving-growth-... This was one of the most rapid expansions of social democratic policies in human history. This transformation from a more market-oriented economy to a more politically directed one had the predictable effect of reducing labor productivity growth, which evidence shows was the primary cause of the slowdown in wage growth: http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/12/22-sources-real-wage-stagnation-bosworth http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/12/22-source... In other words, we need MORE profit-motivated capital investments and companies like Amazon flourishing, not less. The seemingly miracalous advancement of income and quality of life since 1800 was because of breakneck rates of industralization. Change, in this context, is good, and anti-capitalist policies that reduce the expansion of capital are bad.
- tarboreus 6y ago
  This is fine if you're spending all your money on junk ordered through the mail, which admittedly is a perk. Not so great for paying rent, attending college, or going to the hospital. Pushing back comparisons to the 16th, 17th, or 18th century will produce a flattering comparison, and people should be aware of how much things have improved since then, but in a conversation about Amazon it's not relevant. Companies like Amazon and Walmart have led to monopsony (buyer advantage) dynamics that have gutten communities, stifled innovation, and led to stagnant wages. The issue is that these companies wind up not just competing on their own comparative strengths, but take advantage of their size and market advantage. I notice you're not singing the praises of, for example, Spectrum (formely Time Warner), because the obvious market power and complete lack of competence or innovation in that sector is hard to talk around. Amazon's Bezos is actually pretty savvy, and Amazon leads to some lower prices for consumers and occasional innovation, so the damage to competition in various markets is easier to ignore. But these companies are dangerous, in that they can turn market power and cash in hand into political power, and they do. Size matters.

dnissley 6y ago

This is amazingly dishonest: "Six years ago, before the company opened a giant fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey, warehouse workers made $24 an hour on average, according to BLS data. Last year the average hourly wage slipped to $17.50." Guess what? Low-skill immigrants have a similar effect on local economies. But it doesn't mean that those workers are "stealing" higher paid jobs. Seems likely to me that those higher paying jobs are still there, and it's just the average that's gone down.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago

> Despite a starting wage well above the federal minimum, the company is dragging down pay in the logistics industry and bracing for a fight with unions. Sadly, the author doesn't seem to realize that those wages come out of the pocket of the consumer. Lower the cost of labor and you lower the cost of the good that is provided.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Consumers should not expect slave labor, but they would happily consume it if regulation did not prevent it. Disclosure: I donate to progressive efforts in this space to drag the minimum wage up, which has not kept pace with inflation for many years.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  Have you considered why there is inflation which always drives down real wages?
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Monetary policy in an economy addicted to debt and the “need” for growth. Easier to steal value from the working class with inflation (ask your average citizen about the impact of expansionary monetary policy on their personal net worth, the result is likely deer in headlights) than appropriately tax the wealthiest and their wealth/assets. Thread topic for another day.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      > Monetary policy in an economy addicted to debt. Yes, agreed. > properly tax the wealthiest and their wealth/assets. Accounting gimmicks don't solve scarcity. You could expropriate all the wealth in the world, it wouldn't feed people for a year. You can't eat money. > Thread topic for another day. It is directly relevant to this discussion of the cost of labor and the standard of living that a laborer can expect.

ab_testing 6y ago

I think the author has a beef with Amazon. The labor market is based on supply and demand . If the labor supply is more than the demand, then wages will fall. Except for forklift drivers, most warehouse jobs are unskilled Jobs and during times of high unemployment, prices for unskilled labor tends to fall down. The United States also admits close to a million immigrants every year - mostly via the family based categories. Those also tend to have a downward effect on wages as they compete with local talent for the same jobs .

charlesu 6y ago
If the labor market is based on supply and demand, why are teacher salaries stagnant in the face of perpetual teacher shortages? Why do nice school districts pay more than bad ones despite having far more applicants?
- 0xy 6y ago
  This is misleading considering the average teacher salary is 50% higher than the average salary in general. In some states, that's only the starting salary.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zp33 6y ago
  Because teachers are not operating in a free market. Teacher salaries come from local governments, who may have to cut budgets.
  - krapp 6y ago
    No one is operating in a free market. Free markets don't exist in the real world - all markets have externalities and influences other than those created by the markets themselves, if only due to those markets existing within states under frameworks of law and regulation. Arguments from simple supply and demand never describe reality accurately enough to be useful.

trianglem 6y ago

None of this is going to work. Let the robots do these jobs and bring on the Universal Basic Income. Anything short of that is unsustainable and inconsistent with capitalism.

0xy 6y ago
UBI is inconsistent with basic math, because any notable UBI has a cost that exceeds the entire budget of the U.S. government. Let alone the fact that it'll slash the amount of money spent on disabled and old people (because UBI usually includes the lacking plan of cutting other welfare to pay for it).
krapp 6y ago
Thing is, we're going to get the robots and not UBI, so that's going to be a problem.

tsjq 6y ago

There's this documentary from long ago, "Walmart: the high cost of low prices" . Now, Amazon joins the clout