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I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

316 points by brownie 15y ago

ck2 15y ago
It's interesting how we put down companies for their abusive labor conditions in China but at least 50% of the population will rally behind forces that prevent any sort of government regulation or unions that help prevent this kind of abuse "in the homeland". Oh and I don't just mean the right wing, fun fact, Hillary Clinton was a bigtime lawyer for walmart to help them prevent unions. Walmart even has a swat-like team to respond to possible union formations.
- ericd 15y ago
  Unions are disastrous for the competitiveness of a company on the global market. We do need worker protections of some form (perhaps greater informational transparency about working conditions would help?), we don't need the techniques that unions use to obtain unsustainably high wages for their workers.
  - ck2 15y ago
    Re-read that article and tell me you want any human being to have to work like that for more than a week in a supposedly 1st-world country. Those people are subsidizing your low prices by taking 800mg of advil a day to be able to get a paycheck and deferring the health disaster they will have in a few years without insurance. If you do not have unions or government regulation, big business sets the rules and you end up with that story and in the bigger picture, the criminal health care system that plagues this nation. I find it absurd that the answer for the USA is to pull us down to the lowest level of workforce conditions elsewhere in the world to remain "competitive". The only people who win in a race to the bottom are the ones on top enjoying their 2nd vacation home purchase while everyone else working for them rents.
    - ericd 15y ago
      Read past the first couple of words of my comment and you'll see that I agree that worker protections are important, I'm just saying that unions have historically created a whole host of hard to solve problems and are not a good way to deal with this. No job availability is still generally the worst possible outcome in a country without strong social safety nets like the US, so don't underestimate the importance of competitiveness.
      - karambahh 15y ago
        There wouldn't be worker protections if unions did not exist. They pushed for paid holidays, medical leave, safety, etc. In the european country where I live, unions made all of this possible until the 1970s. Since then, unionization got less and less prevalent and now that the economy is gloomy at best, corporations are lobbying hard to relax worker protections. Unions are nowhere to be seen and workers are left alone to suffer.
      - philjohn 15y ago
        Unions exist in other countries that have highly successful industries, take Germany for example.
  - DamnYuppie 15y ago
    I don't agree entirely with this line of thinking. The concept of protecting workers from abuses by corporations is not in and of itself undesirable. As we have seen all throughout human history those who wield power usually abuse it. The issue with unions, as most people in America view them, is that they became to powerful themselves. This allowed them to make demands that would ultimately lead to their organizations becoming hamstrung and unable to rapidly adjust. Hence business look at them as the plague. The issue as I see it is that business, labor, and consumers need to understand the concept of "moderation". Consumers do not need an abundance of cheap crap. Businesses shouldn't focus solely on short term profits. Unions should seek to protect their workers and not pry as much money as they possibly can out of their employer.
  - krschultz 15y ago
    I'm not a big fan of unions in general (especially with regards to years = seniority in pay & firing), but on ergonomics I'm with them. It doesn't cost much to implement the warehouse in an ergonomic way, but clearly this company and many like it aren't doing that at all. That has a really important effect on the difficulty of the job.
    - mgkimsal 15y ago
      well... it costs them something more than it cost to have it the way it is now, and since they don't have to pay for the effect on the workers working in the non-ergonomic warehouse, what's the point? If they had to pay for the health/welfare of their workers directly, they'd have an incentive to ergonimicize the place.
      - yummyfajitas 15y ago
        If they had to pay for the health/welfare of their workers directly... You mean if they had to pay some sort of compensation for work related injuries? Too bad only 50 US states have workers comp laws.
        JVirissimo 15y ago
        Even if there were no workers comp laws, there would still be workers comp. Why? Because employees demand it and will work for a lower nominal wage in order to get it. Even 17th century pirates had workers comp.
        deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
  - scarmig 15y ago
    Just because it's hard to monetize and profit from concepts like the health and well-being of employees doesn't mean that we as a society should put that value at zero. The "competitiveness of a company on the global market" isn't the be-all, end-all. The phrase itself belies your point: if we as a society wanted to, we could place tariffs equivalent to the cost of providing a humane workplace for packaging workers, while also requiring our own companies to do so. This would eliminate the competitive edge issue, while also allowing other countries to engage in free trade with us if they pass laws protecting their own laborers from workspace exploitation. We simply choose not to, for certain values of we (read: members of the finance capital rentier class that dominates American political discourse).
    - ericd 15y ago
      Competitiveness is extremely important, and you highlight a way to sort of obtain that, but you can only control competitiveness in the domestic market with tariffs unless you basically oppress third worlders (how it will be viewed, anyway) by strong-arming nations to pass similar tariff laws. The value of domestic manual labor simply isn't that high anymore except in hard-to-outsource cases, and unless we change our society to involve more wealth redistribution, those who can only perform manual labor will not enjoy a similar standard of living to those with greater leverage.
      - Retric 15y ago
        The US economy has no need to export anything into third world countries their economy's are simply to tiny accept much in the way of imports. In-fact we have long flooded most of them with cheap food which we lost money to create so balance of trade is even less valuable than you might think. http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/ http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/ Canada, is another story we really need to keep them happy: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c1220.html http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c1220.html We export half as much stuff to China: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html And Ethiopia is next to nothing: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c7740.html http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c7740.html
  - bunderbunder 15y ago
    Ultimately, in a free society people need to be allowed the right to cooperate. And we also need to acknowledge that the management in a company invariably enjoys collective bargaining rights, and that basic human decency demands that we allow non-management employees to have similar rights. Which is not to say that all unions are well-behaved. My time as a Teamster was both instructive and discouraging. They had secured a lot of provisions that I don't think should have been allowed to stand. For one, joining the union was a condition of employment. If that requirement didn't violate the principle of free labor markets, it at least cut close to the line. And they eradicated all traces of meritocracy; the only thing that could ever be rewarded was seniority. That was deeply discouraging for a new employee, and from the company's perspective it ensured that the highest-paid employees were also the least productive, by virtue of having spent the most time observing that hard work would never be met with any reward aside from itself. However, we should not throw the baby out with the bath-water. Unions should be allowed to exist; history is rife with practical examples what happens if you don't do so. And frankly, the potential problems posed by unions can naturally be addressed by the free market itself, if only we'd let it. If a company's compensation structure becomes unsustainable due to more efficient competition from another company, then it is absolutely OK to simply let its more efficient competitors out-compete it. That remains the case regardless of the cause of the unsustainable compensation structure.
    - yummyfajitas 15y ago
      And we also need to acknowledge that the management in a company invariably enjoys collective bargaining rights... No, it's illegal for corporations to collectively bargain to set workers wages. On the flip side, if employees unionize, it's illegal for the employer to refuse to do business with them.
      - mwhite 15y ago
        s/management/middle management
      - mwhite 15y ago
        s/management/middle management
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    There's unions and unions. I don't have a problem with such organizations as representatives of working people's collective interests, but the relationship between unions and business in the US can be terribly adversarial such that 'collective bargaining' often ends up looking more like mutual attrition. It might be that historically the diversity of the US is partly responsible; where there is wide social and cultural variation among both employers and employees then the establishment of a consensus about what working conditions are fair and reasonable becomes more difficult. If you've grown up and started your career in an atmosphere of tough working conditions and demanding expectations, then as an employer you're going to have similar expectations of the people you hire. To someone who has grown up in a more collaborative or cooperative situation designed to insulate colleagues from external pressures, the demanding productivity goals of the former context may seem irrational or oppressive. Perhaps there is some correlation with the variety of household income situation experienced growing up - marginal (waged) or fixed (salaried) economic inputs are likely to influence perceptions of appropriate output.
    - winestock 15y ago
      Upvote for "There's unions and then there's unions." I live in Michigan and have known people who personally attest to all of the negative stereotypes about the Teamsters and the UAW. On the other hand, Germany manages to have a world-class economy based on manufacturing highly-sought factory-made goods, and they do it all with high-wage union labor. I'm a red-blooded American, so I prefer as few regulations as necessary. But maybe -- just maybe -- we can copy a few of the things that those wacky krauts are doing.
      - scarmig 15y ago
        It's an interesting system. Workers actually have votes on corporate governance; in fact, a 50/50 split with shareholders if I recall correctly. I wouldn't be surprised if that led to a less antagonistic labor/management relationship.
  - rdl 15y ago
    Yeah, generally the people are asking for 10-30% more than they're getting now (in pay, or slower pace, or better conditions), which is a whole lot less inefficiency than converting things to union rules. The threat of unionization, combined with PR issues with customers learning about how workers are treated, will probably cause companies to fix these issues pretty soon.
  - hristov 15y ago
    Not always the case. Many of the German and Japanese companies that have been kicking our asses on the global market have much more powerful unions than their respective US competitors.
  - mbell 15y ago
    Unions are disastrous for many of the same reasons that much of my country's (USA) systems are failing in various ways, political corruption. I still live in a 'union town' (Boston) so perhaps it is different elsewhere, but they certainly push their influence well beyond the scope of worker rights in this city. It being discovered that you didn't vote on the union line or otherwise 'play ball' with their political or public stance will get you booted from the union. Which in some trades around here makes you unemployable unless you relocate. In other words, they use scare tactics to push their agenda. Unions had a time and place. There were absolutely deplorable conditions of work in the US for a period of time and unions were a proper solution. Today they just lay the basis for overly cushy jobs and political corruption.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - intended 15y ago
      Or perhaps the union system has merit, but its in great need for a spring cleaning.
  - DirtyCalvinist 15y ago
    Nonetheless, companies would do well to remember that the first unions were formed not to demand higher pay, but to protect the worker from employer caprice and tyranny, and to lobby employers to make changes to keep workers from being mangled by the machines they worked on. Paying people a pittance may make them depressed, but destroying their dignity and their health will compel them to organize - labor laws and strike breaking tactics be damned.
skurry 15y ago
I spent the first five years of my professional life developing software for these places. I've seen lots of warehouses and even worked in them briefly to test our software. Not the most glamorous work, but I could do fun stuff like use genetic algorithms for optimization problems or create a dynamic 3D visualization of the warehouse space. It took me a while to realize that my work is making other people obsolete and replaceable, but I guess so does a big portion of software and technology in general. But it was surprisingly refreshing to switch off your brain for a few hours and do whatever the scanner tells you to do. Though of course I didn't have any pressure to do more than 1,000 picks a day, that is insane! This was in Germany though, so the unions and worker's council made sure that the working conditions were more humane than described in the article.
lukifer 15y ago
These conditions aren't unique to warehouse jobs; the customer call-center industry is similar in many ways. Time is tracked down to the second, you are being recorded and/or monitored at all times, tardiness and absenteeism are ruthlessly enforced with no excuses, and there is relentless pressure to "hit your numbers", which are often nearly impossible. And of course, you're still expected to "always put the customer first" under these insane conditions. If you don't live up in any respect, they're happy to let the next batch of trainees have your job. In fact, they prefer it; those with 5+ years of experience have the most to fear, as they acquire raises and cushier benefits over time, and so are often fired for the same infraction that gets a newbie a write-up. I suppose that call centers are preferable to warehouses, in that there is little risk of injury, and there are more opportunities to move up or transfer careers. Still, this is one of the human costs of corporate capitalism in general: if you don't have rare or specialized skills, you have no negotiating power, and have to take whatever you can get. And don't even think about uttering the word "union".
- patio11 15y ago
  I worked in a call center for two summers to pay for college. It was actually not that bad. I was certainly tracked, monitored, and given aggressive performance targets, but as an inbound CSR you don't have many calls that make you cry. They offered us shifts in the warehouse when we didn't need 100% utilization on the phones. I never took them up on that, despite that juicy extra quarter an hour.
  - lukifer 15y ago
    There's a huge degree of variability in the industry; I worked for four different call centers before I broke into web-dev, and some were much worse than others. The absolute worst ones are the out-sourced centers that handle in-bound calls for multiple other companies. Because they have no stake in the long-term outcome and are paid solely by their numbers (cost per call), they have little incentive to train their staff well, pay well, follow through with customers, etc. Working for Comcast and AT&T directly was degrading and Dilbertesque, but they weren't as bad as the outsourced centers or the warehouse environs described in the article.
nostromo 15y ago
It strikes me that these sort of manual warehouse picking jobs will be completely gone in a few years as robots automate the picking process (as seen here with Diapers.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zXOW6v0c8s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zXOW6v0c8s)
- Permit 15y ago
  Wow, that's truly incredible. I didn't realize anyone had reached this point. I'm excited to see this stuff progress, but I can't help but wonder what sort of social problems this might create as the unskilled jobs of an economy are slowly chipped away at. This sort of work surely creates more jobs in tech sectors and in maintenance, but skills learned in boxing are not transferable to any of the jobs that might be created by this.
  - kijin 15y ago
    Machines have been replacing jobs for over 200 years now, but I don't think there's been a huge increase in unemployment over that period. We've always managed to invent more meaningless and repetitious tasks for ourselves to do. One might say that most office jobs nowadays are like that, too. Factories replaced farms, cubicles replaced factories. But usually this happened over generations, so people had a chance to adapt. If, at some point in the future, so many tasks get automated so quickly that there aren't enough jobs for the majority of this planet's featherless bipeds, we might finally get a chance to rethink the age-old rule that a person must work in order to survive. Work might become something that you only do because you like it, or because you want a higher income than whatever the default is. I only hope that outdated ideologies won't get in the way of such a paradigm shift.
    - chii 15y ago
      "we might finally get a chance to rethink the age-old rule that a person must work in order to survive." i m a stern believer that people has to produce value. And until a person can produce value merely by living, people will have to work to survive. Value right now is measured by money, and money has a limited capability in measuring things that are very subjective (how do you measure the value a nice person brings to a community?). But i dont believe there ever will be a day when a person can live without outputting an iota of value as measured by the standards of the day. At least, not until we have a source of free, and unlimitd energy.
SurfScore 15y ago
It always comes down to price. The vast majority of people in the world aren't so self-righteous that they'll pay $10 more for something that was produced "the right way." This has always been the nature of these kinds of businesses, and until robots and technology take those jobs away completely (which opens up a whole other can of worms), it will just keep happening
- winestock 15y ago
  "Economists dismiss costs that aren't included in price. For them the cost that matters is the price paid by consumers." - Paul Craig Roberts, Which Is Worse: Regulation Or De-Regulation? Sadly, customers often act the same way as economists on this issue. EDIT: Punctuation
  - neilk 15y ago
    Bad economists maybe. DanI-S's sibling comment to yours points out the costs that this offloads onto the government and health care system.
- DanI-S 15y ago
  The author mentions that picking 800 items filled 52% of her daily quota. An extra 5c shipping cost per item could thus double her salary, or pay for an entire extra employee. There's no need for this kind of brutal efficiency. It is detrimental to our society and our economy. Workers who develop crippling health conditions and can never afford to retire are a massive burden on our systems of welfare.
  - intended 15y ago
    Or ironically get called dead weight later.
- neilk 15y ago
  You're right that most consumers don't really act like it's a priority for them, even when labeling regimes exist and they have said that ethical products are important. The best you can get is a 10% premium from a segment of relatively wealthy and socially conscious people.[1] However, for those that do, I'm not sure "self-righteous" is the right term. I think the word you were looking for was "non-hypocritical". Anyway, I think this just shows that the checkout counter isn't the right place for us to exert our ethical standards. When no one's really watching, and the pain is significant, we're weak, atomized individuals. We even know that our individual purchasing decisions mean zero to giant economic forces. So it's rational to just go for the lower price. All progress with labor standards have come about in other ways - journalism, legislation, and unionization. [1] http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~hiscox/Depelsmacker.pdf http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~hiscox/Depelsmacker.pdf
JohnnyBrown 15y ago
>Temporary staffers aren't legally entitled to decent health care because they are just short-term "contractors" no matter how long they keep the same job. This to me actually sounds illegal. I've worked in other industries where significant hoops were jumped through to make it possible to call workers contractors. If I recall one test often used is whether the worker is on a set schedule, which the situation described would utterly fail. IANAL
winestock 15y ago
Mike Daisey's book, 21 Dog Years, briefly discussed conditions at Amazon's warehouses even though cube farm hell was the focus of the book. I don't have the book, anymore, but, going from memory, Daisey's account matches those of the author of the Mother Jones article. http://www.amazon.com/21-Dog-Years-Doing-Amazon-com/dp/07432.. http://www.amazon.com/21-Dog-Years-Doing-Amazon-com/dp/07432.... That's right; it's an Amazon link. Ironic, I know.
tsotha 15y ago
I worked at a company developing the warehouse management software. This was back in the mid '90s, but we didn't have a single customer that ran his warehouse like the one in the article. Picking is a crappy job, and everyone knows it, so pickers weren't expected to move too fast. If you showed up to work for a few weeks as a picker you'd get promoted to another position. Most of the people who got hired were ex-cons and drug addicts, so only about one in three lasted more than a day or two. I don't know if the industry as a whole has changed, or if the place the author worked is far on the bad end of the spectrum.
- DanI-S 15y ago
  I would guess that the current economic climate provides an incentive for management to push workers harder than before, since there's a greater pool of replacements and a worse fate awaiting those who can't keep up.
  - winestock 15y ago
    Some time ago, a commenter on a blog called Advice Goddess wrote something apropos to what you've written: "Competition isn't always an impetus to improve. Sometimes it's just impetus to fuck harder."
- hristov 15y ago
  The economy changed. The mid to late nineties were the years of the Clinton relative prosperity when unemployment was low jobs were not that hard to get so one could not treat people like shit, especially in low level jobs.
namidark 15y ago
More ads and I wouldn't even have to read the article! Popup's and unders included!
ontIgnoreRealit 15y ago
It's a shame that there aren't unions in China and the United States.
noonespecial 15y ago
If you ever find yourself in a situation where static electricity is a problem as in this article, find a regular wooden pencil, break it in half, sharpen both ends and then blunt them a bit so they don't poke you. As you approach the metal object, touch the end of the pencil to it first. Make sure you are in good contact with the other end. The graphite "lead" is a conductor. You won't feel the shock.
- onemoreact 15y ago
  Works with any conductor like a ring or tape a paperclip to your index finger. I often touch the metallic part of my keys then use the key's to touch your door.
  - noonespecial 15y ago
    The pencil seems to work better, perhaps because the graphite has some resistance. I usually feel it a bit when I use a key. In this case, the people in the warehouse were unable to carry metal in because the delay at the metal detectors would mean they got no break time. The nub of pencil would be ideal.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Surely the graphite is a resister rather than a conductor? Otherwise how can it stop the spark.
  - neilk 15y ago
    It doesn't stop it. Consider: the energy of the spark is flowing through your whole body, but it's only painful at the point of contact, because it's concentrated in the smallest possible cross-section. So use something else at that point of contact.
paulhauggis 15y ago
Amazon is the worst e-commerce company I've ever dealt with. They treat their marketplace sellers like garbage. I have been selling for the past 5+ years. They put a review on my account and when I called them to find out some more information about it, I was met with a call center rep in India who gave me absolutely no help. They don't actually have call support for marketplace sellers. You have to email them. When you do, you get mostly automated responses. After this ordeal, I finally left them for good. I still can't believe people are giving Amazon this much money (most categories are between 8-16% commission) to sell their goods (plus $40/month if you have a pro-account). It's a slap in the face when you can't even talk to someone when you have any sort of account issue. On top of this, Amazon doesn't even abide by the same harsh rules they expect all of their 3rd-party sellers to follow.
b1daly 15y ago
People are making comments here about how unions diminish competiveness. What about incompetent CEOs who make big decisions that wreck a company and still get paid millions. Why is it always the lowest paid workers who are expected to take a pay cut to make the company viable? I'm thinking of high profile CEOs who brought havoc and failure to theieto company: Stephen Elop, Leo Apotheker, Carol Bartz,Carly Fiorina... But really, the insistence that the peons take the hits, I don't get it.
- 3pt14159 15y ago
  Because unions have government protection, CEOs don't, and it is up to the shareholders to maximize value.
  - dalke 15y ago
    That's a meaningless blanket statement. Yes, unions have government protection. So do CEOs, since a corporate entity exists to protect CEOs and others in the company from personal liability. Unions in the US also have government restrictions on what they can do. As one example, the Taft–Hartley Act prohibits a number of union actions, restricts First Amendment rights (eg, union offers must sign non-communist affidavits), and expressly allows a company to fire supervisors which support union rights. The title of this essay uses "Wage Slave." The point is that "maximizing value" is not necessarily aligned with human rights. Is it your view that those two principles never be out of alignment, and if not, what happens in that case?
    - 3pt14159 15y ago
      It isn't a meaningless statement. Unions, at least where I am from, are legally allowed to force individuals to join the union. Corporations are not legally allowed to fire everyone from the union, or demand non-unionship from their employees. Corporations are the way that contracts can exist between parties without relying on the location or livelihood of individuals. Corporations are the reason you can sue, 40 years after the fact, the organization that polluted the river that brought about your colon cancer. The Taft-Hartley Act was fucking retarded, but that isn't anymore reason to create further law against corporations (besides banks, since the fractional reserve system is moronic and introduces huge risks into the system. I wasn't directing my comment at the article I was answer the person's question: Why are there negative sentiments against unions. The reason is that many of us have dealt with them at one point or another and they artificially aided by government law. All of them. Most CEOs are not.
rw 15y ago
This reminds me of the novella "Manna": > He looked at me for a long time, "A computer is telling you what to do on the job? What does the manager do?" > "The computer is the manager. Manna, manager, get it?" > "You mean that a computer is telling you what to do all day?", he asked. > "Yeah." http://bit.ly/xP6sLk http://bit.ly/xP6sLk
- wladimir 15y ago
  Yes, that dystopia (at least in the beginning of the novella) is becoming reality for a lot of people. And I don't think it's getting better soon. We should consider ourselves lucky that we are the ones that program computers instead of the ones programmed by them.
jennya 15y ago
Contrast this with the comments for the Amazon Prime article a few stories down :(
click170 15y ago
I've worked at one of the warehouses for an electronics retailer, and I rather enjoyed it. They didn't outsource to a temp agency, instead they had their own HR department. The starting pay was far above average for similar jobs with other companies and they readjusted for cost of living increases every few years, and the employee discount was wicked. It's interesting to read about perspectives from employees of other warehouses, it sounds like I had it good.
pmorici 15y ago
"I probably look happier than I should because I have the extreme luxury of not giving a shit about keeping this job." Great quote there. That's really a key to being happy in any job. Her description of this job doesn't sound all that bad you get exercise and paid above minimum wage plus overtime.
- fmx 15y ago
  I was going to upvote you for the quote, but then I got to "her description of this job doesn't sound all that bad"... It sounds pretty bad to me, at least for a first-world country.
  - alan_cx 15y ago
    Well, there's your problem. First World countries now need to compete with Third World countries. Its what unregulated capitalism does. It cant happen and wont happen, but this downward spiral of competing to the floor can only be stopped if the entire world sets minimum standards of employment. Even them places like the US and EU will need to revise down, while the likes of India and China will have to revise up!!! Best bit, is we all cause this, no, we demand it when we are purchasing. Free shipping, lowest price for highest quality, etc. Are "we" willing to pay more to get less, so that people don't get exploited? Nope...
    - liber8 15y ago
      >>It cant happen and wont happen, but this downward spiral of competing to the floor can only be stopped if the entire world sets minimum standards of employment. Even them places like the US and EU will need to revise down, while the likes of India and China will have to revise up!!!<< This is preposterous. The "downward spiral" as you call it is already slowing, as can readily be seen by many US companies "reshoring" jobs now that China's labor costs have risen so dramatically. India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, etc., are all following suit because as demand for labor in those places increases, so does the price of that labor. No government intervention necessary.
fleitz 15y ago
Honestly, the article sounds pretty good for warehouse work. About 12 years ago I was working in a warehouse at -25 C slogging sides of beef at 25 to 50 Kg for at least 10 hours, my record shift was 26 hours. The pay was even less, $10/hr. It had to be -25 in the freezer because there was ice cream in there too and if it didn't leave at -25 it would melt by the time it got to the destination. The only odd thing about the job was the look I got like I was crazy when I left to work tech support in the city for a dollar an hour less.
bostonvaulter2 15y ago
I'm actually surprised that the workers are getting so much over minimum wage yet are being so poorly treated. Why not just pay them closer to minimum wage since there are so many willing workers?
cynwoody 15y ago
Would you rather be idling excess machines or firing workers?
cynwoody 15y ago
Would you rather be idling excess machines or firing workers?
to_jon 15y ago
More than call centers, this industry reminds me of the meatpacking industry. Warehouse workers fill a crucial step in a larger fulfillment model that unnecessarily imposes harsh conditions on its workforce. The writer mentions picking 500 items during her last morning on the job, which probably represents anywhere from 200 to 300 orders (assuming the average book or dildo order is small). Over a 5 hour period, that represents 40 to 60 orders per hour, picked at real hourly cost of perhaps $14. In other words, a slower picking rate and higher wages might cost consumers several extra dimes per order. It's reasonable to say that passing this additional cost to consumers would have a trivial impact on shopper's wallets, while fueling a strong wealth creation effect in the community where the warehouse is located as its workers can actually afford to spend their way into a middle class lifestyle. Likewise, the meatpacking industry is infamous for its brutal working conditions and low wages. It has bred many low income, working poor communities plighted by gangs, crime, and despair. The solution to righting the industry and its communities is obvious- pay employees real, middle class wages. But the industry has been fighting a race to the bottom, as the wholesalers of meat products will obviously pick the meatpacking company that can sell at the lowest cost. Because better wages would only increase the price supermarkets pay for meat by several cents per pound, one meatpacking company CEO has openly called for imposing higher wage levels across the entire industry (easier than done). The introduction of higher wages would boost local economies and in aggregate that contributes to the nation's prosperity. The industries are examples of capitalism at its most efficient and of capitalism utterly failing society as well.
VMG 15y ago
Were you able to leave? Yes? Then you weren't a slave.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jrockway 15y ago
Sounds about right. Amazon is great for their investors and customers. Employees? Not so much, it seems. In this case, it doesn't seem unreasonable. The pay rate and overtime they get means they make around $40,000 a year. In rural America with no skills other than the ability to walk and use a barcode scanner, that's not bad money. I'm all in favor of educating people so they can work 8 hour days behind a desk, but the reality is that that won't work for everyone. So having jobs available that let people good at manual labor have a decent life doesn't seem that horrible to me. I may be wrong, though.
Jinzang 15y ago
I've got a modest proposal. Let's bring back slavery. Then employers would worry about employee injuries, have work for them year round instead of only hiring during peak season, and in general treat their slaves with the concern that posters here seem to reserve for robots.

316 points by brownie 15y ago

ck2 15y ago

It's interesting how we put down companies for their abusive labor conditions in China but at least 50% of the population will rally behind forces that prevent any sort of government regulation or unions that help prevent this kind of abuse "in the homeland". Oh and I don't just mean the right wing, fun fact, Hillary Clinton was a bigtime lawyer for walmart to help them prevent unions. Walmart even has a swat-like team to respond to possible union formations.

ericd 15y ago
Unions are disastrous for the competitiveness of a company on the global market. We do need worker protections of some form (perhaps greater informational transparency about working conditions would help?), we don't need the techniques that unions use to obtain unsustainably high wages for their workers.
- ck2 15y ago
  Re-read that article and tell me you want any human being to have to work like that for more than a week in a supposedly 1st-world country. Those people are subsidizing your low prices by taking 800mg of advil a day to be able to get a paycheck and deferring the health disaster they will have in a few years without insurance. If you do not have unions or government regulation, big business sets the rules and you end up with that story and in the bigger picture, the criminal health care system that plagues this nation. I find it absurd that the answer for the USA is to pull us down to the lowest level of workforce conditions elsewhere in the world to remain "competitive". The only people who win in a race to the bottom are the ones on top enjoying their 2nd vacation home purchase while everyone else working for them rents.
  - ericd 15y ago
    Read past the first couple of words of my comment and you'll see that I agree that worker protections are important, I'm just saying that unions have historically created a whole host of hard to solve problems and are not a good way to deal with this. No job availability is still generally the worst possible outcome in a country without strong social safety nets like the US, so don't underestimate the importance of competitiveness.
    - karambahh 15y ago
      There wouldn't be worker protections if unions did not exist. They pushed for paid holidays, medical leave, safety, etc. In the european country where I live, unions made all of this possible until the 1970s. Since then, unionization got less and less prevalent and now that the economy is gloomy at best, corporations are lobbying hard to relax worker protections. Unions are nowhere to be seen and workers are left alone to suffer.
    - philjohn 15y ago
      Unions exist in other countries that have highly successful industries, take Germany for example.
- DamnYuppie 15y ago
  I don't agree entirely with this line of thinking. The concept of protecting workers from abuses by corporations is not in and of itself undesirable. As we have seen all throughout human history those who wield power usually abuse it. The issue with unions, as most people in America view them, is that they became to powerful themselves. This allowed them to make demands that would ultimately lead to their organizations becoming hamstrung and unable to rapidly adjust. Hence business look at them as the plague. The issue as I see it is that business, labor, and consumers need to understand the concept of "moderation". Consumers do not need an abundance of cheap crap. Businesses shouldn't focus solely on short term profits. Unions should seek to protect their workers and not pry as much money as they possibly can out of their employer.
- krschultz 15y ago
  I'm not a big fan of unions in general (especially with regards to years = seniority in pay & firing), but on ergonomics I'm with them. It doesn't cost much to implement the warehouse in an ergonomic way, but clearly this company and many like it aren't doing that at all. That has a really important effect on the difficulty of the job.
  - mgkimsal 15y ago
    well... it costs them something more than it cost to have it the way it is now, and since they don't have to pay for the effect on the workers working in the non-ergonomic warehouse, what's the point? If they had to pay for the health/welfare of their workers directly, they'd have an incentive to ergonimicize the place.
    - yummyfajitas 15y ago
      If they had to pay for the health/welfare of their workers directly... You mean if they had to pay some sort of compensation for work related injuries? Too bad only 50 US states have workers comp laws.
      - JVirissimo 15y ago
        Even if there were no workers comp laws, there would still be workers comp. Why? Because employees demand it and will work for a lower nominal wage in order to get it. Even 17th century pirates had workers comp.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
- scarmig 15y ago
  Just because it's hard to monetize and profit from concepts like the health and well-being of employees doesn't mean that we as a society should put that value at zero. The "competitiveness of a company on the global market" isn't the be-all, end-all. The phrase itself belies your point: if we as a society wanted to, we could place tariffs equivalent to the cost of providing a humane workplace for packaging workers, while also requiring our own companies to do so. This would eliminate the competitive edge issue, while also allowing other countries to engage in free trade with us if they pass laws protecting their own laborers from workspace exploitation. We simply choose not to, for certain values of we (read: members of the finance capital rentier class that dominates American political discourse).
  - ericd 15y ago
    Competitiveness is extremely important, and you highlight a way to sort of obtain that, but you can only control competitiveness in the domestic market with tariffs unless you basically oppress third worlders (how it will be viewed, anyway) by strong-arming nations to pass similar tariff laws. The value of domestic manual labor simply isn't that high anymore except in hard-to-outsource cases, and unless we change our society to involve more wealth redistribution, those who can only perform manual labor will not enjoy a similar standard of living to those with greater leverage.
    - Retric 15y ago
      The US economy has no need to export anything into third world countries their economy's are simply to tiny accept much in the way of imports. In-fact we have long flooded most of them with cheap food which we lost money to create so balance of trade is even less valuable than you might think. http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/ http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/ Canada, is another story we really need to keep them happy: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c1220.html http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c1220.html We export half as much stuff to China: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html And Ethiopia is next to nothing: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c7740.html http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c7740.html
- bunderbunder 15y ago
  Ultimately, in a free society people need to be allowed the right to cooperate. And we also need to acknowledge that the management in a company invariably enjoys collective bargaining rights, and that basic human decency demands that we allow non-management employees to have similar rights. Which is not to say that all unions are well-behaved. My time as a Teamster was both instructive and discouraging. They had secured a lot of provisions that I don't think should have been allowed to stand. For one, joining the union was a condition of employment. If that requirement didn't violate the principle of free labor markets, it at least cut close to the line. And they eradicated all traces of meritocracy; the only thing that could ever be rewarded was seniority. That was deeply discouraging for a new employee, and from the company's perspective it ensured that the highest-paid employees were also the least productive, by virtue of having spent the most time observing that hard work would never be met with any reward aside from itself. However, we should not throw the baby out with the bath-water. Unions should be allowed to exist; history is rife with practical examples what happens if you don't do so. And frankly, the potential problems posed by unions can naturally be addressed by the free market itself, if only we'd let it. If a company's compensation structure becomes unsustainable due to more efficient competition from another company, then it is absolutely OK to simply let its more efficient competitors out-compete it. That remains the case regardless of the cause of the unsustainable compensation structure.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    And we also need to acknowledge that the management in a company invariably enjoys collective bargaining rights... No, it's illegal for corporations to collectively bargain to set workers wages. On the flip side, if employees unionize, it's illegal for the employer to refuse to do business with them.
    - mwhite 15y ago
      s/management/middle management
    - mwhite 15y ago
      s/management/middle management
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  There's unions and unions. I don't have a problem with such organizations as representatives of working people's collective interests, but the relationship between unions and business in the US can be terribly adversarial such that 'collective bargaining' often ends up looking more like mutual attrition. It might be that historically the diversity of the US is partly responsible; where there is wide social and cultural variation among both employers and employees then the establishment of a consensus about what working conditions are fair and reasonable becomes more difficult. If you've grown up and started your career in an atmosphere of tough working conditions and demanding expectations, then as an employer you're going to have similar expectations of the people you hire. To someone who has grown up in a more collaborative or cooperative situation designed to insulate colleagues from external pressures, the demanding productivity goals of the former context may seem irrational or oppressive. Perhaps there is some correlation with the variety of household income situation experienced growing up - marginal (waged) or fixed (salaried) economic inputs are likely to influence perceptions of appropriate output.
  - winestock 15y ago
    Upvote for "There's unions and then there's unions." I live in Michigan and have known people who personally attest to all of the negative stereotypes about the Teamsters and the UAW. On the other hand, Germany manages to have a world-class economy based on manufacturing highly-sought factory-made goods, and they do it all with high-wage union labor. I'm a red-blooded American, so I prefer as few regulations as necessary. But maybe -- just maybe -- we can copy a few of the things that those wacky krauts are doing.
    - scarmig 15y ago
      It's an interesting system. Workers actually have votes on corporate governance; in fact, a 50/50 split with shareholders if I recall correctly. I wouldn't be surprised if that led to a less antagonistic labor/management relationship.
- rdl 15y ago
  Yeah, generally the people are asking for 10-30% more than they're getting now (in pay, or slower pace, or better conditions), which is a whole lot less inefficiency than converting things to union rules. The threat of unionization, combined with PR issues with customers learning about how workers are treated, will probably cause companies to fix these issues pretty soon.
- hristov 15y ago
  Not always the case. Many of the German and Japanese companies that have been kicking our asses on the global market have much more powerful unions than their respective US competitors.
- mbell 15y ago
  Unions are disastrous for many of the same reasons that much of my country's (USA) systems are failing in various ways, political corruption. I still live in a 'union town' (Boston) so perhaps it is different elsewhere, but they certainly push their influence well beyond the scope of worker rights in this city. It being discovered that you didn't vote on the union line or otherwise 'play ball' with their political or public stance will get you booted from the union. Which in some trades around here makes you unemployable unless you relocate. In other words, they use scare tactics to push their agenda. Unions had a time and place. There were absolutely deplorable conditions of work in the US for a period of time and unions were a proper solution. Today they just lay the basis for overly cushy jobs and political corruption.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - intended 15y ago
    Or perhaps the union system has merit, but its in great need for a spring cleaning.
- DirtyCalvinist 15y ago
  Nonetheless, companies would do well to remember that the first unions were formed not to demand higher pay, but to protect the worker from employer caprice and tyranny, and to lobby employers to make changes to keep workers from being mangled by the machines they worked on. Paying people a pittance may make them depressed, but destroying their dignity and their health will compel them to organize - labor laws and strike breaking tactics be damned.

skurry 15y ago

I spent the first five years of my professional life developing software for these places. I've seen lots of warehouses and even worked in them briefly to test our software. Not the most glamorous work, but I could do fun stuff like use genetic algorithms for optimization problems or create a dynamic 3D visualization of the warehouse space. It took me a while to realize that my work is making other people obsolete and replaceable, but I guess so does a big portion of software and technology in general. But it was surprisingly refreshing to switch off your brain for a few hours and do whatever the scanner tells you to do. Though of course I didn't have any pressure to do more than 1,000 picks a day, that is insane! This was in Germany though, so the unions and worker's council made sure that the working conditions were more humane than described in the article.

lukifer 15y ago

These conditions aren't unique to warehouse jobs; the customer call-center industry is similar in many ways. Time is tracked down to the second, you are being recorded and/or monitored at all times, tardiness and absenteeism are ruthlessly enforced with no excuses, and there is relentless pressure to "hit your numbers", which are often nearly impossible. And of course, you're still expected to "always put the customer first" under these insane conditions. If you don't live up in any respect, they're happy to let the next batch of trainees have your job. In fact, they prefer it; those with 5+ years of experience have the most to fear, as they acquire raises and cushier benefits over time, and so are often fired for the same infraction that gets a newbie a write-up. I suppose that call centers are preferable to warehouses, in that there is little risk of injury, and there are more opportunities to move up or transfer careers. Still, this is one of the human costs of corporate capitalism in general: if you don't have rare or specialized skills, you have no negotiating power, and have to take whatever you can get. And don't even think about uttering the word "union".

patio11 15y ago
I worked in a call center for two summers to pay for college. It was actually not that bad. I was certainly tracked, monitored, and given aggressive performance targets, but as an inbound CSR you don't have many calls that make you cry. They offered us shifts in the warehouse when we didn't need 100% utilization on the phones. I never took them up on that, despite that juicy extra quarter an hour.
- lukifer 15y ago
  There's a huge degree of variability in the industry; I worked for four different call centers before I broke into web-dev, and some were much worse than others. The absolute worst ones are the out-sourced centers that handle in-bound calls for multiple other companies. Because they have no stake in the long-term outcome and are paid solely by their numbers (cost per call), they have little incentive to train their staff well, pay well, follow through with customers, etc. Working for Comcast and AT&T directly was degrading and Dilbertesque, but they weren't as bad as the outsourced centers or the warehouse environs described in the article.

nostromo 15y ago

It strikes me that these sort of manual warehouse picking jobs will be completely gone in a few years as robots automate the picking process (as seen here with Diapers.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zXOW6v0c8s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zXOW6v0c8s)

Permit 15y ago
Wow, that's truly incredible. I didn't realize anyone had reached this point. I'm excited to see this stuff progress, but I can't help but wonder what sort of social problems this might create as the unskilled jobs of an economy are slowly chipped away at. This sort of work surely creates more jobs in tech sectors and in maintenance, but skills learned in boxing are not transferable to any of the jobs that might be created by this.
- kijin 15y ago
  Machines have been replacing jobs for over 200 years now, but I don't think there's been a huge increase in unemployment over that period. We've always managed to invent more meaningless and repetitious tasks for ourselves to do. One might say that most office jobs nowadays are like that, too. Factories replaced farms, cubicles replaced factories. But usually this happened over generations, so people had a chance to adapt. If, at some point in the future, so many tasks get automated so quickly that there aren't enough jobs for the majority of this planet's featherless bipeds, we might finally get a chance to rethink the age-old rule that a person must work in order to survive. Work might become something that you only do because you like it, or because you want a higher income than whatever the default is. I only hope that outdated ideologies won't get in the way of such a paradigm shift.
  - chii 15y ago
    "we might finally get a chance to rethink the age-old rule that a person must work in order to survive." i m a stern believer that people has to produce value. And until a person can produce value merely by living, people will have to work to survive. Value right now is measured by money, and money has a limited capability in measuring things that are very subjective (how do you measure the value a nice person brings to a community?). But i dont believe there ever will be a day when a person can live without outputting an iota of value as measured by the standards of the day. At least, not until we have a source of free, and unlimitd energy.

SurfScore 15y ago

It always comes down to price. The vast majority of people in the world aren't so self-righteous that they'll pay $10 more for something that was produced "the right way." This has always been the nature of these kinds of businesses, and until robots and technology take those jobs away completely (which opens up a whole other can of worms), it will just keep happening

winestock 15y ago
"Economists dismiss costs that aren't included in price. For them the cost that matters is the price paid by consumers." - Paul Craig Roberts, Which Is Worse: Regulation Or De-Regulation? Sadly, customers often act the same way as economists on this issue. EDIT: Punctuation
- neilk 15y ago
  Bad economists maybe. DanI-S's sibling comment to yours points out the costs that this offloads onto the government and health care system.
DanI-S 15y ago
The author mentions that picking 800 items filled 52% of her daily quota. An extra 5c shipping cost per item could thus double her salary, or pay for an entire extra employee. There's no need for this kind of brutal efficiency. It is detrimental to our society and our economy. Workers who develop crippling health conditions and can never afford to retire are a massive burden on our systems of welfare.
- intended 15y ago
  Or ironically get called dead weight later.
neilk 15y ago
You're right that most consumers don't really act like it's a priority for them, even when labeling regimes exist and they have said that ethical products are important. The best you can get is a 10% premium from a segment of relatively wealthy and socially conscious people.[1] However, for those that do, I'm not sure "self-righteous" is the right term. I think the word you were looking for was "non-hypocritical". Anyway, I think this just shows that the checkout counter isn't the right place for us to exert our ethical standards. When no one's really watching, and the pain is significant, we're weak, atomized individuals. We even know that our individual purchasing decisions mean zero to giant economic forces. So it's rational to just go for the lower price. All progress with labor standards have come about in other ways - journalism, legislation, and unionization. [1] http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~hiscox/Depelsmacker.pdf http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~hiscox/Depelsmacker.pdf

JohnnyBrown 15y ago

>Temporary staffers aren't legally entitled to decent health care because they are just short-term "contractors" no matter how long they keep the same job. This to me actually sounds illegal. I've worked in other industries where significant hoops were jumped through to make it possible to call workers contractors. If I recall one test often used is whether the worker is on a set schedule, which the situation described would utterly fail. IANAL

winestock 15y ago

Mike Daisey's book, 21 Dog Years, briefly discussed conditions at Amazon's warehouses even though cube farm hell was the focus of the book. I don't have the book, anymore, but, going from memory, Daisey's account matches those of the author of the Mother Jones article. http://www.amazon.com/21-Dog-Years-Doing-Amazon-com/dp/07432.. http://www.amazon.com/21-Dog-Years-Doing-Amazon-com/dp/07432.... That's right; it's an Amazon link. Ironic, I know.

tsotha 15y ago

I worked at a company developing the warehouse management software. This was back in the mid '90s, but we didn't have a single customer that ran his warehouse like the one in the article. Picking is a crappy job, and everyone knows it, so pickers weren't expected to move too fast. If you showed up to work for a few weeks as a picker you'd get promoted to another position. Most of the people who got hired were ex-cons and drug addicts, so only about one in three lasted more than a day or two. I don't know if the industry as a whole has changed, or if the place the author worked is far on the bad end of the spectrum.

DanI-S 15y ago
I would guess that the current economic climate provides an incentive for management to push workers harder than before, since there's a greater pool of replacements and a worse fate awaiting those who can't keep up.
- winestock 15y ago
  Some time ago, a commenter on a blog called Advice Goddess wrote something apropos to what you've written: "Competition isn't always an impetus to improve. Sometimes it's just impetus to fuck harder."
hristov 15y ago
The economy changed. The mid to late nineties were the years of the Clinton relative prosperity when unemployment was low jobs were not that hard to get so one could not treat people like shit, especially in low level jobs.

namidark 15y ago

More ads and I wouldn't even have to read the article! Popup's and unders included!

ontIgnoreRealit 15y ago

It's a shame that there aren't unions in China and the United States.

noonespecial 15y ago

If you ever find yourself in a situation where static electricity is a problem as in this article, find a regular wooden pencil, break it in half, sharpen both ends and then blunt them a bit so they don't poke you. As you approach the metal object, touch the end of the pencil to it first. Make sure you are in good contact with the other end. The graphite "lead" is a conductor. You won't feel the shock.

onemoreact 15y ago
Works with any conductor like a ring or tape a paperclip to your index finger. I often touch the metallic part of my keys then use the key's to touch your door.
- noonespecial 15y ago
  The pencil seems to work better, perhaps because the graphite has some resistance. I usually feel it a bit when I use a key. In this case, the people in the warehouse were unable to carry metal in because the delay at the metal detectors would mean they got no break time. The nub of pencil would be ideal.
tomjen3 15y ago
Surely the graphite is a resister rather than a conductor? Otherwise how can it stop the spark.
- neilk 15y ago
  It doesn't stop it. Consider: the energy of the spark is flowing through your whole body, but it's only painful at the point of contact, because it's concentrated in the smallest possible cross-section. So use something else at that point of contact.

paulhauggis 15y ago

Amazon is the worst e-commerce company I've ever dealt with. They treat their marketplace sellers like garbage. I have been selling for the past 5+ years. They put a review on my account and when I called them to find out some more information about it, I was met with a call center rep in India who gave me absolutely no help. They don't actually have call support for marketplace sellers. You have to email them. When you do, you get mostly automated responses. After this ordeal, I finally left them for good. I still can't believe people are giving Amazon this much money (most categories are between 8-16% commission) to sell their goods (plus $40/month if you have a pro-account). It's a slap in the face when you can't even talk to someone when you have any sort of account issue. On top of this, Amazon doesn't even abide by the same harsh rules they expect all of their 3rd-party sellers to follow.

b1daly 15y ago

People are making comments here about how unions diminish competiveness. What about incompetent CEOs who make big decisions that wreck a company and still get paid millions. Why is it always the lowest paid workers who are expected to take a pay cut to make the company viable? I'm thinking of high profile CEOs who brought havoc and failure to theieto company: Stephen Elop, Leo Apotheker, Carol Bartz,Carly Fiorina... But really, the insistence that the peons take the hits, I don't get it.

3pt14159 15y ago
Because unions have government protection, CEOs don't, and it is up to the shareholders to maximize value.
- dalke 15y ago
  That's a meaningless blanket statement. Yes, unions have government protection. So do CEOs, since a corporate entity exists to protect CEOs and others in the company from personal liability. Unions in the US also have government restrictions on what they can do. As one example, the Taft–Hartley Act prohibits a number of union actions, restricts First Amendment rights (eg, union offers must sign non-communist affidavits), and expressly allows a company to fire supervisors which support union rights. The title of this essay uses "Wage Slave." The point is that "maximizing value" is not necessarily aligned with human rights. Is it your view that those two principles never be out of alignment, and if not, what happens in that case?
  - 3pt14159 15y ago
    It isn't a meaningless statement. Unions, at least where I am from, are legally allowed to force individuals to join the union. Corporations are not legally allowed to fire everyone from the union, or demand non-unionship from their employees. Corporations are the way that contracts can exist between parties without relying on the location or livelihood of individuals. Corporations are the reason you can sue, 40 years after the fact, the organization that polluted the river that brought about your colon cancer. The Taft-Hartley Act was fucking retarded, but that isn't anymore reason to create further law against corporations (besides banks, since the fractional reserve system is moronic and introduces huge risks into the system. I wasn't directing my comment at the article I was answer the person's question: Why are there negative sentiments against unions. The reason is that many of us have dealt with them at one point or another and they artificially aided by government law. All of them. Most CEOs are not.

rw 15y ago

This reminds me of the novella "Manna": > He looked at me for a long time, "A computer is telling you what to do on the job? What does the manager do?" > "The computer is the manager. Manna, manager, get it?" > "You mean that a computer is telling you what to do all day?", he asked. > "Yeah." http://bit.ly/xP6sLk http://bit.ly/xP6sLk

wladimir 15y ago
Yes, that dystopia (at least in the beginning of the novella) is becoming reality for a lot of people. And I don't think it's getting better soon. We should consider ourselves lucky that we are the ones that program computers instead of the ones programmed by them.

jennya 15y ago

Contrast this with the comments for the Amazon Prime article a few stories down :(

click170 15y ago

I've worked at one of the warehouses for an electronics retailer, and I rather enjoyed it. They didn't outsource to a temp agency, instead they had their own HR department. The starting pay was far above average for similar jobs with other companies and they readjusted for cost of living increases every few years, and the employee discount was wicked. It's interesting to read about perspectives from employees of other warehouses, it sounds like I had it good.

pmorici 15y ago

"I probably look happier than I should because I have the extreme luxury of not giving a shit about keeping this job." Great quote there. That's really a key to being happy in any job. Her description of this job doesn't sound all that bad you get exercise and paid above minimum wage plus overtime.

fmx 15y ago
I was going to upvote you for the quote, but then I got to "her description of this job doesn't sound all that bad"... It sounds pretty bad to me, at least for a first-world country.
- alan_cx 15y ago
  Well, there's your problem. First World countries now need to compete with Third World countries. Its what unregulated capitalism does. It cant happen and wont happen, but this downward spiral of competing to the floor can only be stopped if the entire world sets minimum standards of employment. Even them places like the US and EU will need to revise down, while the likes of India and China will have to revise up!!! Best bit, is we all cause this, no, we demand it when we are purchasing. Free shipping, lowest price for highest quality, etc. Are "we" willing to pay more to get less, so that people don't get exploited? Nope...
  - liber8 15y ago
    >>It cant happen and wont happen, but this downward spiral of competing to the floor can only be stopped if the entire world sets minimum standards of employment. Even them places like the US and EU will need to revise down, while the likes of India and China will have to revise up!!!<< This is preposterous. The "downward spiral" as you call it is already slowing, as can readily be seen by many US companies "reshoring" jobs now that China's labor costs have risen so dramatically. India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, etc., are all following suit because as demand for labor in those places increases, so does the price of that labor. No government intervention necessary.

fleitz 15y ago

Honestly, the article sounds pretty good for warehouse work. About 12 years ago I was working in a warehouse at -25 C slogging sides of beef at 25 to 50 Kg for at least 10 hours, my record shift was 26 hours. The pay was even less, $10/hr. It had to be -25 in the freezer because there was ice cream in there too and if it didn't leave at -25 it would melt by the time it got to the destination. The only odd thing about the job was the look I got like I was crazy when I left to work tech support in the city for a dollar an hour less.

bostonvaulter2 15y ago

I'm actually surprised that the workers are getting so much over minimum wage yet are being so poorly treated. Why not just pay them closer to minimum wage since there are so many willing workers?

cynwoody 15y ago

Would you rather be idling excess machines or firing workers?

cynwoody 15y ago

Would you rather be idling excess machines or firing workers?

to_jon 15y ago

More than call centers, this industry reminds me of the meatpacking industry. Warehouse workers fill a crucial step in a larger fulfillment model that unnecessarily imposes harsh conditions on its workforce. The writer mentions picking 500 items during her last morning on the job, which probably represents anywhere from 200 to 300 orders (assuming the average book or dildo order is small). Over a 5 hour period, that represents 40 to 60 orders per hour, picked at real hourly cost of perhaps $14. In other words, a slower picking rate and higher wages might cost consumers several extra dimes per order. It's reasonable to say that passing this additional cost to consumers would have a trivial impact on shopper's wallets, while fueling a strong wealth creation effect in the community where the warehouse is located as its workers can actually afford to spend their way into a middle class lifestyle. Likewise, the meatpacking industry is infamous for its brutal working conditions and low wages. It has bred many low income, working poor communities plighted by gangs, crime, and despair. The solution to righting the industry and its communities is obvious- pay employees real, middle class wages. But the industry has been fighting a race to the bottom, as the wholesalers of meat products will obviously pick the meatpacking company that can sell at the lowest cost. Because better wages would only increase the price supermarkets pay for meat by several cents per pound, one meatpacking company CEO has openly called for imposing higher wage levels across the entire industry (easier than done). The introduction of higher wages would boost local economies and in aggregate that contributes to the nation's prosperity. The industries are examples of capitalism at its most efficient and of capitalism utterly failing society as well.

VMG 15y ago

Were you able to leave? Yes? Then you weren't a slave.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

jrockway 15y ago

Sounds about right. Amazon is great for their investors and customers. Employees? Not so much, it seems. In this case, it doesn't seem unreasonable. The pay rate and overtime they get means they make around $40,000 a year. In rural America with no skills other than the ability to walk and use a barcode scanner, that's not bad money. I'm all in favor of educating people so they can work 8 hour days behind a desk, but the reality is that that won't work for everyone. So having jobs available that let people good at manual labor have a decent life doesn't seem that horrible to me. I may be wrong, though.

Jinzang 15y ago

I've got a modest proposal. Let's bring back slavery. Then employers would worry about employee injuries, have work for them year round instead of only hiring during peak season, and in general treat their slaves with the concern that posters here seem to reserve for robots.