8 ms·

If Amazon is the future of work, then be afraid

73 points by antitrust 13y ago

fireflash38 13y ago
It's perfectly reminiscent of factory work. Drudgery, efficient drudgery.
tomorgan 13y ago
I think it's just capitalism, and economics. Consumers are constantly pushing down the prices on everything, expecting more and more for less and less. Faced with this reality, companies have to streamline and become more effective in order to succeed and profit. This is what Amazon are doing. We moan about having to pay for baggage, choosing seats, food and even using the bathroom on flights now - but this is solely because of our want to push down the headline price of flights. The price has been reduced...but the cost is still there. AFAIK, Amazon aren't doing any illegal, they're just working very efficiently.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  And the only solution is regulation. Minimum wage too low? Raise it. If Amazon wants to be efficient, it can be on the back of its margins, not at the expense of humans. EDIT: Ran into this on reddit, thought it was very timely: "Sorry, It's Not A 'Law Of Capitalism' That You Pay Your Employees As Little As Possible" http://www.businessinsider.com/companies-need-to-pay-people-more-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/companies-need-to-pay-people-...
  - tjdetwiler 13y ago
    Amazon... what margins?
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Or, they'll just accelerate the automation plans they're already pursuing, and simply fire people. What good is an higher wage, if you're unable to get a job?
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      What good is automation if your customers don't have any money?
- Florin_Andrei 13y ago
  Here's another bunch of people who didn't do anything illegal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials
cm2012 13y ago
I'm going to copy and paste from something I wrote in another thread. From my experience with warehouses/fulfillment centers, all the other options are same or worse than Amazon with regards to worker treatment. Besides, on Amazon plenty of merchants do their own fulfillment, and those that do fulfill with Amazon are going to fulfill with Amazon on eBay or Rakuten or their own website anyway. To do so morally you'll have to look into the fulfillment details of any individual company you do business with. Honestly, it just sucks to be an unskilled worker in today's society, its not something new to Amazon.
- seunosewa 13y ago
  It sucks to be an unskilled worker in any society. If it didn't suck, people wouldn't go through years and years of trouble just to acquire skills.
- metricman 13y ago
  I hear this often if I try to discuss Amazon.com work conditions, but I don't like the excuse. Costco is the largest company that comes to mind which makes much stronger claims and (if you believe them) treats employees, even 'unskilled' employees, better. Here are some Glassdoor reviews for Costco Wholesale: http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Costco-Wholesale-Reviews-E2590.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Costco-Wholesale-Reviews-E2... I'm sure this isn't a good comparison. But Costco is doing fine and has a large market cap (52B). This isn't new to Amazon.com, but Amazon.com is exemplary in treating employees in high-demand (i.e. easily replaceable) positions poorly. We should talk about their warehouses because their policies alone could nudge the industry to being more compassionate. Bezos repeats that "long-term" "willing to be misunderstood" stuff a lot, but how many companies have tried really treating replaceable workers well? Maybe the current conditions inhibit workers from fulfilling their potential and making larger impacts than carrying boxes.
ef4 13y ago
Amazon's warehouses aren't the future of work. They're its history. That kind of zero-skilled, follow-the-instructions work is going fully robotic, much more quickly than people realize. Amazon themselves are investing heavily in robotics.
- megaframe 13y ago
  Yup, http://www.kivasystems.com http://www.kivasystems.com In some test warehouses, outside of the service technician, the person loading the shelf, and the person loading the truck there are essentially no employees.
- DamnYuppie 13y ago
  The question then becomes what happens to all of those unskilled and now unneeded workers?
  - selter01 13y ago
    Who knows. Unskilled workers make me sad.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      It gets worse. What if skilled workers are skill in a field that becomes suddenly redundant? Think about payroll clerks who typed out checks every two weeks; now it's all done by computers, databases and spreadsheets. Even skilled workers are not necessarily immune. Of course that merely shows that there is a problem, it doesn't show what to blame or how to fix it in general.
      - saraid216 13y ago
        Remember how we used to have telephone switchboard operators?
        mpyne 13y ago
        Even better, remember when people used to talk on "party lines" with no privacy at all?
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
This has been going on in warehousing and Distribution Centers for a long time -- over a decade. Same goes for many call centers. I don't like the nature of the work, but I look at it like this: if you want robots to take dreary work from people, then that work needs to be quantified and structured. These kinds of things are the last step before total automation. So in a way, the news is even worse than crappy jobs. These jobs are leaving. This is just the last vestiges of them. What will replace them? Beats me. I think the question itself is wrong, that is, as things change and become more efficient, there are new scarcities having nothing to do with food or shelter that people pay for. If you could predict the future of these scarcities you'd be rich beyond belief. So while it sounds like a good question, "Where do all these people go?", it's not one that's answerable in this case -- nor was it ever answerable. One thing I know: this issue has nothing to do with Amazon. They're just being used as a prop here.
- brandonbica 13y ago
  The type of work that is being described is very typical of best of breed warehouse management systems. I agree that Amazon is a prop in this story as there a tons of other large scale companies that have the same types of systems. Maybe they don't all use temp workers, but labor management systems are not rare.
DamnYuppie 13y ago
For the life of me I can't fathom how moving the bulk of our workforce to temporary employees benefits us as a nation in the long run. Is there anyone here who an provide any metric to support this as a good thing? I do see where some wish to blame the consumer for this trend which is a bit surprising to me. That idea seems paradoxical in that the majority of people do not have good paying would, by necessity, want things to cost less. Yet if you propagate this throughout ecosystem you end up in a viscous cycle where companies, in order to meet lower price points, squeeze their employees which only propagates the cycle. Most of us on this site are not the type of unskilled laborers who are currently impacted by this. Yet such trends have a way of working their way up the the food chain so to speak. Companies will trumpet "think of the consumer" as a way to depress or wages.
- gaius 13y ago
  It is the consumer tho'. I can't count the number of people I know who are very vocal about workers rights, human rights, living wage etc but happily wear clothes and carry personal electronics made in sweatshops. Ironically, it's the rabid capitalist types who are willing to pay for locally produced items made by skilled workers.
  - zhemao 13y ago
    Probably because those rabid capitalist types actually have the money to afford those locally produced items.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Stuff made in sweatshops pays a wage to extremely poor workers. Stuff made locally pays a wage to workers in a developed country with reasonable safety net protections. Why would you expect the human rights defender to privilege the comparatively wealthier worker over the poorer one?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- gizmo686 13y ago
jlund 13y ago
It sounds like they treat people the same way all of us treat EC2 instances.
- Florin_Andrei 13y ago
  > It sounds like they treat people the same way all of us treat EC2 instances. Well, the Borg Collective has perfected that technique, actually. But yeah.
eksith 13y ago
Amazon: Building better robots with human flesh. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Amazon suddenly announces a secret R&D project involving a floor of robots pretty soon. In fact, the type of monotonous line-following, retrieval and packing fits well within the line of past factory workers who've been all but replaced with robots. I'd even cheer them on if they did that instead of dehumanizing those workers.
- fiatmoney 13y ago
  They bought Kiva, which is exactly that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KRjuuEVEZs&feature=youtu.be&t=10s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KRjuuEVEZs&feature=youtu.be&... http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/amazon-com-buys-kiva-systems-for-775-million/?_r=0 http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/amazon-com-buys-kiva-...
- jwoah12 13y ago
  I'd even cheer them on if they did that instead of dehumanizing those workers. And I'm sure those workers would be grateful for your cheering when they're standing in the unemployment line.
  - eksith 13y ago
    Once upon a time, I've stood in both a factory floor and in the unemployment line. At one of them, I still felt like a human being. Guess which.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
DannoHung 13y ago
Man, fuck this world. Go into a STEM job? Well, maybe you'll get hired, maybe you won't, you have to hope that you picked an area that was hot 4 years ahead of time and that the people managing recruitment don't have their heads up their asses. Also you need to hope that any company isn't already in the process of globalizing or outsourcing said STEM jobs because they can do those cheaper elsewhere (see IBM story yesterday). And if you didn't go into STEM, well, fuck you because STEM is the only college that's any good by 95% of all accounts. And if you didn't go into college, then fuck you because you're going to do back-breaking labor with no guarantee of financial security. Something's gotta change or things are going to be grim. They're already getting grim.
- antitrust 13y ago
  This message has affected me emotionally. I don't know why. Something about the urgency of it, and the humanity. I suppose my guess is that something will grow organically out of what we have. I don't think it will be ideological. One example might be localization. If Amazon is subject to the same taxes as a brick and mortar business, it might become less important and local businesses more important. If not, we're all going to end up in the Army. See you in the cybercorps!
- mjolk 13y ago
  How dare companies only hire workers that they believe provide utility and could lead to increased profit?
  - cliveowen 13y ago
    You're missing the point: by dehumanizing workers to achieve the most profit you're making them a disposable commodity and denying large swaths of the population the means to provide for themselves.
- eshvk 13y ago
  Things have always been grim. The crows are just coming home to roost in America. Why do you think so many Indians and Chinese people are doctors or engineers? Fear. It is not about competence. It is not about passion. It is the fear that drives them. Because life is hard there without a safety net. A life where health care has to be paid for out of pocket. A life where your daughter's marriage requires piles of money. “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it” What is the solution? I don't know. The future is going to belong to people who refuse to let themselves be nothing. It is not going to be about STEM jobs, math or science or art. The future is something you are going to have to find. Or become irrelevant. Scary, but sometimes that fear is useful.
shabble 13y ago
I'm reminded of the first half of the fictional short(ish) story "Manna"[1] by Marshall Brain. [1] http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
sailfast 13y ago
It is asserted multiple times in the article, but is there any evidence that Amazon uses temp workers at all their facilities or just in this one UK example? I haven't seen any accounts of heavy use in US warehouses, but they could be out there.
- rndmize 13y ago
  There's been a whole lot of articles about heavy use of temps in US warehouses. I think I recall one from a few months ago which talked about how the average temp in some CA warehouses was around 90 degrees most of the day and was staffed almost entirely by temp workers. Edit: found it. > Amazon uses temporary employees in its Breinigsville warehouse, works them to the point of heat exhaustion--no, really, it parks ambulances outside--and then lets them go after they've failed to perform. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/09/what-it-takes-ship-amazon-purchases-you-overnight/42704/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/09/what-it-ta... And it seems there's an update - http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/06/amazons-warehouses-sound-cooler-more-humane-these-days/53157/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/06/amazons-wa...
- allritenow 13y ago
  As a former manager for Amazon across multiple fulfillment centers, they ALL use temps. They don't all use the same temp agencies, and sometimes they use more than one at the same facility. In about 2006 some facilities would do a direct hire into Amazon. But the model now is the try-before-you-buy. A new temp is told that after so many hours they are eligible for "conversion" to a full time Amazon associate. But, there is also a max allowable hours before they are let go. So within that window they have to keep minimal attendance points and minimal warnings (write-ups). If there is space, a manager will always try to convert the best of his/her temps. No, it isn't glorious work. Yes, I felt like I was managing a literal sweatshop in the summer. But, working in a warehouse/distribution environment is tough everywhere. I really wasn't a fan of how Amazon treated any of the fulfillment workers (managers or associates) and that ultimately led to me leaving. Don't miss it at all.
nbuggia 13y ago
I spend a lot of time thinking about this too - because computer/ robotic automation is not just going to take warehouse jobs, it will eventually come for all of our jobs. But this doesn't have to be a bad thing, if you think about it from a community perspective, how great would it be if all our basic needs were automated and low cost? Theoretically, this should free people up to pursue other interests, like science, art, sports, religion -- kind of like the premise Star Trek TNG. Unfortunately, this isn't the reality today. If things keep going like they are, then this automation will enable a small oligarchy even greater wealth and power, and leverage over the civilization. I don't mean this to be alarmist, this is a really logical progression, and 'they way things are' has created some pretty amazing achievements for us to-date. I think this will be the next big social evolution and I can't wait to see how it unfolds.
- Florin_Andrei 13y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
- tjdetwiler 13y ago
  Housing is one thing that comes to mind that is a big cost but will only get more expensive over time.
Houshalter 13y ago
This reminds me a lot of the story Manna. In the story, robotics and machine vision is still behind human workers, however computers are able to perfectly optimize every other detail, and so tell human workers what to do step by step through an earpiece. I love the idea actually, but I think most people would find it unsettling. But why not have perfectly optimized work routines and get the same amount of stuff done in half the time? Unfortunately I doubt the benefits would go to the workers and they'd still have to work the same amount of time, but that's true for all increases in efficiency.
- laxatives 13y ago
  Thats not so different from how it is now. Instead of an earpiece, we get blinking lights to micromanage away inefficiency and reduce error.
- msluyter 13y ago
  ObReference: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Someone 13y ago
Same story, in the US, IMO told better: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...
tenpoundhammer 13y ago
This sounds bizarrely similar to a portion of the Ken Burns documentary about the dust bowl. Basically, towards the end of the great depression tons of people migrated to California looking for work. Upon arriving they found little employment and those that did find work were doing hard labour,farms along with employment agencies were working together to drive down the cost human labour even further. This created an enormous class of extremely poor that could be let go at any moment for any reason. While farms and employment agencies raked in profits. Just because a company is acting within the law doesn't mean they are ethical or moral. Maybe robots are better than human subjugation, maybe this is the beginning of new type of economy.
njharman 13y ago
If the future of work is work I'm extremely depressed / afraid. We are beyond the point of continued human labor to support ever increasing consumption. Buckminster Fuller showed the way http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller
Tichy 13y ago
They (media, leftist groups) tried to create a scandal about this in Germany and succeeded to some extent. I found it kind of amusing that the mere description of people having to do actual work already seems to be so shocking to middle class people. If you don't work with your brain, you work with your body... I don't think working a farm or maybe a slaughterhouse or whatever other manual labor jobs there are are much better than an Amazon warehouse. I saw a documentary about garbage men recently and apparently they have to be fit like Marathon runners. Some jobs simply are hard. Now I am glad I don't have to do that kind of job, but people should question what they are really asking for. They should then really support basic income, and also be prepared to pay a lot more for stuff. In fact, I wish instead of complaining people would just cough up more money. I wonder how big the engagement would then still be. Or, you know, go full communism and have everybody take turns at doing the hard manual labor, no matter what education they have. In Christmass time, there would be a random selection of people who would be sent to Santa's warehouse (I mean Amazon) to work.
- tjic 13y ago
  > I found it kind of amusing that the mere description of people having to do actual work already seems to be so shocking to middle class people. Indeed. "They don't have air conditioning!" Oh...so the Amazon warehouse workers are like every other warehouse worker, factory worker, agricultural worker, miner, oil drilling hand...
forgotAgain 13y ago
So how long after robot warehouse workers do you think we'll have robots enforcing laws? I'm getting a picture of Soylent Green but with robots instead of humans controlling the crowds.
- throwaway1979 13y ago
  Doesn't Elysium come out this Friday?
aetherson 13y ago
> “The feedback we’re getting is it’s like being in a slave camp,” said Brian Garner, the dapper chairman of the Lea Hall Miners Welfare Centre and Social Club, still a popular drinking spot. Just like a slave camp. You know, besides the fact that you get paid, can own property, have the full rights of citizens, can quit at any time, and go home at the end of the day. > There is much to admire in Amazon’s rise, but in some dark corners of that sprawling empire the top line numbers and razor-thin earnings are being boosted by a dystopian model of neofeudalism that is jarringly out of step with the company’s shiny, ‘leaning into the future’ brand. A "dystopian model of neofeudalism"? For reals, guys? I have complained about jobs that were doubtless better in every way than warehouse jobs at Amazon, and I'm sure that there are legitimate complaints, but it's hard to take this article seriously. The axe to grind is so prominently on display that it's difficult to know what part of the story can be read as an objective description of the facts.
- gdulli 13y ago
  > Just like a slave camp. You know, besides the fact that you get paid... Each successive future we strive for should have standards higher than the previous. We can do better than putting literal slave labor behind us. We should achieve a standard where the metaphor doesn't even apply.
san86 13y ago
The contracting culture is indeed awful. It gives companies a way to fire workers without making the headlines. Also let's them not dirty their hands with benifits. But it's unfair to blame Amazon alone. Many organizations do this, including the US Federal Government. The DC metro area is filled with offices where the "employees" walk in and the "contractors" badge in. The tech contractors still make handsome cash, but the job scurity is not where it should be

73 points by antitrust 13y ago

It's perfectly reminiscent of factory work. Drudgery, efficient drudgery.

I think it's just capitalism, and economics. Consumers are constantly pushing down the prices on everything, expecting more and more for less and less. Faced with this reality, companies have to streamline and become more effective in order to succeed and profit. This is what Amazon are doing. We moan about having to pay for baggage, choosing seats, food and even using the bathroom on flights now - but this is solely because of our want to push down the headline price of flights. The price has been reduced...but the cost is still there. AFAIK, Amazon aren't doing any illegal, they're just working very efficiently.

toomuchtodo 13y ago
And the only solution is regulation. Minimum wage too low? Raise it. If Amazon wants to be efficient, it can be on the back of its margins, not at the expense of humans. EDIT: Ran into this on reddit, thought it was very timely: "Sorry, It's Not A 'Law Of Capitalism' That You Pay Your Employees As Little As Possible" http://www.businessinsider.com/companies-need-to-pay-people-more-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/companies-need-to-pay-people-...
- tjdetwiler 13y ago
  Amazon... what margins?
- icebraining 13y ago
  Or, they'll just accelerate the automation plans they're already pursuing, and simply fire people. What good is an higher wage, if you're unable to get a job?
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    What good is automation if your customers don't have any money?
Florin_Andrei 13y ago
Here's another bunch of people who didn't do anything illegal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials

cm2012 13y ago

I'm going to copy and paste from something I wrote in another thread. From my experience with warehouses/fulfillment centers, all the other options are same or worse than Amazon with regards to worker treatment. Besides, on Amazon plenty of merchants do their own fulfillment, and those that do fulfill with Amazon are going to fulfill with Amazon on eBay or Rakuten or their own website anyway. To do so morally you'll have to look into the fulfillment details of any individual company you do business with. Honestly, it just sucks to be an unskilled worker in today's society, its not something new to Amazon.

seunosewa 13y ago
It sucks to be an unskilled worker in any society. If it didn't suck, people wouldn't go through years and years of trouble just to acquire skills.
metricman 13y ago
I hear this often if I try to discuss Amazon.com work conditions, but I don't like the excuse. Costco is the largest company that comes to mind which makes much stronger claims and (if you believe them) treats employees, even 'unskilled' employees, better. Here are some Glassdoor reviews for Costco Wholesale: http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Costco-Wholesale-Reviews-E2590.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Costco-Wholesale-Reviews-E2... I'm sure this isn't a good comparison. But Costco is doing fine and has a large market cap (52B). This isn't new to Amazon.com, but Amazon.com is exemplary in treating employees in high-demand (i.e. easily replaceable) positions poorly. We should talk about their warehouses because their policies alone could nudge the industry to being more compassionate. Bezos repeats that "long-term" "willing to be misunderstood" stuff a lot, but how many companies have tried really treating replaceable workers well? Maybe the current conditions inhibit workers from fulfilling their potential and making larger impacts than carrying boxes.

ef4 13y ago

Amazon's warehouses aren't the future of work. They're its history. That kind of zero-skilled, follow-the-instructions work is going fully robotic, much more quickly than people realize. Amazon themselves are investing heavily in robotics.

megaframe 13y ago
Yup, http://www.kivasystems.com http://www.kivasystems.com In some test warehouses, outside of the service technician, the person loading the shelf, and the person loading the truck there are essentially no employees.
DamnYuppie 13y ago
The question then becomes what happens to all of those unskilled and now unneeded workers?
- selter01 13y ago
  Who knows. Unskilled workers make me sad.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    It gets worse. What if skilled workers are skill in a field that becomes suddenly redundant? Think about payroll clerks who typed out checks every two weeks; now it's all done by computers, databases and spreadsheets. Even skilled workers are not necessarily immune. Of course that merely shows that there is a problem, it doesn't show what to blame or how to fix it in general.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      Remember how we used to have telephone switchboard operators?
      - mpyne 13y ago
        Even better, remember when people used to talk on "party lines" with no privacy at all?

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

This has been going on in warehousing and Distribution Centers for a long time -- over a decade. Same goes for many call centers. I don't like the nature of the work, but I look at it like this: if you want robots to take dreary work from people, then that work needs to be quantified and structured. These kinds of things are the last step before total automation. So in a way, the news is even worse than crappy jobs. These jobs are leaving. This is just the last vestiges of them. What will replace them? Beats me. I think the question itself is wrong, that is, as things change and become more efficient, there are new scarcities having nothing to do with food or shelter that people pay for. If you could predict the future of these scarcities you'd be rich beyond belief. So while it sounds like a good question, "Where do all these people go?", it's not one that's answerable in this case -- nor was it ever answerable. One thing I know: this issue has nothing to do with Amazon. They're just being used as a prop here.

brandonbica 13y ago
The type of work that is being described is very typical of best of breed warehouse management systems. I agree that Amazon is a prop in this story as there a tons of other large scale companies that have the same types of systems. Maybe they don't all use temp workers, but labor management systems are not rare.

DamnYuppie 13y ago

For the life of me I can't fathom how moving the bulk of our workforce to temporary employees benefits us as a nation in the long run. Is there anyone here who an provide any metric to support this as a good thing? I do see where some wish to blame the consumer for this trend which is a bit surprising to me. That idea seems paradoxical in that the majority of people do not have good paying would, by necessity, want things to cost less. Yet if you propagate this throughout ecosystem you end up in a viscous cycle where companies, in order to meet lower price points, squeeze their employees which only propagates the cycle. Most of us on this site are not the type of unskilled laborers who are currently impacted by this. Yet such trends have a way of working their way up the the food chain so to speak. Companies will trumpet "think of the consumer" as a way to depress or wages.

gaius 13y ago
It is the consumer tho'. I can't count the number of people I know who are very vocal about workers rights, human rights, living wage etc but happily wear clothes and carry personal electronics made in sweatshops. Ironically, it's the rabid capitalist types who are willing to pay for locally produced items made by skilled workers.
- zhemao 13y ago
  Probably because those rabid capitalist types actually have the money to afford those locally produced items.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Stuff made in sweatshops pays a wage to extremely poor workers. Stuff made locally pays a wage to workers in a developed country with reasonable safety net protections. Why would you expect the human rights defender to privilege the comparatively wealthier worker over the poorer one?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
gizmo686 13y ago

jlund 13y ago

It sounds like they treat people the same way all of us treat EC2 instances.

Florin_Andrei 13y ago
> It sounds like they treat people the same way all of us treat EC2 instances. Well, the Borg Collective has perfected that technique, actually. But yeah.

eksith 13y ago

Amazon: Building better robots with human flesh. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Amazon suddenly announces a secret R&D project involving a floor of robots pretty soon. In fact, the type of monotonous line-following, retrieval and packing fits well within the line of past factory workers who've been all but replaced with robots. I'd even cheer them on if they did that instead of dehumanizing those workers.

fiatmoney 13y ago
They bought Kiva, which is exactly that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KRjuuEVEZs&feature=youtu.be&t=10s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KRjuuEVEZs&feature=youtu.be&... http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/amazon-com-buys-kiva-systems-for-775-million/?_r=0 http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/amazon-com-buys-kiva-...
jwoah12 13y ago
I'd even cheer them on if they did that instead of dehumanizing those workers. And I'm sure those workers would be grateful for your cheering when they're standing in the unemployment line.
- eksith 13y ago
  Once upon a time, I've stood in both a factory floor and in the unemployment line. At one of them, I still felt like a human being. Guess which.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

DannoHung 13y ago

Man, fuck this world. Go into a STEM job? Well, maybe you'll get hired, maybe you won't, you have to hope that you picked an area that was hot 4 years ahead of time and that the people managing recruitment don't have their heads up their asses. Also you need to hope that any company isn't already in the process of globalizing or outsourcing said STEM jobs because they can do those cheaper elsewhere (see IBM story yesterday). And if you didn't go into STEM, well, fuck you because STEM is the only college that's any good by 95% of all accounts. And if you didn't go into college, then fuck you because you're going to do back-breaking labor with no guarantee of financial security. Something's gotta change or things are going to be grim. They're already getting grim.

antitrust 13y ago
This message has affected me emotionally. I don't know why. Something about the urgency of it, and the humanity. I suppose my guess is that something will grow organically out of what we have. I don't think it will be ideological. One example might be localization. If Amazon is subject to the same taxes as a brick and mortar business, it might become less important and local businesses more important. If not, we're all going to end up in the Army. See you in the cybercorps!
mjolk 13y ago
How dare companies only hire workers that they believe provide utility and could lead to increased profit?
- cliveowen 13y ago
  You're missing the point: by dehumanizing workers to achieve the most profit you're making them a disposable commodity and denying large swaths of the population the means to provide for themselves.
eshvk 13y ago
Things have always been grim. The crows are just coming home to roost in America. Why do you think so many Indians and Chinese people are doctors or engineers? Fear. It is not about competence. It is not about passion. It is the fear that drives them. Because life is hard there without a safety net. A life where health care has to be paid for out of pocket. A life where your daughter's marriage requires piles of money. “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it” What is the solution? I don't know. The future is going to belong to people who refuse to let themselves be nothing. It is not going to be about STEM jobs, math or science or art. The future is something you are going to have to find. Or become irrelevant. Scary, but sometimes that fear is useful.

shabble 13y ago

I'm reminded of the first half of the fictional short(ish) story "Manna"[1] by Marshall Brain. [1] http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

sailfast 13y ago

It is asserted multiple times in the article, but is there any evidence that Amazon uses temp workers at all their facilities or just in this one UK example? I haven't seen any accounts of heavy use in US warehouses, but they could be out there.

rndmize 13y ago
There's been a whole lot of articles about heavy use of temps in US warehouses. I think I recall one from a few months ago which talked about how the average temp in some CA warehouses was around 90 degrees most of the day and was staffed almost entirely by temp workers. Edit: found it. > Amazon uses temporary employees in its Breinigsville warehouse, works them to the point of heat exhaustion--no, really, it parks ambulances outside--and then lets them go after they've failed to perform. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/09/what-it-takes-ship-amazon-purchases-you-overnight/42704/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/09/what-it-ta... And it seems there's an update - http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/06/amazons-warehouses-sound-cooler-more-humane-these-days/53157/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/06/amazons-wa...
allritenow 13y ago
As a former manager for Amazon across multiple fulfillment centers, they ALL use temps. They don't all use the same temp agencies, and sometimes they use more than one at the same facility. In about 2006 some facilities would do a direct hire into Amazon. But the model now is the try-before-you-buy. A new temp is told that after so many hours they are eligible for "conversion" to a full time Amazon associate. But, there is also a max allowable hours before they are let go. So within that window they have to keep minimal attendance points and minimal warnings (write-ups). If there is space, a manager will always try to convert the best of his/her temps. No, it isn't glorious work. Yes, I felt like I was managing a literal sweatshop in the summer. But, working in a warehouse/distribution environment is tough everywhere. I really wasn't a fan of how Amazon treated any of the fulfillment workers (managers or associates) and that ultimately led to me leaving. Don't miss it at all.

nbuggia 13y ago

I spend a lot of time thinking about this too - because computer/ robotic automation is not just going to take warehouse jobs, it will eventually come for all of our jobs. But this doesn't have to be a bad thing, if you think about it from a community perspective, how great would it be if all our basic needs were automated and low cost? Theoretically, this should free people up to pursue other interests, like science, art, sports, religion -- kind of like the premise Star Trek TNG. Unfortunately, this isn't the reality today. If things keep going like they are, then this automation will enable a small oligarchy even greater wealth and power, and leverage over the civilization. I don't mean this to be alarmist, this is a really logical progression, and 'they way things are' has created some pretty amazing achievements for us to-date. I think this will be the next big social evolution and I can't wait to see how it unfolds.

Florin_Andrei 13y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
tjdetwiler 13y ago
Housing is one thing that comes to mind that is a big cost but will only get more expensive over time.

Houshalter 13y ago

This reminds me a lot of the story Manna. In the story, robotics and machine vision is still behind human workers, however computers are able to perfectly optimize every other detail, and so tell human workers what to do step by step through an earpiece. I love the idea actually, but I think most people would find it unsettling. But why not have perfectly optimized work routines and get the same amount of stuff done in half the time? Unfortunately I doubt the benefits would go to the workers and they'd still have to work the same amount of time, but that's true for all increases in efficiency.

laxatives 13y ago
Thats not so different from how it is now. Instead of an earpiece, we get blinking lights to micromanage away inefficiency and reduce error.
msluyter 13y ago
ObReference: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Someone 13y ago

Same story, in the US, IMO told better: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...

tenpoundhammer 13y ago

This sounds bizarrely similar to a portion of the Ken Burns documentary about the dust bowl. Basically, towards the end of the great depression tons of people migrated to California looking for work. Upon arriving they found little employment and those that did find work were doing hard labour,farms along with employment agencies were working together to drive down the cost human labour even further. This created an enormous class of extremely poor that could be let go at any moment for any reason. While farms and employment agencies raked in profits. Just because a company is acting within the law doesn't mean they are ethical or moral. Maybe robots are better than human subjugation, maybe this is the beginning of new type of economy.

njharman 13y ago

If the future of work is work I'm extremely depressed / afraid. We are beyond the point of continued human labor to support ever increasing consumption. Buckminster Fuller showed the way http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller

Tichy 13y ago

They (media, leftist groups) tried to create a scandal about this in Germany and succeeded to some extent. I found it kind of amusing that the mere description of people having to do actual work already seems to be so shocking to middle class people. If you don't work with your brain, you work with your body... I don't think working a farm or maybe a slaughterhouse or whatever other manual labor jobs there are are much better than an Amazon warehouse. I saw a documentary about garbage men recently and apparently they have to be fit like Marathon runners. Some jobs simply are hard. Now I am glad I don't have to do that kind of job, but people should question what they are really asking for. They should then really support basic income, and also be prepared to pay a lot more for stuff. In fact, I wish instead of complaining people would just cough up more money. I wonder how big the engagement would then still be. Or, you know, go full communism and have everybody take turns at doing the hard manual labor, no matter what education they have. In Christmass time, there would be a random selection of people who would be sent to Santa's warehouse (I mean Amazon) to work.

tjic 13y ago
> I found it kind of amusing that the mere description of people having to do actual work already seems to be so shocking to middle class people. Indeed. "They don't have air conditioning!" Oh...so the Amazon warehouse workers are like every other warehouse worker, factory worker, agricultural worker, miner, oil drilling hand...

forgotAgain 13y ago

So how long after robot warehouse workers do you think we'll have robots enforcing laws? I'm getting a picture of Soylent Green but with robots instead of humans controlling the crowds.

throwaway1979 13y ago
Doesn't Elysium come out this Friday?

aetherson 13y ago

> “The feedback we’re getting is it’s like being in a slave camp,” said Brian Garner, the dapper chairman of the Lea Hall Miners Welfare Centre and Social Club, still a popular drinking spot. Just like a slave camp. You know, besides the fact that you get paid, can own property, have the full rights of citizens, can quit at any time, and go home at the end of the day. > There is much to admire in Amazon’s rise, but in some dark corners of that sprawling empire the top line numbers and razor-thin earnings are being boosted by a dystopian model of neofeudalism that is jarringly out of step with the company’s shiny, ‘leaning into the future’ brand. A "dystopian model of neofeudalism"? For reals, guys? I have complained about jobs that were doubtless better in every way than warehouse jobs at Amazon, and I'm sure that there are legitimate complaints, but it's hard to take this article seriously. The axe to grind is so prominently on display that it's difficult to know what part of the story can be read as an objective description of the facts.

gdulli 13y ago
> Just like a slave camp. You know, besides the fact that you get paid... Each successive future we strive for should have standards higher than the previous. We can do better than putting literal slave labor behind us. We should achieve a standard where the metaphor doesn't even apply.

san86 13y ago

The contracting culture is indeed awful. It gives companies a way to fire workers without making the headlines. Also let's them not dirty their hands with benifits. But it's unfair to blame Amazon alone. Many organizations do this, including the US Federal Government. The DC metro area is filled with offices where the "employees" walk in and the "contractors" badge in. The tech contractors still make handsome cash, but the job scurity is not where it should be