Amazon drivers pushed to the limit as holiday deliveries reach a frenzy

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-amazon-drivers-20161218-story.html

by mbgaxyz • 10 years ago

132 86 10 years ago

Seems like "it sucks to works for Amazon" has been added in a permanent spot on journalist's radars for "HR stuff to write about". I'm not saying these lawsuits mentioned in the article do not exist, but is it any better for drivers in DHL or UPS?

komali2• 10 years ago

UPS drivers drive a UPS truck. UPS pays for the gas and maintenance. That's a pretty big difference.

chrismealy2• 10 years ago

UPS also has a union.

user5994461• 10 years ago

Are you saying that Amazon drivers have to bring their own cars and handle the maintenance themselves.

A news like that would be worthy of some major headlines.

lostlogin• 10 years ago

You're using the wrong phrasing - Amazon would never put it like that. Those drivers are Amazon associates, not workers.

gdulli• 10 years ago

Seems like "it sucks to works for Amazon" has been added in a permanent spot on journalist's radars

It's not a narrative that was pulled out of thin air. It was earned.

joezydeco• 10 years ago

UPS drivers have a union contract that caps the amount of hours a week they can work. Last I heard, that was 60 hours/wk.

Once they time out, UPS needs another driver. From what I hear in my area, they're way understaffed.

KingOfMyRoom• 10 years ago

I am unsure of what to think of this. It sickens me. In Scotland, Amazon workers chose to sleep in tents near the warehouse. In the depths of winter.

1) Workers in the warehouse at Amazon are in pretty bad conditions but how does this compare to working in a warehouse in other companies? Not sure if things are rosy elsewhere

2) What I fear is the growth and normalization of this behaviour in the future. Crappy jobs and child labour were acceptable during the Industrial Revolution, it was always better then no job in the rural area. But now it feels like a step backwards. In the information age, when tech giants are changing/destroying entire industries to create this new (great?) future?

3) And then, what happens when delivery drivers are replaced by drones and autonomous car makes car ownership irrelevant? Cloud subscription has made hardware servers irrelevant. Will we have car subscription to Google, Tesla and Uber? How will we earn money to pay for those subscriptions and buy on Amazon?

nickjj2• 10 years ago

I can't wait until drones and other autonomous deliveries are available because maybe people will start getting their packages when they are supposed to.

For example I ordered a small package from Amazon last week. I don't order a lot from Amazon but when I do, there seems to always be delays and problems.

They guaranteed it by yesterday but it's still not here and isn't scheduled to be delivered for another 2 days putting it 4 days past the "guaranteed" delivery time.

This was standard shipping which is treated in the same way as free shipping in terms of delivery times.

Reason? Who knows, all I know is it was very likely a human error out of my control.

- Amazon's dashboard tells me I requested an address change even though I didn't.

- Amazon's phone rep tells me the USPS screwed up by delivering it to the wrong zone's post office.

- USPS tells me Amazon tends to ship things in pallets of 100 parcels and the pallet for my zone was filled so they put it into a different pallet (clearly knowing it would delay the package).

- USPS won't compensate me (I was put into a 30min 3 way conversation with Amazon, USPS and myself).

- Amazon updates me today saying the item has been dropped from tracking and is tagged as "lost in transit".

- USPS tells me the package is on the other side of the state I'm in (NY).

- Amazon said they will ship a new item out with 2 day delivery which doesn't help me get the item when it was supposed to arrive.

I understand that every single US govt ran service tends to be horrendous in terms of efficiency and quality but Amazon is supposed to be one of the most efficient platforms in the world.

I'm guessing this entire issue was due to some over worked warehouse employee just saying "fuck it" and threw my box into the wrong pallet but a robot would haven't made this mistake and a drone would have likely gotten to my residence a few hours after ordering instead of closer to 11-12 days.

djsumdog2• 10 years ago

I've said it before on here and I'll say it again. I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart around 2009. I returned to the United States after leaving for four years and I feel more than ever that Amazon is now the new Wal-Mart. I no longer buy anything from Amazon; to the point of using services like Digital Ocean/Linode/etc over AWS for the open source projects I work on.

camus22• 10 years ago

I guess it sucks if it's a full time job. The kind of job that works people to the bones and leaves them with anxiety and depression in their late 30's . I did shitty jobs too, working in corn fields and stuff like that. It just breaks you.

Spooky234• 10 years ago

UPS is better, but iirc they screwed the new guys a few years ago with benefits.

You still work super hard and are watched carefully.

The worst are the Amazon sweatshops and the post office. Letter carriers mostly got buyouts and the replacements make $12/hr and have awful benefits.

chrismealy2• 10 years ago

In Seattle the people driving Amazon trucks are maniacs, way worse than UPS and FedEx. OnTrac is pretty bad too.

maxxxxx• 10 years ago

Do they pay more for crunch times like this? Paying more often does wonders for motivation.

aero142• 10 years ago

I only know one Amazon driver in Austin, so it's just an anecdote. He is a student and likes it better than driving for Uber. He makes $18/hr plus tips and can just pick up hour shifts whenever they are available. He makes good money and it fits perfectly with his school schedule. He avoids telling people about it because he doesn't want the competition for shifts.

mmastrac• 10 years ago

People are tipping Amazon drivers? Or is this just for food delivery?

chrisper2• 10 years ago

I am guessing he is referring to Amazon Prime Now where you are expected to tip. But generally I do not tip because I think Amazon should pay their drivers. And most of the time they didn't even come to my door, so they don't deserve any tip. Though, I don't use that service as much.

Though thinking back, I did leave $1 or $2 tips here and there, depending on their service.

SilasX• 10 years ago

Whould it make more or less sense if it were just for food?

jrnichols• 10 years ago

I know they have Prime Now in the Dallas/Ft Worth area (Amazon has at least 5 or 6 warehouses near DFW alone) but I haven't seen any job openings for it. I did apply for Amazon Flex, but like many others, I simply never heard back from them. A co-worker got a call back about it, but they declined him because his vehicle wasn't considered fuel efficient enough.

massysett• 10 years ago

Amazon is the new Walmart.

unclebucknasty4• 10 years ago

There will always be a new Walmart as long as most of us are primarily concerned about price and/or convenience above all else.

eli_gottlieb2• 10 years ago

There will always be a new Walmart as long as labor law is not enforced and union-busting is not punished.

mbgaxyz• 10 years ago

Delivery rate ~ one box every 2 or 3 minutes

He starts each day with about 260 boxes, which he has to drop off at maybe 200 addresses across up to 80 miles in Southern California. Factoring in the time needed to load and gas up his white van, which sometimes sports a magnetized Amazon logo on the back door, Echeverria has to hit one home every two minutes, on average.
Prime Now orders — an Amazon service launched in 2014 that allows customers to get a product within hours of clicking on it. She says Amazon gave her up to 72 packages to deliver in four hours, meaning she had to deposit one package roughly every three minutes.

Remote tracking via Android app:

Amazon gives him an Android phone with an app that scans packages and determines his route. He says it is also used to track how much of a dent he’s made in his delivery load that day. He has learned not to stop for lunch because, he said, Amazon employees will call his dispatcher at any point in the day if they notice that he’s behind schedule.

Complaint threshold of 0.2%:

Amazon does not want any individual driver to exceed a ratio of two complaints for every 1,000 packages they’re tasked with delivering. But he said that Amazon does not instruct LMS to fire drivers who have had a trend of high complaints. LMS independently starts a disciplinary process, he said, starting with retraining, if a driver has a high number of citations for two consecutive weeks.

kqr• 10 years ago

But he said that Amazon does not instruct LMS to fire drivers who have had a trend of high complaints. LMS independently starts a disciplinary process, he said, starting with retraining, if a driver has a high number of citations for two consecutive weeks.

Of course they don't get fired. But after several months of "disciplinary process starting with retraining" they quit voluntarily, perhaps...

jpatokal• 10 years ago

You missed the key here. Amazon does not instruct LMS to fire people, because coemployment. But it will inform LMS that they're failing to meet their contractual obligation to hit the complaints target, and in completely unrelated news, here's a list of driver IDs and their complaint rates.

hobarrera• 10 years ago

Why would this retraining be such a pain? I mean, they're already in a job they pretty much hate, how much worse can the retraining be?

coldcode• 10 years ago

This is not sustainable. This is why pizza delivery no longer advertises specific delivery guarantees; all it does is create inattentive drivers who cause accidents.

Blackthorn• 10 years ago

Also, I expect those packages to be thrown onto porches without a care in the world.

kahrkunne• 10 years ago

This is (barely) sustainable for the short time each year that is holiday season

oliv__• 10 years ago

I think it's kind of sick when you start optimizing on people like you do on software.

danblick• 10 years ago

Start? This is a skill they've developed for years and years. The company that inspired "I was a warehouse wage slave" no doubt can transfer a few lessons to delivery...

jdietrich• 10 years ago

This kind of "optimisation" has been around for over a century, starting with Frederick Taylor. Dehumanising, mechanistic management is not new, nor is the backlash against it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Times_(film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film)

ryao5• 10 years ago

Anyone upset with this could just cancel their prime membership and stop doing business with Amazon. It is easier now than ever because they no longer compete on price. It is almost always the case that I find the same things cheaper on eBay, Newegg or jet.com. Their decision to drop price zombie from their affiliate program would seem to confirm that they no longer intend to compete on price. I assume that is how they fund Prime Video.

r00fus2• 10 years ago

Don't forget Google Shopping Express if you absolutely need it next day - which even passes on sales from local stores to delivery purchases.

Prime (free) Video could be seen as simply a sales channel for their paid video.

ryao5• 10 years ago

Enough to pay for $3 billion in original content spending with amazon's reporting margins?

https://www.google.com/amp/www.techtimes.com/amp/articles/17...

They ought to be subsidizing it with higher prices.

justicezyx2• 10 years ago

I don't think you actually have Amazon prime account. The prime video itself now have very high-quality original/exclusive content. The most recent example is Grand Tour, google it you can see how it is welcomed universally.

kayoone• 10 years ago

In my european country Amazon is still usually the cheapest and fastet way to get stuff and i enjoy zero delivery fees and their generous return policies, however i don't really use Prime Now so all deliveries are by DHL anyway. I am not sure which service would come close and is equally convenient.

quadrangle8• 10 years ago

I don't know why people still believe that boycotts and individual consumer decisions are effective strategy for such things. All the evidence is against this. I suppose it's the propaganda of the "free market" and such.

If a market were as the simplistic theory describes, all the drivers would be completely independent, set their own terms, and all product manufacturers would negotiate with all the drivers and all the consumers would negotiate etc. It would be totally inefficient and impractical, but we'd have actual competition and supply/demand etc.

Reality is Amazon is a massive organization with a top-down power structure and massive power inequities. Consumers are individual people with no comparable organizational power. The idea that each individual consumer should make decisions that mediate the power of the massive corporation is a farce.

camus22• 10 years ago

Consumers are individual people with no comparable organizational power.

Nobody said consumers have to be individuals, consumers can organize just like low wage workers should. They have just been sold individualism thanks to centuries of propaganda. Rich people have no problem organizing, that's what corporations are, but somehow when people at the bottom of the ladder do, it is a bad thing? This is puritan morals, "rich are blessed with wealth, poor people only deserve contempt" and it certainly defines America.

Spooky234• 10 years ago

Companies like Amazon are more vulnerable than you think. The slightest disruption in flow impacts them hard.

You get a large bloc of people to act, they will notice.

ryao5• 10 years ago

Buying things from Amazon no longer makes economic sense for most people. Buying from other stores because they are cheaper has nothing to do with the idea of a boycott. If you dislike how they conduct their business, then you have another reason to re-evaluate your expenditures with them.

edblarney4• 10 years ago

"If a market were as the simplistic theory describes, all the drivers would be completely independent, set their own terms, "

No - the 'free market' is at work here. The workers absolutely do not have the power to set any terms at all.

The issue is that the 'free market' is ultimatley a game over power - and when one entity has a lot, and others are divided and weak - salaries would be basically zero for them: just enough to survive. It would be much below min. wage as an entire economy of 'sub-dollar store' communities would develop. Much like favelas in Brazil etc..

For most people, we have some market power because of our skills, but for manual labour, they have none, which is why worker protections and min. wage laws exist.

arnoooooo• 10 years ago

It might not be an effective strategy, but it would be morally wrong to do otherwise.

edblarney4• 10 years ago

"Anyone upset with this could just cancel their prime membership and stop doing business with Amazon."

No, this is not quite reasonable.

Consumers do not realistically have this kind of power, especially vis-a-vis very large entities.

It would take a massive, massive informational campaign, massive awareness, coordination, coordination in the press etc..

For the same reason in the 19th century, before unions, people couldn't just 'not shop somewhere'.

Labour practices are best codified in law and policy.

I'm not a big fan of unions, where they are entrenched, they often have too much power ...

But where unions are 'possibly forming', it's usually for a very good reason.

Salaries for many working class jobs can't be left entirely up to the free market, otherwise they'd be earning next to zero.

It's really quite a paradox how benevolent Bezos and his ideological friends seem to be, all their charities blah blah blah and yet they treat many of their labour workers terribly. There are some real horror stories from the picking/packing plants.

bsder• 10 years ago

If only there were a way to bring multiple employees together to overcome the power imbalance between them and an employer. /s

unclebucknasty4• 10 years ago

It's amazing how much of the labor force itself is anti-union.

fsaneq2• 10 years ago

Not sure why this type of thing keeps on popping up as "news". The fact that jobs requiring no skill will be driven down to bad conditions/pay/whatever is sort of axiomatically obvious and inevitable given how capitalism and a more-or-less free labor market works.

Having held one of these shit jobs in the past to get myself through college, I understand how much it sucks, but complaining/negotiating when you have zero leverage simply does not work (in the sense it is very likely not the highest expected value use of your time -- IMO a good way is education, get yourself ready for a slightly better job, repeat until happy).

Amazon drivers pushed to the limit as holiday deliveries reach a frenzy

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