Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48990482

by pmoriarty • 7 years ago

432 383 7 years ago

bbc.co.uk

kome• 7 years ago

way to go!

as consumers, we can help by boycotting amazon.

jonknee2• 7 years ago

Yea so that way they'll have no jobs at all!

deogeo2• 7 years ago

Or they will have jobs at other retailers, that will step in to take Amazon's market.

chc• 7 years ago

How is this not a generalized objection to any strike or boycott? That isn't the goal here, and historically, similar tactics have been effective.

mkane8483• 7 years ago

Did that sound clever in your head?

rstupek3• 7 years ago

Cue Amazon putting in more robots!

throwaway20482• 7 years ago

The amount of smug proclamations about how all these workers are going to be replaced by robots in these threads is really gross.

Nearly everyone that posts on HN is in a situation where their employer holds vastly more power than themselves in their employer/employee relationship, statistically are you likely being screwed, and you aren't going to be Jeff Bezos one day either.

nerdjon2• 7 years ago

I mean... it's happening.

So either we continue to deny it isn't or we actually start those conversations now and figure out how we live in that world.

And there is a correlation between actions like this and the desire to have a more automated workforce. Not saying that as blame because there are many other reasons and you can look at the reasons their jobs are so bad right now anyways.

But we can't ignore it.

mc322• 7 years ago

Ambivalently, this is the reality of things, unless you restrict globalization and implement domestic laws against automation, economic pressure is going to provoke automation in many areas, first in the most automatable and later on in higher value added areas...

Based_Detroiter• 7 years ago

Cue the robot unions. Holding companies hostage for more frequent PM!

SmileyRedBall2• 7 years ago

What would it effect Bezos Net Worth to double the warehouse operatives hourly rate to $22?

honopu• 7 years ago

not relevant, free market, they decide to work there, or not.

SmileyRedBall2• 7 years ago

not relevant, free market, they decide to work there, or not ..

Yea they can decide to move to the next low-pay job, zero-hour contract, no benefits, wages barely pays the rent, on food stamps ..

bancars• 7 years ago

That’s an awfully easy position to take when you don’t have to work at an Amazon warehouse. How many times have you been fired for using the bathroom?

jodrellblank5• 7 years ago

A free market would allow the employees to unionise to negotiate more effectively the employee side, like Amazon the company uses many people collectively to negotiate the employer side. But Amazon is anti-union and spends money to that effect.

If the free market is a fair market, unionising wouldn't make any difference as the negotiated rates would already be fair and couldn't be any more fair. Amazon wouldn't be spending money to block union efforts, because that would be wasted money. Therefore either this isn't free market, and your comment is wrong (not free market), or this is free market but it isn't fair so your comment is wrong (free market, yet still relevant).

agsamek• 7 years ago

Yep. The situation is similar to what Ford had. Salary increase might happen if they have a shortage of candidates. But will there be a shortage? Or are they just the best employer for a lot of people?

mparramon2• 7 years ago

Very relevant film about the topic: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5688932/

steveads2• 7 years ago

Some back of the napkin math: 650,000 Amazon workers. Let's say 600,000 are min(ish) wage and get an increase from $11/hr to $22/hr. That's a 13.2B increase per year. Jeff Bezo's net worth is 165B. Jeff Bezo's Net Worth drops 8% after one year.

OscarCunningham2• 7 years ago

If people expected Amazon to make a loss long-term then its share price would drop to zero immediately, taking most of Bezos' wealth with it.

jerf2• 7 years ago

Jeff's net worth isn't in cash. It's going to be affected much more strangely than your analysis suggests. If Amazon has to raise its labor costs that much, Wall Street will react in a way that is difficult to predict the magnitude, but easy to predict the direction.

Normally I'd suggest analyzing that 13.2B in terms of the profits of the company, which for instance last Jan 2019 was ~$3 billion, which if projected out for the year means you'd be proposing a pay raise larger than the profit margin for the company, which is definitely going to affect the stock price. But Amazon is a weird case where most people think that they can just turn on the spigots anytime they really want to just make money, so it's maybe not the easiest analysis.

But for most companies, they make less profit than people think, especially if they're looking at revenue numbers, and a lot of people tend to suggest things that would make a 6% profitable company (not a terribly uncommon number) become a -25% profitable company or something. Even if you tip all executive compensation back into profit, that doesn't usually do much for these large companies.

notatoad• 7 years ago

What would it effect bezos's net worth to halve the required number of items picked per hour but keep the pay the same? Pay should be determined by the market, decent working conditions are what we should be fighting for. Amazon workers aren't poorly compensated, they're just working shitty jobs regardless of the compensation. Paying people more doesn't make abusing them okay.

electrograv• 7 years ago

If each employee was paid the same to pick half the items, then they’re effectively being paid twice as much to do the same amount of work. Amazon would have to hire twice the workers (if not more) to fulfill their order volume, which means shipping items becomes more expensive.

So the real question is: Who is going to pay the bill?

And the problem I see here is, whoever you ask this, the answer is always “not me!” Everyone wants to reap the benefits of cheap labor (e.g. cheap, fast shipping), while proclaiming they want to treat the labor force well, but without a willingness to actually “put their money where their mouth is” and pay for it when it actually comes down to it.

For example: If you could willingly add 50% to the cost of every Amazon purchase if it gave workers better conditions, would you? If your first reaction to that is “Hey, that’s not my problem! The [government/market/unions/etc.] should have to solve that!” ... then yeah, we’ll the thing is that’s what everybody says when asked these sorts of problems.

dlgeek• 7 years ago

They have a $15 hour/minimum, so $22 isn't double.

Animats• 7 years ago

Yes. Don't be a scab and cross the picket line. Don't buy from Amazon today.

Wohlf• 7 years ago

Scabs are workers who cross the picket line, not customers. If you think boycotts are a good idea, ask the auto unions how well customers not buying cars worked out for their members.

fucking_tragedy• 7 years ago

Customers boycotted Stop & Shop when workers went on strike earlier this year, and it worked out pretty well for the workers[1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/us/stop-shop-strike.html

astura• 7 years ago

Scabs are workers who cross the picket line, not customers.

That's not the way unions themselves use the word.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/24904995/boston-union-ca...

"Boston union calls Yankees 'scabs' for crossing hotel picket line"

zaksoup3• 7 years ago

Are you implying that the unions asked Americans to boycott cars that weren't foreign-assembled crossovers?

Your comment seems to not really make much sense since UAW and other unions are currently involved in calling for boycotts of Mexico-assembled GM vehicles.

anarchodev2• 7 years ago

While you're correct about the meaning of the word scab, there doesn't yet exist a word with appropriately caustic undertones to describe the customer who continues to patronize a service whose workers are striking -- and so we typically use that word for both situations. Welcome to the party.

idlewords• 7 years ago

Everyone on this site uses AWS.

_bxg12• 7 years ago

It's not simply about hurting Amazon, it's about sending a signal. "This specific part of our business is threatened by the way that we're running it." Let it make business sense for Amazon to treat people like human beings. Otherwise it won't.

mkane8483• 7 years ago

Which is in an of itself an entire set of problems to sort through, but I don't see what actual point you're making other than spewing do-gooder derogation.

cheeze• 7 years ago

Here are instructions to block AWS from your computer as well: https://bigboy.us/other/aws/

Don't be a scab and cross the picket line. Don't use anything hosted on AWS today.

(Which basically means "turn off your computer because nothing will work" today)

lonelappde2• 7 years ago

Or buy from Amazon, and then return the purchase for refund when they fail fulfillment promise due to staffing outage.

oneepic• 7 years ago

Just a little reminder that many workers in fact do not get treated well just because their company thinks they do.

luxuryballs• 7 years ago

I think it should also be noted that the best way to show an employer that they need to do better is supply and demand, quitting entirely and working for someone else is not only more effective than simply demonstrating or slacking off, it’s also many magnitudes more professional and better for your career.

vageli• 7 years ago

I think it should also be noted that the best way to show an employer that they need to do better is supply and demand, quitting entirely and working for someone else is not only more effective than simply demonstrating or slacking off, it’s also many magnitudes more professional and better for your career.

If the goal is to get the employer to notice the issue, leaving and hope they get the idea, when the pool of applicants is essentially unlimited seems like a poor way of articulating a position.

Amazon is a captive audience in this protest and by not just outright leaving, the employees are forcing Amazon to consider their situation, rather than write it off and bring in a new batch.

lucasmullens• 7 years ago

Some people have mouths to feed and bills to pay. You can't just tell people to quit if they don't like it. There aren't many other $15/hour jobs available for most of those workers.

Tade02• 7 years ago

quitting entirely and working for someone else

Doesn't work if every other employer is also like that.

enlyth• 7 years ago

I agree with the worker in the video, they should be treated as human beings. One of the issues is doing a simple, monotonous task every 8 seconds, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, without creating anything of value, is going to be dehumanizing and unfulfilling regardless.

Robots carrying out this work would probably be for the best for everyone involved, although Amazon should do right by the workers carrying them over this difficult transition period where they're still required for part of the menial manual labour tasks. The compensation should reflect the mental and physical stress they put people through.

vorpalhex• 7 years ago

So the fix to this is Amazon laying off all their workers?

Someone1234• 7 years ago

As automation keeps on improving and productivity gets more centralized will there be a shortage of jobs?

The above poster makes a fair point that this is work well suited to automation. In the broader sense with retail closing and Amazon taking market share, centralizing productivity (i.e. reducing retail jobs to fewer picker jobs), and then automating those fewer jobs away entirely, are we going to have a hole in society where those jobs once existed?

I genuinely have no idea how society would work if you simply eliminated 20% of jobs tomorrow. Mass poverty? Artificially created jobs? A larger rich/poor divide?

traderjane• 7 years ago

Perhaps the state should be responsible for the roughness of economic transition, especially for work-affecting phenomena which is global? Such as through polishing the unemployment program.

OscarCunningham2• 7 years ago

without creating anything of value

That's not the right way of phrasing it. They're producing a substantial amount of value, in the real sense that the world is a better place because of the work they've done.

cfqycwz• 7 years ago

And in the sense that Amazon generates tremendous profit for its owners, which has to come from somebody's labor!

mdorazio2• 7 years ago

The compensation should reflect the mental and physical stress they put people through.

As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market. The fact that Amazon can easily hire as many workers as it wants at $15/hr says that they are paying their employees plenty already. It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for their labor practices rather than demonizing the market conditions that have led to Amazon warehouses being a place people are willing to work.

toomuchtodo3• 7 years ago

Market conditions are set by regulation and market participants (there is no such thing as a pure free market except in an economist's textbook). Congress (the Senate specifically, conservatives/republicans) have failed to raise the federal minimum wage ($7.25, unchanged since 2009) to reflect the required wage to survive with increased costs of living (housing, broken healthcare, etc). This caused Senator Sanders to have to shame Amazon into paying a higher wage to Amazon's warehouse workers (which Amazon not only agreed to do, but also stated they would lobby for raising the federal minimum wage as well).

Why shouldn't one of the wealthiest companies in the world (a labor market participant) be demonizied for worker abuse, even if it is "legal"?

If you don't understand what Amazon fulfillment workers experience, I encourage you to take a vacation day or two and apply for a job at a warehouse as a runner. You'll only need a day or two to appreciate the experience. There is no college course or bootcamp for compassion and empathy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9m7d07k22A (Warehouses: HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver)

JudgeWapner3• 7 years ago

. It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for

Why does it bother you when people empathize with the poor and castigate billion dollar corporations that don't even allow employees enough time to urinate without it harming the employees metrics making them slip towards the back of the rank and closer to being fired? That bothers you...think about that.

EliRivers4• 7 years ago

Why should it reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market? What's the axiom upon which you stand to say that is the correct way of things?

somethoughts3• 7 years ago

Tangentially one thing that I've pondered is the the Amazon Fulfillment Centers are typically on the periphery exurban areas such that they will have the benefits of the minimum wage legislation of the urban area but that wage will go a lot farther and they will have a lot shorter commute then if they were located in the urban area itself as a normal retail job would. That seems smart. For instance, $15 an hour goes a lot farther in Tracy and Stockton toward rent or a downpayment than it does in the Mission. Obviously Amazon were to pay more and that would be even better.

theothermkn• 7 years ago

As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market.

The odiousness of the use of the word "should" has been pointed out elsewhere, and I reiterate it, but there is another point to be made about this analysis: It neglects that Amazon is a monopsony or near-monopsony. As Amazon replaces other supply chains, the demand for supply-chain labor is increasingly concentrated in one buyer of labor, Amazon. We should reasonably expect a distortion in the market to occur wherein Amazon leverages their power to either reduce wages or demand more labor for the equivalent wage.

In effect, the market conditions to which the OP appeals are eroded away by Amazon's cornering of this sector of the labor market. $15/hr may be good PR, but it's not a "fair" or "market" wage if Amazon can just burn through employees with adverse working conditions (ostensibly valued at a higher rate in a real market) because of their position as the sole buyer of labor.

If we're going to apply market theory to this, we have to go all the way, and not just stop when it suits our purposes.

jasonhansel2• 7 years ago

the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market.

Why?

azernik• 7 years ago

The fact that Amazon can easily hire people at $15/hr at its current abysmal working conditions does not mean that they morally should. The market conditions let Amazon get away with it, and collective action changes market conditions.

noobermin3• 7 years ago

Given Amazon is such a large part of that market, they do in fact play a large role in the perpetuation of that market. This strike action is in fact those people pushing back both against Amazon and that larger set of conditions they are in.

jtmcmc• 7 years ago

So I believe it does that at best only imperfectly and further it's neither obvious that compensation should be derived in that fashion nor in my, and many others, opinions is it correct.

klodolph2• 7 years ago

As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market.

The market has no moral compass. If you decide that the market dictates what we should do, then your actions will reflect the morals of the market, i.e., none.

Supply and demand is a statement of what "is", not what "should be". To some approximation.

viraptor2• 7 years ago

"The market" is not intelligent, moral, or nice to people. "The market" decided that slaves are a pretty efficient way of farming. You can hate the game not the player, but the player is still responsible at some point.

lallysingh• 7 years ago

It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for their labor practices rather than demonizing the market conditions that have led to Amazon warehouses being a place people are willing to work.

That's about as useful a statement as "Thoughts and prayers."

To change the labor market you go after the parties you can affect. Amazon is one. There are many others on the demand side. Retaining the workforce would be a much lower % return for the investment.

zem• 7 years ago

As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market.

nope, that's just using the fact that right now capital has more leverage than labour to pay your workers as little as you can get away with.

munk-a• 7 years ago

As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market.

This isn't currently the case by a long shot, compensation is more driven by a monopolist control of the market than anything else. For retail, manufacturing and similar positions (like the amazon warehouse) compensation isn't being allowed to freely vary - businesses have become unreasonably entrenched and therefore retain a strong control of the capital for production, leading to an unbelievably strong wealth inequality. If you asked America who would be willing to take Jeff Bezos's job for a tenth of the compensation (including some stock options to make up for the fact that Bezos actually is paid quite modestly) everyone's hand would shoot up, among those there would be plenty of qualified individuals (including plenty with the aptitude but lacking the prior experience expected) - but for some reason the board of directors hasn't taken this action...

This is a sort of "free market" but not the sort of "free market" that I appreciate.

kadendogthing• 7 years ago

the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market.

Yeah. There's no way way it's more complicated than this. If there are other effects not reflected on a simple X/Y axis then I don't wanna know about it!

drup86• 7 years ago

What would be wrong in lowering immigration numbers of low skilled immigrants to help people stuck in unfortunate Amazon employment like situation above?

And yet I never hear any such solution being spoken about in public?

rosser• 7 years ago

Would it not be even more in Amazon's interest to cultivate labor practices which make their warehouses places people might want, instead of merely being willing, to work?

"Oh, the market..." Bullshit. Amazon can afford to let people go to the bathroom without fearing for their jobs. They choose not to.

lawnchair_larry• 7 years ago

Just because you have market leverage to do what you want to desperate people, doesn’t mean you should. If this were a wage dispute, I might agree, but it’s much more than that.

anigbrowl4• 7 years ago

As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market.

I do not agree that market efficiency should have priority over all other considerations. It seems to me this idea simply reflects the views of those who derive a net benefit from markets, and are oblivious (by accident or choice) to the costs of market failure or impossibility of clearance.

Look, supply and demand only work under conditions of perfect competition, which include total knowledge of the market by all participants and no costs for entry or exit. Such conditions obviously do not obtain in many, perhaps most real world contexts. A slavish obedience to these laws is therefore a losing strategy, and indeed in the real world most people take a strategic approach.

People who take a strategic approach for themselves while insisting on the supremacy of supply and demand to others (who may or may not be aware of the dichotomy and subsequently credulous of the assertion) are engaged in an act of deception.

PopeDotNinja• 7 years ago

I wonder if a Amazon warehouse workers have tried using diapers & tried expensing them. Whether the claim for approved or rejected, it'd be +1 piece of evidence to highlight you-no-pee-pee shenanigans.

eloisant• 7 years ago

It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for their labor practices rather than demonizing the market conditions that have led to Amazon warehouses being a place people are willing to work.

The thing is that Amazon largely contributed to create those market conditions, by getting the consumer used to free next day delivery (same delivery in some places). And by squeezing their workers like this, forcing other online retailers to follow if they want to stay competitive.

cyphar6• 7 years ago

It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for their labor practices rather than demonizing the market conditions that have led to Amazon warehouses being a place people are willing to work.

There's no reason we can't do both. Unfortunately, once you start criticising capitalism (which inevitably leads to these types of employee-employer abuses without unions or other legislation) you get called a communist (incorrectly) and the discussion is over.

dv_dt• 7 years ago

Maybe the human work will shift to robot technicians, and how many blown servomotor assemblies or control boards you can swap out in an hour, but there will always be human standards that need help enforcing in some industries.

noobermin3• 7 years ago

If they didn't "create anything of value" why are they there doing it? Why does Amazon have them doing what they do in the first place? The point is they do in fact play an important role in the generation of the value by Amazon and they are asking for their fair share.

rayiner11• 7 years ago

I agree with the worker in the video, they should be treated as human beings. One of the issues is doing a simple, monotonous task every 8 seconds, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, without creating anything of value, is going to be dehumanizing and unfulfilling regardless.

If it’s a task that can’t easily be automated and needs to be done, the doing it is creating value.

pathseeker2• 7 years ago

without creating anything of value,

Delivery creates significant value. What are you talking about?

dpwm2• 7 years ago

I was at a graduate careers fair in a city where Amazon had just opened offices. Naturally, Amazon had a stall at this careers fair. The person running their stall was telling an audience of maybe six or seven other people that Amazon was the kind of company where if you could find a path around their warehouse that would shave even a single second off a warehouse worker's journey, they'd make them walk it. The audience were quite impressed by this.

I suddenly found myself the other side of having said "what an awful place to work," and receiving a mix of bewildered and hostile looks from every other person around that stall.

I'm pretty sure the claim was hyperbole – the practical side of getting people to walk a particular path would have been my follow-up question, if I'd thought of it in time. Even so, the claim revealed a mentality of workers as robots that I think helped explain some of the news stories of extraordinary conditions of their warehouse workers.

C1sc0cat3• 7 years ago

Um this is standard Time and Motion stuff from 1920's this is SOP for any factory production line going back a hundred years or more.

dhruvrrp• 7 years ago

He says he has to pick an item about every eight seconds, or 332 per hour, for a 10 hour day.

Ignoring the math, it’s hard to imagine that pace. Are they forced to continually be moving? Or is the person counting picking up, say 15 usb chargers as 15 separate things?

pardavis2• 7 years ago

Pick workers at robotized FCs stand in one place at the nexus point of conveyors and robots. Robots bring them shelving units of products. Conveyor belts bring them empty containers. The human selects products from the robot and puts it in the container.

pwinnski• 7 years ago

If they're going to do that much automation, they might as well have the robot put the product in the container.

Which they do. Amazon has both human and robot pickers.

Eric_WVGG2• 7 years ago

Yes. I read an article last week about a guy who got fired for "unnecessary motion." (will update this comment with a link if I can dig it up.)

Here's a story about a patent on a wristband that enables this kind of tracking: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/31/amazon-wa...

It is humanly possible. As a teenager, I worked at UPS, where I was expected to stack boxes real-life-Tetris-style into a van at a rate of 45 per minute. They could get as heavy as 30 lbs. I actually got to enjoy it after a while (biceps!), but I could never get the hang of memorizing the zip codes (every truck has a list of 1-30 that we were expected to memorize instantly).

reroute12• 7 years ago

I also did this and have younger friends who still do. I much preferred that job to a customer service one where I had to deal with angry people all day. I was also sorting via zip codes and enjoyed the physical work... I don't understand what people accepting a factory job expect. It is repetitive, non-creative, work. That is the idea.

AcerbicZero• 7 years ago

I did a similar job for UPS, but at an airport before school in the mornings (~2am-6am). Unloading the containers from the big plane, then sorting all those boxes, and finally loading the smaller planes or trucks. Everything was timed, and it was tough cold work (middle of winter, in a cold part of the US, at an airport where there is nothing to stop the wind), but its totally possible.

Comically enough, the part that stuck with me the most was how bad I was at memorizing the codes for the various trucks/locations as well.

refurb• 7 years ago

I did a similar role when I was young and working at a warehouse. Basically pick, pack and ship orders. You basically worked until the orders are filled, 10, 11 hour shifts were not unusual.

An item every 8 seconds is a rapid pace, but at least when I did it, the orders are sequential based on the layout of the warehouse. You grab one item, look at the next item, walk an aisle or two down, grab that item. I would estimate something between 10 seconds between picks?

It is physically demanding work and boring as hell, but you end up in great shape! A couple decades ago when I did it the work paid really well for an unskilled job. Made putting up with it bearable.

theranfear• 7 years ago

Similar story to the other people here, having worked in a ups warehouse with unload rates of >1100 per hr I find it's not the physical nature of the job that's hard (in fact if you like moving around it's good) but mental stress of doing 1 dimensional things all day that is the real challenge!

xtracto• 7 years ago

Between this and the Mechanical Turk article I read earlier today, I am left thinking about these type of jobs. There is this "chasm" of things that machines still cannot but that are repetitive and boring for humans, for which the value to human-effort ratio is small.

I foresee that in the following 10 years, we will be seeing more and more of these types of works. Now, the interesting thing about some of these jobs is that they cannot be moved to places where the payment to cost of living ratio can be improved. Some Mechanical Turk tasks could (if the language allowed it) but the Amazon warehouse jobs would be impossible to move.

Unless, Amazon opens a chain of warehouses in Mexico's cities that border the US (Tijuana, Tecate, Mexicali, Sonoyta, Nogales, Cd Juarez, among all the others) and then dispatches the goods from there. That however would need to include a very good import/export deal.

tachyonbeam• 7 years ago

I foresee that in the following 10 years, we will be seeing more and more of these types of works.

On the other hand, people are hard at work trying to automate these jobs. Amazon would love nothing more than to have a completely robotic warehouse and a fleet of delivery robots that run 24/7.

WengerPen2• 7 years ago

Well, in theory a company like these can create robots that are operated from anywhere in the world. In that case, the operator job may be outsourced as it may be cheaper and less of a hassle than to have a person in X country getting paid more, complaining and going on strike.

alexgmcm2• 7 years ago

Is the North of Mexico that much poorer though?

I mean Mexico is quite wealthy compared to the rest of Latin America and the North of Mexico includes many of the wealthier areas.

It's not the same building a warehouse in Nuevo Leon as in Chiapas.

topspin• 7 years ago

Off topic: I've been seeing Prime Day ad notifications in Brave. Thought that was interesting; about the most 'mainstream' ad I've ever seen in Brave.

_zachs• 7 years ago

"I have to pick an item every eight seconds, or 332 per hour, for a 10-hour day"

No, no you dont

lonelappde2• 7 years ago

It's not a paradox as stated, since "or" has ambiguous meaning, but it does look suspicious, since 3600sec/8sec is 450, and 3600sec/332 is about 10.8sec.

jeanl• 7 years ago

I've been boycotting amazon for a long time. Waiting for "democracy" to solve the problems of unabated exploitative capitalism is a cop out. I put my money where my mouth is. I pay more, wait longer, but shop at places where I know people are treated at least decently.

Havoc2• 7 years ago

Honestly it's been underwhelming anyway.

The vast majority of the deals are re-runs of ones in past 6 months...just all at same time.

I buy a lot of amazon stuff, but this barely shifted my day to day pattern.

I did find out that you get wifi power plugs that are controllable and measure electricity usage. That's pretty cool...just not sale related.

wingworks2• 7 years ago

Do you have a link/name of the wifi power plugs? Sounds intriguing.

Havoc2• 7 years ago

TP link one

...also saw some random github-y thing while googleing the model number which hints at some level of hackable/api-able interfacing which made me click the buy button. That's sketchy info though

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07GWWRK1C

[Please bookmark & make use of smile.amazon.com/co.uk thing...it's amazon's corporate charity thing - free 0.5% donation]

capkutay3• 7 years ago

Slightly unrelated but there is something weirdly consistent about how Amazon treats their workers and people who have to work with them. I remember just exhibiting an AWS conference was the most time-intensive grueling event I've ever worked in the tech industry.

Obviously not as hard as a factory-working job, but they hold the only event in the industry that has you working from 7 am to 7 pm w/ no break if you want to exhibit.

icelancer4• 7 years ago

...aren't most exhibits/conferences like this? All my trade shows events are at least this grueling, and I no longer work in major IT.

capkutay3• 7 years ago

I mean they practically can become that if you include the networking events and dinners but the listed hours in the exhibition hall usually are closer to 8 hours.

misterprime• 7 years ago

Ew, no. That's horrible. The company I work for does a lot of shows. I generally do about 22/year. A common range is 9am to 5pm, but 10am to 4pm is not unheard of. 8am to 6pm happens from time to time and feels really bad. I think out of 60ish shows that I've done only one was 7am to 7pm.

40acres• 7 years ago

Marx predicted this with his theory on Entfremdung (alienation), in a system of highly optimized division of labor those laborers are going to be for a lack of a better word: bored.

thundergolfer4• 7 years ago

Also knew that capital is indifferent to the lived experience of labourers.

f00zz2• 7 years ago

I'll get downvoted to hell for saying this, but $15/hr is upper middle class pay here. I made less than that for much of my software development career...

orhmeh09• 7 years ago

Your post would be considerably more useful with date and location information.

Tade02• 7 years ago

So did I, but where I come from $1k/month of take-home-pay is enough to rent a two bedroom apartment and live comfortably.

The US is, all things considered, expensive.

thundergolfer4• 7 years ago

You’ll be getting downvoted because what you make “here” and it being upper-middle class pay is not relevant at all to these workers, unless you want to make a disingenuous suggestion that they move countries to “here”.

f00zz2• 7 years ago

Of course I understand that. I just find it very hard to sympathize with the plight of someone making $15/hour. It seems high, even taking differences in cost of living into account.

beecat• 7 years ago

If I think about it, I feel pretty dehumanized myself each time I click through a clumsy AWS GUI for a set of shoddy services that my company pays 60k a month for the privilege of running our operations and storing our business intelligence on the computers of the one entity that has not only the financial muscle but also the lack of moral scrupples to use that intelligence to enter our market and outcompete us.

Jussayin'

friendlybus• 7 years ago

Glad someone finally said it. What's stopping these data collecting companies from cornering a huge amount of markets?

WengerPen2• 7 years ago

When you reach that size, you are not looking for investments in the millions, you are looking for the billions.

BurningFrog3• 7 years ago

Since Amazon easily hires and retains people at these wages, there very likely isn't anything wrong with these jobs. At least not compared to similar jobs for the same segment of the work force.

What I think is really going on here is that Amazon has a PR vulnerability that can be exploited. With enough videos and testimony produced contrasting the plight of the poor oppressed workers with their boss, The World's Richest Man, Amazon will need to do something to make this go away.

Or at least that's what this campaign hopes.

cyphar6• 7 years ago

Since Amazon easily hires and retains people at these wages, there very likely isn't anything wrong with these jobs. At least not compared to similar jobs for the same segment of the work force.

I agree that there are almost certainly many other examples of inhumane treatment of low-wage workers. We should fix those too. If low-wage workers had unions then you would be able to have those kinds of cross-industry group actions.

But no, the work conditions at Amazon are not acceptable. And to pretend that this a free market transaction -- and not a case of people who are desperate (and probably being forced to work several jobs and depend on government programs due to inhumanely low wages) being exploited.

dymk3• 7 years ago

$15/hour is “inhumanly low”? Since when?

Amazon has been a leader in paying unskilled workers a good salary at huge scale.

BurningFrog3• 7 years ago

The US unemployment rate is at 3.6%, the lowest in living memory. It has never been easier to find a new job.

The number of people working multiple jobs to make ends meet peaked in the 90s, but the legend lives on...

That you find blue collar job conditions unacceptable says something about you, not too much about the jobs.

dymk3• 7 years ago

When you employ hundreds of thousands of people, it’s not hard to find hundreds who are incredibly unhappy. Sure, this only represents 0.1% of their workforce, but news agencies don’t care about that. People just want something to be angry about.

They’ll continue to ignore that $15/hour is within “living wage” for the low CoL areas that Amazon fulfillment warehouses are located in.

cyphar6• 7 years ago

They aren't asking for a wage increase, they're asking for better working conditions -- this is explicitly talked about at length in TFA. Also, Amazon only started paying a minimum wage of $15/hour in Oct 2018 (9 months ago) -- in large part thanks to Bernie Sanders[1].

[1] https://www.businessinsider.nl/bernie-sanders-amazon-fight-m...

vkou2• 7 years ago

And I must say:

When you employ hundreds of thousands of people, it's not hard to use divide-and-conquer against them, to get them to act against their common interests.

Most of them are not in any position to push back on your demands, even if they'd all be better off from having the freedom to be able to step away from their 'highly important job' to have a piss in peace, without threat of termination.

dehrmann3• 7 years ago

This reminds me of the Foxconn suicides. Lots of press made it sound like a major problem, but the actual rate was lower than both China and US averages.

fourbits• 7 years ago

If I'm not mistaken a subset of these protests are in reaction to Amazon allegedly working with ICE.

I did a quick ctrl-f and don't see anyone else talking about this in here. How does HN feel about it?

Personally it's just another reason to keep my distance from Amazon, although I will still randomly yell out Jeff Bezos' name because I find it funny.

Jeff, motherheckin Bezos!

15engineer3• 7 years ago

Reading through these comments I find myself rather dazed at all of the complaints regarding $15 an hour salaries, I'm a software engineer with 6 years of experience in a first world country and I make less than that before taxes.

thundergolfer4• 7 years ago

Which first world country is this? I made $30AUD as a waiter in 2015. An Australian software engineer with that much experience getting paid almost half that ($15 is USD yeah?) in 2019 would be absurd.

15engineer3• 7 years ago

Hong Kong and yes USD.

alexgmcm2• 7 years ago

It depends on the cost of living though.

I earn around that in Western Europe but it's still a pretty good job for Spain and I have no doubt I live in better conditions than the Americans working for $15 an hour, which is really what matters.

15engineer3• 7 years ago

You're right it does depend on cost of living, but I live in a city/country (Hong Kong) with one of the highest costs of living in the world[1].

[1] https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/country/ranking

povertyworld• 7 years ago

Oh, it's so nice to see all these rich tech guys are concerned about the plight of Amazon workers. Suppose if one of these Amazon workers applied to be a programmer at your company even though they didn't go to a top twenty school or have 5-7 years experience with the trendiest stack, but merely did a bootcamp, and published some apps on their own, would you hire them and spend your money (as opposed to Jeff Bezo's money) to better their lot in life? Or would you hit delete the second their pathetic resume touched your inbox? At least Jeff Bezos is making it possible for people to pay their rent and not end up yet another homeless guy on the San Francisco sidewalk.

noicebrewery• 7 years ago

"At least" is right; he is doing the very least he can. If they are working for the wealthiest man on the planet he could afford to pay them a decent wage.

C1sc0cat3• 7 years ago

I haven't seen any one in this debate saying anything like that.

codeforces• 7 years ago

996.icu did not only happen in China, it is happening everywhere on this planet.

eatonphil3• 7 years ago

D and

eatonphil3• 7 years ago

Thaneks

eatonphil3• 7 years ago

Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

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