Even though I haven't bought anything from Amazon since 2016, I have less sympathy for Amazon workers these days. One of my best friends works in finance and has often been in warehouses for projects. She told me, "they get treated fine."
I mean, I know it's long, boring, grueling work picking stuff and putting it in boxes. But that's the nature of factory/warehouse work. They're not in a coalmine.
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@djsumdog @moffintosh @icedquinn @dhfir
The issue might be that people taking a job at an Amazon warehouse think they'll be treated like the top payed software engineers. They overestimate the value of their work probably.
Only concerning thing I even remember about Amazon warehouse worker conditions was that they weren't allowed bathroom breaks. But the details seems so vague, that I don't know if there's any merit to the claim/rumor. It might be true that workers are very limited in their break time, but then again... is it really unreasonable that low skilled job positions have a limit on break time, so people don't intentionally procrastinate on the toilet, instead of being productive?
@alyx @djsumdog @icedquinn @dhfir "“It’s very easy to lose an arm,” Medina says.
At least “I haven’t had a knife fall on me,” out of a bin of goods placed on shelves far above the worker’s head, Medina admits. That happened to a colleague. That’s not all.
“I’ve met so many people who have told me about broken bones on the job, but they have to continue to work. They don’t have unpaid leave time to take, and Amazon clocks” their time on the job, minute by minute, and docks those who stay away too long."
@moffintosh @djsumdog @icedquinn @dhfir
>cites covid
Warehouse & delivery work is gonna be harder during a time frame when the economy abruptly switched to everything being delivered at home.
If you can't understand that, you're free to go at any time.
Just like a firefighter needs to be able to deal with an increase of forest fires during random droughts, someone working in the delivery business has to understand that the risk of sudden increases of demand comes with the job title.
As for the backbreaking work, that's what warehouse work is about. You're doing manual labor, not sitting in a silk armchair. If your back doesn't hurt in the first week of doing something like this, you haven't worked hard enough.
>Amazon warehouse workers suffer serious injuries at twice the rate of rivals
Amazon has NO real rival. It's a beast unlike any other. There is nothing that comes close to it's size and diversity of products it handles. Maybe the Chinese Alibaba, but I doubt we have accurate information about that.
>lack of information about the coronavirus
I'm sorry, is your boss your nanny or something? I don't think a company is obligated to fill you in on world news. Maybe there's a complain to be made if Amazon didn't have a covid policy in place.
>mandatory overtime
Happens all the time, in all sorts of fields. Most often in the video game industry it seems. In Amazon's case, it's what you get when you have a sudden market demand shift. You literally can't hire and train staff fast enough. You either enforce overtime, or your company fails.
>“It’s very easy to lose an arm,”
It's very easy to lose lots of things in all sorts of jobs. The employee is first and foremost the one responsible for his own safety. There's only so much an employer can idiot proof a worksite. Doesn't matter how much an employer does safety training, if the staff doesn't take it seriously. And low paid workers much too often have a tendency of not taking work safety seriously (but then complaining when something happened to them).
>and two- and three-hour commutes
I don't get how that's Amazon's fault. You live where you live, and you chose that job. You have two options: you move or you commute. Amazon doesn't get to make that choice for you, and Amazon isn't obligated to offer you a home to live in.
My conclusions is that Americans are simply too entitled, and too many of them simply haven't worked nearly hard enough in their lives.
https://thesoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/The-Injury-Machine_How-Amazons-Production-System-Hurts-Workers.pdf
It takes two link clicks to get to it and what do we immediately find? It's not a study. It's literally just a white paper published by "Strategic Organizing Center" .. huh .. so some pro-union organization? Published on fake-news NBC?! Who would have thought!
Also, the study doesn't mention the type of injuries or chart them anywhere in the paper (as far as I can tell). It vaguely talks about how robots increase injury without any real information. It doesn't go into which "non-Amazon" warehouses are in the aggregates of the other numbers. It reads like an advert, not a legitimate study.
Factory work in general is dangerous. I dated a girl who worked at McKee Foods, and during shortages or snow storms, some of the administrative staff would go to work in the factory. There were a lot of strict safety requirements .. things as simple as having your hair tied back and pulled up. One girl didn't and it got caught in a machine, ripping off half her scalp. This is literally a cookie/cake factory!
Factories are dangerous in general. I suspect Amazon is probably less dangerous than a faucet or washing machine factory. As far as the breaks and long hours; that's very common for factory work too. You can also to not work over 40 and some places will keep you, and some won't. A lot of people work the extra hours willingly for the money. If they don't like working for Amazon, they can always go to Wal-Mart or UPS or some other unskilled position. That's the beautiful of capitalism. You get a choice in where you want to apply to work.
And I want to reiterate, I don't even like Amazon. I don't shop at Amazon. I don't use AWS for any personal hosting. I still find this type of argument dodgy.
@alyx @djsumdog @icedquinn @dhfir
The issue might be that people taking a job at an Amazon warehouse think they'll be treated like the top payed software engineers. They overestimate the value of their work probably.
Amazon is know even in SE circles to be a bad workplace. Either you crunch and get promoted or you're let go.
Only concerning thing I even remember about Amazon warehouse worker conditions was that they weren't allowed bathroom breaks. But the details seems so vague, that I don't know if there's any merit to the claim/rumor. It might be true that workers are very limited in their break time, but then again... is it really unreasonable that low skilled job positions have a limit on break time, so people don't intentionally procrastinate on the toilet, instead of being productive?
Amazon warehouse workers suffer serious injuries at twice the rate of rivals:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/12/study-amazon-workers-suffer-serious-injuries-at-twice-rate-of-rivals.html
Workers cite awful conditions inside Amazon’s monstrous Staten Island fulfillment center
"In telephone interviews with People’s World, Justine Medina and Brett Daniels, members of Amazon Labor Union’s organizing committee there, described backbreaking work, lack of information about the coronavirus, 60-hour-plus workweeks, 20% of colleagues out with the virus, 10-hour shifts with “mandatory overtime” tacked on, and two- and three-hour commutes."
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/workers-cite-awful-conditions-inside-amazons-monstrous-staten-island-fulfillment-center