
Amazon workers say they’re doing “back-breaking” work without paid time off - 0xmohit
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/10/21005098/amazon-warehouse-workers-sacramento
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blacksmith_tb
I'm curious how they attract people to work for them, if it's common knowledge
they are terrible to work for? Is that there just aren't enough other, better
warehouse jobs? The few folks I have known who worked in warehouses (non-AMZN
ones) generally didn't like the work, but I didn't hear outright horror
stories like these.

~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
Because tons of people do difficult and dirty jobs, that is how the world
works around you. I'm on 100% side of the workers but people having cozy
office jobs are simply disconnected with the reality.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Right, but the reporting at least suggests Amazon is worse than comparable
back-breaking warehouse work - is it just that shitty treatment by management
at other warehouses isn't in the news, or are they actually different?

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thecleaner
Man, Amazon is is one asshole of a company. I wonder what people like Bezos
actually thinks about these workers. Whether they are even considered human or
not. I guess not.

~~~
madengr
Liabilities in need of replacement by robots.

~~~
bransonf
Not to defend Amazon here, but if the market demands cheaper products, which
necessitates a ton of labor, and laborers are being overworked...

Doesn’t replacing them with robots actually sound like a viable solution?

The market demands this work, but we recognize it’s unreasonable to subject
humans to these conditions.

~~~
gurumeditations
That depends on if you’re on the side of the capitalist or the side of labor.
Capital holders would take that point of view but labor might say capital
should make the work more reasonable and hire more labor to make up the
difference.

~~~
beatgammit
Isn't there a third argument in favor of retraining those workers to do less
labor intensive jobs? We have plenty of immigrants that would love to have
those jobs at those wages, so retraining would be better for both groups, no?

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jdkee
Why don't the workers unionize? Oh, because Amazon is run by a bunch of amoral
people. The leadership is inhumane.

[https://gizmodo.com/amazons-aggressive-anti-union-tactics-
re...](https://gizmodo.com/amazons-aggressive-anti-union-tactics-revealed-in-
leake-1829305201)

[https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18277322/amazon-fired-
warehous...](https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18277322/amazon-fired-warehouse-
worker-staten-island-union)

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/22/how-amazon-is-fighting-
back-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/22/how-amazon-is-fighting-back-against-
workers-efforts-to-unionize.html)

~~~
beatgammit
Unionizing is the solution to unfair leadership. If the workers are hard to
replace, then forming a union will probably work. If they're easy to replace,
then they're getting precisely what their labor is worth. Since the wage seems
to be higher than minimum wage, there's obviously _some_ value in keeping
them, which means a strike may work.

Unemployment is very low right now, so I'm sure there are plenty of other jobs
available. The fact that people continue to work for Amazon suggests that
quitting is worse than continuing to show up at work, so I'm really not sure
what people expect. I'm guessing it's just that Amazon is seen as a tech
company and therefore is expected to treat their warehouse workers closer to
tech employees than warehouse employees?

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vondur
I’m going to guess they work them up to the limit of part time hours. Then you
don’t have to pay for health insurance or paid time off. This is very common
in the fast food industry.

~~~
mofosyne
But what could we be doing to stop this from happening?

Could it be that we need more granular binning of people between part time to
full time work, with increasingly increased full time rights?

~~~
vondur
Well, the most obvious is to have some sort of universal health care coverage
that can be separated from your place of employment.

~~~
beatgammit
I agree with the second part (separate health insurance from employment), but
I disagree that we need universal health care.

I think we should remove all incentives for employers to offer insurance and
require employers to make the cash value of any benefits available to
employees upon request (and make that option clear at hiring time). Basically,
when your employer shows you a "total compensation" amount, you should be able
to get that in your paycheck if you so choose.

I also think we should encourage (maybe require) insurance companies to offer
long-term contracts at a fixed rate, adjusted only to account for inflation
and changing costs (uniform across all customers). We can continue the
subsidies for poorer people if we want. This would essentially be a market-
driven "universal healthcare", but it's opt-in.

 _Maybe_ we need universal healthcare, but I feel like that's a bit overkill.
I feel like we can ease into it by expanding on the ACA and getting more
people to get insurance outside of their employment.

~~~
brianwawok
A lot of people just don’t pay for insurance given the facts.

A Family of 4 in their 40s are in for what, $1800 a month for health
insurance? If your total income is $5000 a month you just don’t pay it.

You still go to the ER when you get real sick, but you just deal with it then.

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MiguelFCA
Uummm not true....I work at Amazon and I get Paid time off, Unpaid time off,
and Vacation hours as well. I mean I even get two 30 min breaks and one of
them is paid! The work really isnt bad. when i stow im standing in one spot
restocking products.

