
Ruthless Quotas at Amazon Are Maiming Employees - siberianbear
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/amazon-warehouse-reports-show-worker-injuries/602530/
======
LegitShady
The article mistates a cause and effect. The injuries are not caused by
Amazon's need to move packages they're caused by Amazon's unreasonable and
apparently unsafe systemic requierements on employees. Amazon could move the
packages it needs with more employees more safely but have chosen not to.

~~~
hdgejejehg
If anything the problem, going by the story, has to do with Amazon's hiring
practices. Anyone with a brain could guess that a 54 year old female new hire
is at greater liability of injury when performing this sort of work. But I
imagine she wouldn't have applied if she didn't need the money so is it better
to 'protect' every worker because some chose to take a risk?

~~~
zeofig
If anything?? There seem to be a few problems that are unrelated to hiring
practices. These warehouses are deathtraps regardless of your age or other
attributes.

~~~
ydhsjwgfegdh
Weird how that wasn't in the story at all but you managed to insert it anyway.

------
esotericn
This whole thing seems so absurd to me.

The article quotes a rate of 300 items per hour.

If it were 100 items per hour, you'd still be talking about ten cents per item
of labour cost.

No-one would care if their items cost that much more.

~~~
paggle
The items already cost what the customer will pay. Jeff Bezos cares if he
makes that much less profit. Also, there is more fixed cost than the labor
(facility, lights, certain robots, etc).

------
Waterluvian
I speak for myself and not my employer, past or present.

More and more facilities are becoming robot centric. The only reason humans
exist in the robot facilities is because they do something robots don't do
well yet. Usually grabbing objects of varying shapes, sizes, and weights.

It's unsurprising that these facilities are moving at such a pace that they're
becoming increasingly dangerous and inhumane.

I have, in the past or present, watched with immense data fidelity as humans
at these facilities became the weakest link and that weakness only grew as
robot evolution further outpaced them.

I'm convinced that the only humane future for these facilities is one entirely
devoid of humans. I doubt you'll ever convince management to slow the robots
way down and keep them like that.

There are robots available today that are a lot less dangerous than the
Kiva/Amazon deathfloors. But I don't see that remaining true as KPIs endlessly
march upwards.

~~~
mc32
I think you're right that in this mix the robots will win.

Amazon is working to automate their logistics as much as possible --but I
think they should do it in a way more human way. They should design their
process with people in mind and keep people's well being and limits in mind
when designing as well as when managing people.

Unionization is not an answer, well it might be but only temporarily as most
people in fulfilment will be out of the picture. Given that, I would hope
Amazon does the right thing, but I kind of doubt it.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Unionization is only one component. The other is taxing automation.

~~~
mc32
How do you tax automation? Do you reschedule depreciation or something?

The reality is our pop growth is slowing so that these low skills jobs are
being eliminated might not be detrimental to our future workforce. The problem
is we have sent medium/semi skilled jobs overseas and didn't prepare our
workforce for it nor did we "tax" the job shipping to compensate the injured
(affected) workforce. We're slapping some tariffs 30 years too late, but I
guess it's better then nothing.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Changes to depreciation treatment in general, taxing revenue instead of
profits above a certain target, lots of policy tools available to balance
corporate and citizen interests.

A lot of damage to be undone, as you mentioned. I’m not against automation, by
any means, just how the gains and productivity from it is currently
distributed (versus more equitable models).

