[HN Gopher] California bill passes, giving Amazon workers power ...
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California bill passes, giving Amazon workers power to fight speed
quotas
Author : throwawaysea
Score : 183 points
Date : 2021-09-09 16:12 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| nikkinana wrote:
| Now unionize!
| coding123 wrote:
| It's so weird that this is even needed. I mean didn't they
| already have laws that requires breaks, etc... Leave it to Amazon
| to come up with a legal or computational strategy to work around
| the existing laws.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Pretty rich when Jeff Bezos is attacking SpaceX on the grounds
| that Musk doesn't respect the law. Like, he's not wrong, but
| that's solid "takes one to know one" territory right there.
| tyingq wrote:
| Seems like the laws that require breaks don't preclude setting
| piecework quotas that make them impossible to use.
|
| See https://www.scribd.com/document/407590982/Amazon-
| Termination...
|
| Scroll down to "The system also tracks an associates time off
| task" It basically admits that "time off task" doesn't
| automatically account for bathroom breaks. You have to ask a
| manager to include each one, during the conversation where
| you're being scolded for high "time off task"! The wording in
| this section is Amazon's wording, too. Oof.
|
| Edit: After a bit of searching, there don't appear to be any
| federal laws requiring breaks in the US, and there are many
| states that don't have any either.
|
| Breaks: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/rest-periods
|
| Meals: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/meal-breaks
| kelnos wrote:
| It feels like most problems like this end up being defection
| scenarios in the prisoner's dilemma.
|
| If every worker would just take their breaks, and allow their
| quotas to slip, what is Amazon going to do? Fire everyone?
| But instead, individuals decide to look out for themselves
| first, and defect, which causes everyone to be miserable,
| including themselves.
|
| I don't blame them in the slightest for this, but it still
| makes me sad. I guess this is what unions are for. Oh wait,
| Amazon engages in union-busting, never mind.
| shados wrote:
| Yup. These type of quotas are often used for promotion
| opportunities, too, so the carrot on the stick is very
| tempting. If they can just push themselves a little harder,
| they could make more money. If you push that to its
| extreme, you end up with people harming themselves quite a
| bit. Like you said, prisoner's dilemma.
| jonshariat wrote:
| Nurses also have this problem. On a busy floor, they rarely
| get to use their breaks or have to quickly scarf down some
| food and run back.
| thebradbain wrote:
| (Not all, but many) Nurses/Doctors are exempt employees
| though, which has its own set of rules. Warehouse workers
| aren't, generally
| bluedino wrote:
| Most nurses are hourly.
| chefandy wrote:
| When I was working in restaurants a decade ago, getting
| breaks was the exception rather than the norm.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Americans may think they are the kings of capitalism but
| I have seen things...
|
| I saw a Polish kapo beat someone who said he was too sick
| to work. It's almost a concentration camp out there but
| most of the public will never know. One day we will run
| out of folks to exploit but until then full steam ahead I
| suppose.
| bluedino wrote:
| Depends on the culture/management. Some placed I worked
| forced the staff to go on break. Retail is the same way.
| [deleted]
| dsr_ wrote:
| It turns out that it is not enough to pass a law; it must be
| enforced, and it must be enforced even-handedly.
| shados wrote:
| America is amazing at passing feel good laws without thinking
| about the enforcement logistics.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| yes, waste of money without. They are probably big enough to
| merrit permanent inspectors on the floor.
|
| Lets give them a quota in attention points to point out - or
| be fired.
| lhorie wrote:
| Regulations about breaks don't really cover this situation. The
| gist, as I understand, is that Amazon requires workers to meet
| very specific productivity metrics such that the employment
| becomes a trade-off between efficiency and employee well-being.
| My understanding is that there isn't anything in the books that
| quantify exactly what's the minimum acceptable amount of
| "slacking off" an employee is allowed to engage in (I'm using
| the term "slacking off" loosely here to mean anything that
| isn't strictly actively engaging 100% in whatever is considered
| "productive"). In other words, there's nothing that
| specifically says "employers can't get you into hot water
| because you walked too slow from this shelf to that shelf"
|
| The thing I constantly find weird about California regulation
| these days is how short sighted and micro-managey it all is.
| This one clearly is explicitly targeted at Amazon, the AB5/Prop
| 22 pair is specifically targeted at Uber/Lyft, etc.
|
| It strikes me as a deep lack of understanding about how policy
| making is supposed to work. Ideally, policy is supposed to be
| something you get experts to research holistically, present
| data on and implement based on certain expectations of how pros
| and cons are supposed to play out. California policy making
| looks to me more like a reactive game of whack-a-mole, trying
| to put out whatever is the fire du jour with hacks and bandaids
| and hoping the new rules don't cause any collateral damage.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| All the experts are bought and paid for by someone these days
| though. Who exactly are you supposed to be asking about
| something like this?
|
| And if you look at Universities, well good luck. They have a
| known ideological bent that would cause recommendations that
| are skewed the other way.
| tdeck wrote:
| Well, in terms of AB5 the federal government tried to head
| this one off with broad legislation 83 years ago. The Fair
| Labor Standards Act defines an "employ" as "to suffer or
| permit to work" specifically because they understood that
| employers would try to classify workers as anything other
| than an employee in order to get around the law. It doesn't
| seem to have worked out that way, so there's an argument for
| being a bit more specific. (I learned about this from this
| excellent podcast: https://www.marketplace.org/shows/the-
| uncertain-hour/to-suff...)
|
| I think the underlying problem is that these employers have
| disproportionate power, influence, and resources, along with
| endless creativity. If they can't get the government fully on
| their side every time, they'd rather it be dysfunctional.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _California policy making looks to me more like a reactive
| game of whack-a-mole, trying to put out whatever is the fire
| du jour with hacks and bandaids and hoping the new rules don
| 't cause any collateral damage._
|
| I was thinking exactly this while reading this article. I was
| really hoping to read that this was a much more generic law
| that strengthens worker protections, that also just happens
| to help with the problems in Amazon warehouses. But, nope,
| just feels like "injustice whack-a-mole". That's not a good
| way to develop policy at all.
| shados wrote:
| I've worked in logistics and supply chain for a while, and
| that type of quota is pretty much the norm (honestly, it kind
| of is in any job that is easy to quantify, like call centers,
| sales, and some segments of retail).
|
| The way the quotas get set is kind of as a bell curve. You
| set quotas, including threshold for promotions, as some where
| you'll get let go. They hire people, and those folks thrive
| to meet the quota/make more money. If everyone is doing so
| well that the tip of the bell curve is too much to the right,
| they increase the quota. If they have trouble hiring and
| everyone's leaving, or if they end up needing to let go too
| many people, they lower it.
|
| Of course, a company could push it way too far if they have
| enough power and a big enough employee pool. They can then
| put super high quotas and only keep people who can push it
| that far (probably where the whole "peeing in bottles" come
| from).
|
| The concept itself isn't that weird. Maybe weird to people
| who mostly worked in salaried jobs that are hard to quantify.
|
| Where it becomes a problem is when too many people are
| desperate enough for money that they're willing to literally
| harm themselves to meet their quotas or get promoted. That's
| probably where regulators came from with this type of law. I
| didn't read it, but that sounds really tough to implement.
| [deleted]
| lovich wrote:
| How does flagging or making a comment dead work in hn? I thought
| it occurred after many downvotes but I managed to check this
| thread <60 seconds after 'Nikki nana posted
|
| >Now unionize!
|
| And the comment is already [dead]. That feels like it could only
| happen if there were bots downvoting instantly
| [deleted]
| Nicksil wrote:
| I _think_ it 's an automatic thing if the user is banned or
| suspended; like a shadow ban. So, there may very well not have
| been a number of down-voters and was simply dead from the
| start.
| eganist wrote:
| That just means they're shadowbanned, as I understand it. And
| that tracks with all their other comments being dead.
|
| Flagged to death will say both flagged and dead.
| adwn wrote:
| > _That just means they 're shadowbanned, as I understand
| it._
|
| And for good reason, judging by their other comments.
| bhhaskin wrote:
| Also keep in mind that a two word comment doesn't really add to
| the conversation. Low effort comments tend to be down voted.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| There's a "comments" link in the header that shows the newest
| comments across all stories. People could be refreshing that
| and acting on comments without checking every individual story.
| This could be a good way to help moderate a lot of low quality
| comments, but the people doing it might not have all the
| context.
| kodah wrote:
| That probably means that they have been banned which starts
| their post at -4 karma and requires vouching in order to list
| publicly. This only happens for repeated bad behavior.
| the-dude wrote:
| AFAIK you only need 4.
| whyenot wrote:
| What warehouse workers need is a union or some other structure
| that represents employees and can bargain on their behalf. Yes,
| there have been a lot of problems with unions, in the US, in the
| past, but that doesn't mean the need for worker representation
| has gone away.
| tyingq wrote:
| They tried in Alabama, but it didn't get enough votes.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/04/09/982139494/its-a-no-amazon-war...
| asdff wrote:
| If I had to pick any amazon warehouse in the country with
| workers least likely to vote for their own self interests, it
| would probably be in Alabama or Texas. If this vote had
| happened in a state like Oregon it would have probably passed
| and Amazon knows it. Brilliant move by Amazon having the
| first union vote here since Amazon can now point to their
| workers "deciding against a union" whenever it comes up again
| in the press, and other warehouses probably lost a lot of
| wind in their sails for the unionization movement too after
| this failure.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The problem with unions is that skilled workers don't need them
| and unskilled workers have no power even in a union.
|
| Skilled workers are scarce, so they already have negotiating
| power at the individual level and collective bargaining is just
| overhead and another bureaucracy to take a vig that could have
| gone into your paycheck.
|
| Unskilled workers aren't scarce, so what happens if they
| unionize? The union strikes, the company hires a different set
| of unskilled workers and all the union workers get is laid off.
|
| This is especially true for an Amazon warehouse because there
| are thousands of them all over the world. If the workers at a
| warehouse near San Francisco strike, not only can they easily
| hire different workers, they can just send everybody their
| stuff from another warehouse in Nevada or any of a thousand
| other places.
|
| What unskilled workers need isn't a union, it's some way to
| make unskilled labor more scarce, e.g. a UBI so that people
| aren't so desperate for a job and can hold out for better pay
| and working conditions.
| fallingknife wrote:
| > it's some way to make unskilled labor more scarce
|
| Maybe don't allow employers to hire 10's of millions of
| illegal immigrants under the table?
| kelnos wrote:
| Care to back up a wild claim like that with some citations?
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Skilled workers are scarce, so they already have
| negotiating power at the individual level and collective
| bargaining is just overhead and another bureaucracy to take a
| vig that could have gone into your paycheck.
|
| Totally disagree with this. Being skilled at your job doesn't
| necessarily mean you are skilled at negotiating your pay or
| working conditions. These are entirely different skills. We
| all know people who are not as good at their jobs, but are
| smooth talkers and good negotiators, and vice versa is true,
| too. I know for sure that I could be making a lot more if I
| had a professional negotiator, whose job and dedicated skill
| it was to negotiate, either collectively bargaining or
| bargaining on my behalf.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| People like to say skilled workers don't need unions but I
| never heard a convincing argument about why.
|
| Most of the fields I think of when I think of successful
| unions in the US are ones I consider skilled
|
| -teachers
|
| -electricians
|
| -carpenters
|
| -airline pilots
|
| -actors
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| On your list are one group of government employees, three
| licensed industries and one of the last industries to still
| be dominated by a tightly knit cartel (the big Hollywood
| movie studios).
|
| Public sector unions are negotiating with a monopoly. In
| that sense they actually do something. The problem is that
| the monopoly is the government and then the union is a
| labor monopoly acting in opposition to the public rather
| than a capitalist private business. This is great for
| teachers but terrible for students and parents and
| taxpayers.
|
| The unions in licensed industries are unions because the
| law privileges unions, but in practice they're lobbying
| organizations. Your local electrician doesn't need a union
| to negotiate with you when you want a generator panel
| installed in your house. Their actual purpose is regulatory
| capture, and then you have the same problem as the teachers
| unions, e.g. the union lobbies to make it harder for people
| to become electricians to reduce competition to the
| detriment of prospective electricians and the general
| public who then has to pay more for the services of the
| people already in the club.
|
| And then Hollywood is a cartel in need of some antitrust
| enforcement, which is the one place where unions actually
| do something useful (but the better solution is still
| busting the trust).
| kelnos wrote:
| > _This is great for teachers but terrible for students
| and parents and taxpayers._
|
| Given how poorly public K-12 teachers are paid in the US,
| I don't think this is an accurate statement.
| asdff wrote:
| >The problem with unions is that skilled workers don't need
| them
|
| Entirely disagree. Unions for skilled workers would mean that
| when you go into surgery for a car accident the doctor who is
| putting you back together actually had a full night of sleep
| that day.
| burnished wrote:
| I generally agree with your conclusion and recognize your
| arguments. This might just be ignorance on my part, but don't
| we have a history of unions fighting for labor rights and
| securing real improvements for unskilled labor? My
| understanding is they've been sharply eroded, but minimum
| wage and a 40 hour work week alone seem like incredible
| improvements.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Most of the successful 20th century unions weren't
| representing unskilled workers, they were representing
| skilled workers against employers so large that they had
| market power in the labor market for that type of skilled
| labor, like the Big 3 auto makers.
|
| The problem for those workers was that although they were
| skilled labor, the number of employers who needed auto
| workers was small enough for them to act as a cartel. The
| concentrated market offset the negotiating power of a
| skilled individual, but at the same time, a company that
| employed a third of the auto workers in the country
| couldn't just replace them all if they went on strike.
|
| But that was kind of a pathological circumstance and the
| better solution in that case is to do some trust busting.
| Or if competition increases on its own as it did from the
| Japanese automakers during the oil crisis.
|
| The closest thing to that in the modern economy is the
| relationship between app developers and platform app
| stores. It's the same sort of cartelized market. But some
| trust busting would work there too.
|
| And other markets don't look like that. If you're actually
| an employee of Google or Apple, they don't have anything
| like market power in that labor market, because it's the
| same skillset to go and work for Facebook or Microsoft or
| Netflix or a million other places including a large number
| of smaller companies and startups. And if you're a worker
| at an Amazon warehouse, it's not skilled labor.
|
| > My understanding is they've been sharply eroded, but
| minimum wage and a 40 hour work week alone seem like
| incredible improvements.
|
| Most of the claimed victories were symbolic, because they
| were things that were happening anyway and then legislators
| passed laws requiring them after they'd mostly already
| happened so they could say they were doing something.
|
| Workers expect to be paid more to work 80 hours instead of
| 40, so given the choice between paying one worker for 80
| hours and two workers for 40 hours, employers found the
| second option led to higher worker productivity and
| reliability because the workers weren't constantly
| exhausted and making mistakes and didn't as often quit from
| burnout.
|
| Around 2% of people in the US make minimum wage. In other
| words, ~98% of employers pay more than that even though the
| law doesn't require them to, because the market does. And
| even without minimum wage, the other 2% would be making
| around the same amount of money, because the employer still
| has to offer enough to get the employee to accept the job.
|
| Minimum wage is even harmful to employees because it forces
| them into bad trade offs they otherwise wouldn't have
| taken. There might have been a job paying $6/hour across
| the street from your apartment, but it goes away if minimum
| wage is $7.25 and then you have to take a job at $7.25
| which is an hour away and costs you more than $1.25/hour in
| commuting expenses, plus the lost time and significantly
| increased risk of a car accident.
|
| Likewise, the limit on hours or requirements to pay
| overtime can hurt workers, because if you need the extra
| hours, people end up taking a second job instead, which
| still doesn't pay time and a half but now you have two
| commutes instead of having one commute to a single job
| where you take two shifts.
|
| The things that help workers are the things that actually
| increase their negotiating power. Artificial price controls
| don't really do that, because when your negotiating power
| isn't actually any better, you just end up forced to accept
| worse terms on some other dimension, like the longer
| commute.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _If you 're actually an employee of Google or Apple,
| they don't have anything like market power in that labor
| market, because it's the same skillset to go and work for
| Facebook or Microsoft or Netflix or a million other
| places including a large number of smaller companies and
| startups._
|
| I don't know that I'd be so sure about that:
| https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-offer-415-million-
| to-...
|
| I agree that the market is larger, but that doesn't keep
| some of the big players from banding together against
| employee interests.
| narrator wrote:
| Skilled workers have unions. For example, airline pilots have
| some pretty strong unions. The jobs that don't work as unions
| are where workers are not interchangeable because of large
| differences in talent. This makes it a bad deal for highly
| talented members of that professions to be in the union, as
| they can get paid a lot more than the average because of
| their exceptional talent. If they were in a union, they would
| be more likely to get paid the same as other members of the
| union. For example, software developers have wide differences
| in talent and ability, and thus pay, and that's why they
| don't unionize. An airplane pilot can only be so good at
| their job though, even though it takes years of training, so
| they benefit from a union.
| moduspol wrote:
| I generally agree with your take, although professional
| sports players have unions that seem to work well for them
| despite being skilled workers with large differences in
| talent.
|
| I guess there's no hard requirement that unions get
| involved in pay negotiations, and that's the only one I
| know of that seems to have workers' pay in-line with actual
| market factors. It's not like Tom Brady has to get paid the
| same amount as a lesser-performing quarterback just because
| they've been doing it the same amount of years.
| adwn wrote:
| > _What unskilled workers need isn 't a union, it's some way
| to make unskilled labor more scarce, e.g. a UBI [...]_
|
| Here in Germany, unions work as intended. The solution is
| simple: you can't be fired for participating in a strike.
| There, problem solved, no UBI necessary.
|
| > _The problem with unions is that skilled workers don 't
| need them_
|
| Also wrong. There a many unions for skilled workers in
| Germany.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The solution is simple: you can't be fired for
| participating in a strike.
|
| If you're on strike you're not showing up so you're not
| getting paid. They just let you stay on strike forever and
| in the meantime hire somebody else.
|
| Assuming they don't just close the warehouse, so that
| you're not getting fired for going on strike, you're
| getting laid off because the job no longer exists.
| kelnos wrote:
| That doesn't always work, especially when all the workers
| available for those positions are members of a union. And
| closing a warehouse is a drastic measure that will
| undoubtedly cause harm to the company's finances. That's
| not a decision they'd make lightly. Striking actually
| _can_ work, and I find it strange that you seem to
| believe that unions aren 't effective. Despite their
| problems, unions tend to work ok in the US, and even
| better in other places where they have healthier
| attitudes toward employment.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/2021/03/09/975259434/house-democrats-pas...
| (House Democrats Pass Bill That Would Protect Worker Organizing
| Efforts)
|
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/842
| (H.R.842 - Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2021)
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| It's funny, i find anti-union to be nearly identical to anti-
| government.
|
| It seems there are people who feel any organized entity with
| power is bad. Be it government, or union - the effect is the
| same. I can definitely agree that it _can_ be bad, but to me it
| 's the only entity that _should_ be representing me.
| Corporations will have no incentive aligned with myself. Unions
| /Governments serve as a way to organize the people at large.
| Which to me is a wholly good thing.
|
| This organization however does not come without risks. I think
| where we fail as a civilization is recognizing this power
| dynamic and finding ways to monitor corruption. I want to give
| a government power, but i also need ways to monitor them.
| Without know if/when an organization becomes corrupted we have
| no way of healing, and it will always be doomed to fail in the
| worst way.
|
| I'm very pro-union. However we need to figure out monitoring.
| In Governments, and Unions. Otherwise in my view it's just a
| matter of time before they fail.
| badRNG wrote:
| > Be it government, or union - the effect is the same.
|
| I agree with your desire for oversight and accountability for
| either, but there is a difference of at least institutional
| momentum. I don't think anyone would consider institutional
| momentum of the US government to be aligned with the
| interests of workers. I think unions have an opportunity to
| be better and more explicitly aligned with those interests.
| As an employee previously part of a union, the adversarial
| relationship between unions and businesses seems to, at the
| end, strike a balance between the competing interests of the
| workers and the business. A business without unions can be
| like a courtroom without public defenders: not a great place
| to be the little guy.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It seems there are people who feel any organized entity
| with power is bad. Be it government, or union - the effect is
| the same.
|
| I don't think that's true. Those people are typically very
| comfortable with one "organized entity with power" that
| you're leaving out: private capital in its various forms.
| What they're doing is actually defending that against any
| challenges to its power.
|
| Usually those people are laborers like the rest of us, but
| they've been indoctrinated to identify with interests other
| than their own (often reinforced by having a slightly higher
| status than most other laborers, or by unlikely-to-be-met
| aspirations of hitting the jackpot and becoming a wealthy
| capitalist themselves).
| adwn wrote:
| > _one "organized entity with power" that you're leaving
| out: private capital in its various forms_
|
| Private capital is not "one organized entity", especially
| not in "its various forms".
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Private capital is not "one organized entity",
| especially not in "its various forms".
|
| In most cases it's at least as organized as unions. Also,
| a decentralized entity is still an entity.
|
| But my point stands, there are very, very few people who
| actually feel "any organized entity with power is bad."
| If it seems that way, something's being left out of the
| analysis.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Can you explain how "private capital" is "at least as
| organized as unions"? I don't mean to be snarky, but that
| seems axiomatically untrue.
| notJim wrote:
| I'm a different person than you're replying to, but just
| to give some examples of how capital organizes itself,
| there are a ton of organizations they use to represent
| their interests. For example, at every level of
| government, there is a chamber of commerce formed by
| major businesses or their owners. That chamber of
| commerce publishes opinions, lobbies politicians, etc.
| There are also all kinds of think tanks funded and often
| founded by businesspeople to promote their interests. The
| Heritage Foundation is a prominent example. In the US,
| these groups have enormous influence at every level.
| gunshai wrote:
| I think I'd agree with you, but the unionization vote for
| amazon Warehouse workers failed ... by quite a large margin
| already.
|
| It's not lost on me either that a vote of 3000 cast votes is
| not representative of every amazon warehouse, but I would think
| if it's really bad the vote would be much closer.
|
| https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/nlrb-announces...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-violated-
| labor...
|
| > The National Labor Relations Board has determined that
| Amazon violated labor law after workers at its Bessemer,
| Alabama, warehouse tried to join a union, the Retail,
| Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union said Monday.
|
| > The director who presided over the NLRB hearing will
| recommend whether a new election is conducted, the union said
| in a statement, but the final decision whether workers will
| be allowed to cast new ballots and form a union ultimately
| lies with the director of the regional NLRB office based in
| Atlanta.
| [deleted]
| r00fus wrote:
| Wasn't there some rule-breaking on that vote?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28053144
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Minor at best and clearly offset by the national campaign
| for them to vote pro union.
| [deleted]
| asdff wrote:
| The biggest issue with this vote is that it happened in
| Alabama, a state where the republican majority has spent six
| decades villifying labor movements in the eyes of the people
| who would benefit the most for them; Alabama is one of the
| poorest states in the nation. Now look at how good this
| turned out for Amazon. There are now people like you who cite
| this vote and its margin alone, without understanding the
| political context, and use it to suggest that Amazon workers
| would not collectively benefit from unionization. These PR
| people in these large corporations are absolutely brilliant
| at their propaganda. You've been made into an unintentional
| parrot, not your fault considering how hard it is to find
| signal with all the corporate noise that is dumped out there
| in the press these days.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Long term, this accelerates Amazon's robotics development in
| fulfillment centers.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Which is probably for the best.
|
| I'm sure there are more productive or fulfilling things for
| people to be doing than shuffling boxes around.
| eplanit wrote:
| "I'm sure there are more productive or fulfilling things for
| people to be doing..."
|
| I love the irony that they work in "Fufillment Centers".
| kukx wrote:
| If shuffling boxes around gets them the highest pay they can
| get on the market it just may be the most productive thing
| they can do! That means being a useful cog in a very
| effective machine.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Unless Amazon can do the same work for less overall cost
| with robots.
|
| I guess my point is that the potential for automation
| doesn't seem a compelling argument to worsen working
| conditions
| kukx wrote:
| My point is that being a cog in the larger machine may be
| the most productive thing for a person. Even if it means
| doing a boring, repetitive job. For example someone
| shuffling boxes in Amazon may be way more productive than
| an office worker in some small company.
| McWobbleston wrote:
| I think it's important to highlight the difference
| between productive and profitable here. There's likely
| many things someone could do that's more productive, as
| in creates a benefit for those around them, but those
| productive things aren't always paid. What these workers
| are doing is getting the highest wage they can by
| engaging in work owners of capital believe will lead to
| profits from the market
| kukx wrote:
| The terms productive and profitable are tightly related
| to each other. Of course you can argue about definitions,
| but I think I understand what you mean anyway. Yes, some
| things are hard or impossible to price (measure). But
| nonetheless pricing is the best tool in this complex
| world that we have for deciding what is most productive.
| We get monetary compensation for our work that we can
| exchange for the work of others. The more we earn the
| more we can do. We can help others with our earnings,
| maybe more this way than by direct contribution. It is a
| matter of specialization and division of labor that helps
| everyone be more productive.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I think the OP just means productiveness in time, ie.
| spending 8-10 hours a day moving product while being paid
| 2x but working 3x as hard isn't as 'productive' as if you
| were doing something you loved for those 8-10 working
| hours, even if you were being paid a median $7.50/hr wage
| (not that most would achieve this by working the gas
| station register). If everyone could get a free education
| in what they want to do for a living, people wouldn't
| choose to work at Amazon and waste a third of their daily
| life moving boxes.
|
| The root of the problem is that Amazon's $15/hr minimum
| attracts talent as a result of the price of things,
| including rent, continuing to rise, sometimes up to 15%
| YOY - people are often required to either work 16 hours a
| day at 2 jobs or work 8-10 hours at Amazon to reach the
| minimum income needed to have nice-enough living
| conditions.
| kukx wrote:
| I do not perceive productive as equal to fulfilling. But
| I understand you mean that for some people the sacrifice
| would not be worth the extra pay. It is another issue.
| Being a cog in a machine for x hours a day is a
| sacrifice. One voluntarily becomes a slave but in return
| can enjoy the fruits of the labour in the leisure time.
|
| Regarding the matter of education, it is not always an
| option to do what ones enjoy for a living no matter the
| acquired knowledge and the degree that confirms that.
| Some work is more valued than other. The market, we,
| decide that by our selective spending. One can become
| expert in the ancient history and end up working at
| Starbucks just because there is no need for their
| knowledge.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I'm not super thrilled, given our current supply chains, about
| making another important sector (distributing basic goods like
| food) of the US economy 100% dependent on semiconductors from
| the pacific rim.
| kukx wrote:
| Or mid term. I wonder if there is a study that looks into this
| problem. I suppose it backfires similarly to minimum wage. The
| legislation while helping some workers will hurt others. I
| doubt it will be net positive.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| I would be surprised if Amazon wasn't investing everything they
| could into automated fulfillment centers. The factor for
| switching over is the viability of the technology, not the cost
| of labor.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| On the front of this, it seems odd for legislation to target a
| specific company or a few companies. But as power concentrates in
| the hands of a few conglomerates, policy will need to be tailored
| to addressing those conglomerates head on. While universal policy
| would be nice, it is both impractical to write and easy to avoid.
| clairity wrote:
| > "While universal policy would be nice, it is both impractical
| to write and easy to avoid."
|
| rather, every law should scale with (economic and political)
| power, to create fairer markets, better representation, and
| more equitability, as conglomerates of any sort should be
| designed to benefit the public at large, not the principals
| only. for instance, fines for corporate malfeasance should be
| much higher proportionally than for small businesses (who have
| little/no market power). some laws try to approximate this with
| step functions, often a single cutoff (like "greater than 50
| employees"), but those practically invite evasion (e.g., by
| creating 50-employee subsidiaries).
| tyingq wrote:
| It is odd that it specifically only applies to "Warehouse
| Distribution Centers". I imagine the same problems exist in
| other industries.
|
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
| gruez wrote:
| >It is odd that it specifically only applies to "Warehouse
| Distribution Centers".
|
| It's not odd at all when you consider how long of an
| exemption list AB-5 came with.
| tyingq wrote:
| It ends up either being an inclusion list or an exemption
| list at some point. I think it's odd to start with only one
| industry.
| charlesju wrote:
| Honest question, if you were running Amazon, how do you protect
| against bad actors or poor performers? Do you leave it solely to
| the discretion of the managers? How do you judge manager
| performance, solely by morale?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Honest question, if you were running Amazon, how do you
| protect against bad actors or poor performers?
|
| define poor performers.
|
| I've work for abusive corporations that were setting impossible
| goals and called employees "poor performers" and fired them
| when these impossible goals were not met.
| bluedino wrote:
| Employees who produce less than others. Say John packs 50% as
| many orders as Jim. Should he be fired?
| yifanl wrote:
| Depends on what that means in absolute terms, how many Jims
| can you expect to hire?
| bell-cot wrote:
| And we know that John is not getting handed the bigger /
| tougher orders to pack while Jim is cherry-picking the easy
| ones, and ... ?
| judge2020 wrote:
| And so defining the level of work required in law is
| usually not going to help anyone. This is why unions
| exist - so the people that know the workplace and subject
| matter best can negotiate to make the job fair.
| kelnos wrote:
| ... which is the ridiculous thing. As much as unions do
| have problems, I think a better fix to all of this would
| be a law that just said "all warehouse employees must be
| a member of an independent labor union". Amazon has
| fought tooth and nail to keep their warehouse workers out
| of unions.
|
| (I don't _love_ this sort of law, but it 'll probably
| give these workers a better outcome than they have now,
| and likely a better outcome than the law that we're
| talking about here.)
| notJim wrote:
| Is having quotas itself a problem, or is it that the quotas are
| too demanding and rigid? From what I've read, it's very hard
| for most people to meet them, and injuries are common. Turnover
| is also very high. Quotas do have the benefit of being
| objective, which is good for workers too. It's harder for a
| manager to fire someone for discriminatory reasons if they're
| meeting an objective criteria, for example.
|
| It seems like instead you could make the quotas challenging,
| but not to an extent that they're impossible for most people to
| meet without injuring themselves. You could also have some (but
| not infinite) flexibility to allow for bathroom and lunch
| breaks.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| good question!
|
| At 200 per hour each customer paid 18 seconds in salary. At 15
| usd/h that is 7.5 cent.
|
| You could double the salary and half the load and pay 30 cents
| per customer.
|
| i wouldnt care. on 50 usd average order its nothing
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if you were running Amazon, how do you protect against bad
| actors or poor performers? Do you leave it solely to the
| discretion of the managers?_
|
| You take the explicit metric and make it unsaid. Over the
| course of a few months, if a worker isn't meeting their "goal",
| they're given a generic performance warning. If they don't
| improve, they're terminated.
|
| This is why workers need a way to push back on quotas.
| core-utility wrote:
| So instead of the workers knowing the metric out in the open,
| you hide it from them and secretly judge them on it?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _instead of the workers knowing the metric out in the
| open, you hide it from them and secretly judge them on it?_
|
| I'm not advocating this. But it's how most management is
| done. Pushing back only on quotas, without otherwise
| empowering the labor force, will almost certainly lead to
| such a regression.
| kelnos wrote:
| Quotas are fine, as long as they are reasonable, and workers
| don't need to skip food and bathroom breaks in order to make
| them.
|
| The problem seems to be that Amazon has ahead of time decided
| the level of "productivity" they want, as well as the amount of
| money they want to spend on labor, instead of actually
| measuring bad/average/good productivity on its own, and then
| setting quotas (and expectations of labor cost) based on that.
| whack wrote:
| There's an obvious way that Amazon would workaround this law.
| They can drop their base wage for all employees to the minimum
| wage. And offer performance-based bonuses that bring the average
| wage back to what it is today. I don't see how the law would
| handle this. I can't think of any reasonable way to outlaw _"
| we'll pay you more for doing more work"_ policies. Even if it
| leads to the exact same outcome - most workers will do exactly
| what they are doing now, because everyone wants to get paid more.
|
| There is another obvious solution here. Increase budgets for
| Earned-Income-Tax-Credits or initiate a Universal Basic Income.
| This would increase the baseline standard-of-living for all
| workers, so that they would have better alternatives to what
| Amazon is offering. Of course, this would also mean that the
| average taxpayer would need to accept his obligations to his
| fellow citizen, and shoulder the cost of doing so. Not nearly as
| popular as outsourcing this responsibility to private companies.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Without greater taxes on the beneficiaries of Amazon's profits
| (shareholders and people whose salaries are dependent on
| company performance like the CEO), UBI is itself a subsidy to
| those beneficiaries.
| jancsika wrote:
| > They can drop their base wage for all employees to the
| minimum wage.
|
| 1: set of people willing to take a job with decent pay/benefits
| and then find out over the course of probably months that they
| are in a current day episode of Black Mirror where the job has
| been scientifically designed to burn them out.
|
| 2: set of people willing to take a job for minimum wage with
| the "freedom" to hit stretch goals and make their wildest
| dreams come true!
|
| I claim that set 1 has more people in it.
|
| I offer into evidence the fact that Amazon already chose #1
| when choosing #2 would have been vastly more cost effective for
| them if the sets contained the same number of people.
| jxramos wrote:
| Don't quotas already exist in other forms of unionized work; like
| I recall hearing electrical unions have designated time quotas
| for completing certain jobs? Maybe that memory is off though or
| inaccurate.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think quotas are fine, as long as they aren't unreasonable to
| the point that workers need to forego bathroom breaks in order
| to meet them.
|
| I think the problem is that Amazon probably does this
| completely backwards. Quotas should be based on tracking the
| output of all your workers and deciding on some percentile to
| use as a baseline. And this output needs to be tracked when no
| quotas are in place, so you get an idea of what "normal" work
| looks like.
|
| Instead, I expect that Amazon essentially says "we want at
| least X packages to move through here every Y hours, and we
| want to spend no more than $A on warehouse workers, so that
| means we'll hire no more than B workers, so they'll just have
| to work as hard as it takes". That's obviously a recipe for
| unrealistic expectations and a lot of overwork.
|
| Since you bring up unions, the quotas are almost certainly
| negotiated by the union, so (hopefully) what's negotiated will
| be much fairer to the workers. But of course Amazon fights
| against their warehouse workers unionizing, in no small part
| due to this.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| At least in those instances, the union can negotiate for better
| (longer) quotas. In Amazon's case, there's no union to
| represent them. There's the companies (that contract with
| Amazon) that the drivers work for, but they're less powerful
| because there's another company right next to you.
| missedthecue wrote:
| In other words, they don't have a cartel/monopoly?
| cma wrote:
| Amazon shareholders get stringent minority shareholder
| protection and legally protected collective voting schemes
| and can openly collude together against workers. A union
| gives somewhat similar rights to a similar stakeholder.
| missedthecue wrote:
| How can I, and Amazon shareholder, go collude with other
| Amazon shareholders? Tell me how this is possible. I've
| never heard of it.
|
| You can only collude with someone you were in competition
| with. Shareholders of the same company by definition
| cannot collude with each other because they are not
| competing. Collusion would be Walmart and Target and
| Costco and Amazon unionizing together to negotiate wages.
| nicoffeine wrote:
| "collude: cooperate in a secret or unlawful way in order
| to deceive or gain an advantage over others"
|
| Shareholder votes are public, but anonymous. The more
| typical scenario is that you hold on to the shares and
| create demand for the stock as a sign of your approval.
| Unless you own tens of thousands or more shares, you were
| probably not invited to the perfectly legal but private
| discussions about the proposals.
|
| Shareholders recently voted against every single proposal
| that was also opposed by Amazon.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.geekwire.com/2021/final-tally-amazon-
| shareholder...
| Jensson wrote:
| Amazon workers have the right to unionize if they want to. If
| state politicians can't convince them to unionize and instead
| have to pass laws targeting just that company because they
| didn't unionize then maybe there is a problem with the
| politicians instead.
| missedthecue wrote:
| That's because repairing an electrical outage is unpredictable.
| There are a lot of uncontrollable variables. However, jobs like
| manufacturing definitely have quotas. I know for a fact that
| they exist at the heavily unionized auto-manufacturing
| facilities in the US.
| da_chicken wrote:
| If they do, I'm sure they're not so tight that the electrician
| won't be able to stop and go to the bathroom, or facilitate
| soft bans on potentially mandatory break times.
|
| How often have you seen linepersons diligently working after a
| heavy storm while doing the pee-pee dance?
| [deleted]
| klyrs wrote:
| Submitting a trademark application for "Work Ethic" branded
| adult diapers; watch this space.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| While the PR campaign is pretty strongly against quotas, the
| underlying law doesn't attempt to prohibit quotas, only provide
| a straightforward avenue for employees to challenge quotas
| which are too strict to let them take breaks and such.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They'll just do away with hard quotas and tell them they are
| "slow" or "could be doing more". This is what happens at my
| company since they aren't allowed to count story points, but they
| just do it behind the scenes anyways.
| q1w2 wrote:
| In higher level tech jobs, we struggle to find good metrics to
| measure performance, and then in jobs where it's easy to
| measure performance with a clear metric - using it is
| controversial.
|
| Maybe the lesson is that when a metric becomes tangible,
| expectations to meet/exceed those metrics becomes an all-
| encompassing aspect of the job.
| grafelic wrote:
| No big surprise really that scrum would be misused like this.
| It is the perfect recipe for micromanagement. Disgusting none
| the less.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > could be doing more
|
| ... no matter how much time you spend in meetings.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Unless one lives at the office, they could always do more.
| Razengan wrote:
| Until the universe approaches heat death, one could always
| do more.
| tmountain wrote:
| When a metric used for planning is conflated with performance
| measurement, it immediately loses all meaning.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| Now unionize!
| gootler wrote:
| Where's the Amazon Union?
| google234123 wrote:
| I'm not sure the California government ever acts in good faith in
| these matters and the public overwhelmingly is with me: see AB5.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The public would vote for indentured servitude if it kept their
| Amazon retail and Uber services cheap (and in California, they
| did, with Prop 22 [1]). That's why it's important to have
| checks and balances to prevent the tyranny of the majority [2].
| The public voting themselves overly generous government
| benefits is no different than the public voting themselves
| consumer excess on the backs of gig workers.
|
| Sure, unions have problems and labor rights are inconvenient
| for businesses. At the end of the day, people deserve dignity
| and a less miserable work experience than they getting today.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_22
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
| michaelpb wrote:
| If it makes you feel any better about the public, according
| to a poll shortly after[1] ~40% of people voting Yes on Prop
| 22 self-reported that they thought they were voting for the
| option that would classify drivers with more benefits. This
| means a majority of people voting intended to give or
| maintain more regulations and benefits. However, Uber/Lyft
| ran the most expensive campaign in California history,
| burning through 200+ million dollars to confuse the issue,
| and causing many voters (23%) to vote Yes instead of No.
|
| This is a clear corporate-money-dictating-politics thing. I
| used to joke that if the self-driving car thing doesn't pan
| out, there's a always a consultancy pivot ready for Uber.
| "Don't like a law? Have some taxes due? No sweat, for
| $20/vote we can make those pesky taxes disappear!"
|
| [1]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/17/uber-
| ly... - Anecdotally confirmed to me with some canvassing last
| year as well, many (easily more than 23%) were going to vote
| "Yes" since they misinterpreted the question to be the exact
| opposite
| richwater wrote:
| Lol tyranny of the majority keeps Uber cheap?
|
| You know drivers can just stop working if they don't like the
| wage right?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I've lived long enough to quickly suss out humans with a
| lack of empathy and life experience. The life experience I
| can forgive, the lack of empathy I cannot. I hope you
| embrace the opportunity to grow as a human.
| google234123 wrote:
| The essence of democracy is majority rule... Anyway, you
| are missing some empathy with other humans right to
| choose where and how they work.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I get a sense you haven't experienced enough suffering
| for the conclusion you're arriving at. It is easy to
| project onto others that "they should be able to choose
| to work for a pittance if they want", when they don't
| want but have no other options. I'd argue, in a developed
| country with aspirations of being a civil society, you
| set a solid floor for those with the least power instead
| of making excuses that "this is their choice." But, as
| you mention, we all vote and see how it goes.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The essence of democracy is majority rule.
|
| Which is why there aren't many large-scale pure direct
| democracies out there. Most governments are set up to
| have at least some checks and balances to protect
| minority components from majority rule.
| [deleted]
| howinteresting wrote:
| The essence of democracy is _balancing minority rights
| against majority wishes_.
| lhorie wrote:
| That's a bit of a malicious characterization. Prop 22 was
| about trade-offs: more drivers each taking a smaller piece of
| the pie vs less drivers each taking more. The caveat is that
| this trade-off has different levels of impact on consumers
| (less drivers means less availability, slower pick up times
| and higher prices).
|
| A bunch of Uber drivers I've spoken to do it as a side thing,
| to supplement income from other sources. The conundrum is
| that there are a lot of casual drivers and fewer full time
| ones, and those two groups generally sit on opposite ends of
| the debate (casuals don't want to be forced to choose between
| driving and their other income sources, and full time ones
| want employee benefits)
|
| Ultimately, it doesn't boil down to something as sinister as
| a secret desire for indentured servitude, it's simply a
| matter of everyone being selfish. Unions are also a form of
| people being selfish (though collectively). IMHO, the answer
| isn't in bickering on whose selfishness is more warranted,
| it'd be more apt to question why isn't a social net provided
| by the government itself in the first place (in the form of
| public healthcare, unemployment insurance, etc) if they deem
| it important enough to legislate?
| [deleted]
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I'm not sure voters quite understood what Prop 19 did. It was a
| first of it's kind law for the US and the bulk of the TV ad
| spending was misleading (for example app-based taxis have
| significantly increased in price since the law was passed.)
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