[HN Gopher] Amazon warehouse workers stage first-ever strike in ...
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Amazon warehouse workers stage first-ever strike in the UK
Author : bubblehack3r
Score : 233 points
Date : 2023-01-25 12:58 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| leg100 wrote:
| This is incorrect. This is not the first-ever strike. There were
| wildcat strikes across the UK last summer, more widespread than
| today's it would appear:
|
| > https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252523767/UK-Amazon-work...
|
| Media outlets routinely ignore illegal, unofficial, wildcat
| strikes. They are more newsworthy however, because they express
| genuine disillusionment amongst workers and their capability to
| organise themselves without union management.
| nabnob wrote:
| Saving, thanks! And great point.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Every time I tune in to Democracy Now! I'm amazed at how much
| labor action is entirely ignored by most of the media
| (including "leftist" NPR). I mean, it's that or DN is just
| making it up and faking all those interviews they do with
| people involved in it, but I don't think that's the case.
|
| If you don't seek out explicitly pro-labor media like that,
| you'd think there are almost never any strikes or other actions
| by organized labor in the US at all. Maybe like one or two big
| pushes per year from one sector or another (like the railroad
| workers who got screwed recently).
|
| [EDIT] Yet every press release by any halfway-important company
| makes the papers. At least we're honest about what and who
| matter in our system: CAPITAL-ism.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| A third of the workers at one location are striking for one day.
| I somewhat doubt Amazon will listen to their demands.
| ddulaney wrote:
| I think Amazon sees unionization activity as a critical risk
| for them. With a headcount of a million, any increase in cost
| for them is huge. I suspect they are extremely active in
| looking for ways to quash these efforts.
|
| That will probably mostly involve legal corporate messaging,
| illegal corporate intimidation [0], and just shutting down any
| facility that unionizes.
|
| But if the demands are cheap and easy, I could definitely see
| Amazon quietly (extremely quietly!) caving if that would weaken
| the union.
|
| [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/28/amazon-
| st...
| hourago wrote:
| > I think Amazon sees unionization activity as a critical
| risk for them.
|
| Not necessarily Amazon as a company, quite often to improve
| working conditions also improve productivity. But there is a
| risk for upper management that prefers obedient employees
| that accept anything that goes down whatever reasonable or
| not. Lazy management loves employees that work extra hard to
| fill up gaps created by management failures. Many managers
| also think that any feedback from employees will look bad on
| them, even if it just to improve productivity. Finally many
| shareholders just cannot stand the working class and giving
| them even demands that will improve productivity seems scary.
| datavirtue wrote:
| They want loyal employees but get upset when they unionize. A
| union is implicitly a loyal body of employees.
|
| These companies (management monopoly, rather) want to dispose of
| people without a second thought because it is easier and more
| within their abilities.
|
| Unions break the management monopoly and add the capability to
| stop acting like a psychopath.
|
| It's really a government issue. All companies need the same
| circumstances so their competition isn't reaping extra profits by
| treating people worse than dogs.
|
| Workers deserve more protections than consumers.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Solidarity
|
| I feel this is an important movement for both the people involved
| and the competitiveness of employers who treat their staff
| better.
| b3nji wrote:
| Serious question, why don't they just quit, and get another job?
| hezralig wrote:
| Perhaps they like the job.
| 93po wrote:
| Job mobility is not easy for low income earners. Not having a
| paycheck is really difficult if you're living paycheck to
| paycheck. And it's difficult to interview and job hunt if all
| of your free time is spent working, commuting, and caring for
| your family.
|
| Why don't employers just treat workers with basic dignity and a
| level of pay that isn't poverty-level?
| a_c wrote:
| Strike always fascinate me. I wonde if there is any material that
| examine the dynamics of striking? E.g. The impact of striking,
| short term and long term, and its competitiveness relative to
| region without striking. One aspect I find intriguing is that the
| "trigger" of strike is often salary falls behind inflation. On
| the other hand, some portion of inflation is caused by increased
| labour cost. So by the time the strike demand is fulfilled, the
| next strike is in theory in the brewing. What material would you
| suggest to read upon?
| hyperman1 wrote:
| In my experience, the worker treatment is generally as much a
| trigger of strikes as the salary. Here too: [...] long working
| hours, high injury rates, and the unrelenting pace of work, as
| well as aggressive, tech-enhanced monitoring of employees.
| verbify wrote:
| > some portion of inflation is caused by increased labour cost.
| So by the time the strike demand is fulfilled, the next strike
| is in theory in the brewing
|
| The word 'some' is doing heavy lifting. If they get a 10% rise,
| and that causes a 1% increase in inflation (assuming labour
| costs are not necessarily the biggest proportion of the cost of
| goods, and assuming companies eat some of the increased labour
| costs via less money to shareholders rather than raising prices
| for consumers), then there is not necessarily a reason for a
| second strike. I've pulled these numbers for illustrative
| purposes.
|
| A vicious cycle can happen, but it also theoretically doesn't
| need to happen.
| rr888 wrote:
| Me too. I think too the unions work best when its just a small
| part of the population that has the power to get what they
| want. Its like a prisoners dilemma, yhe wider economy can
| support this group being relatively overpaid to keep them
| quiet. However not everyone can be overpaid, and when everyone
| is striking the economy just falls apart.
| troops_h8r wrote:
| So you're saying the only thing keeping the economy together
| is the fact that not too many people have decided to strike?
| Considering that strikes are acts of desperation, I guess
| that means we should hope, for the sake of the system, that
| we don't come across too much desperation any time soon.
|
| Speaking of prisoner"s dilemmas, I wonder how employers
| manage to agree on how much employee desperation they can get
| away with...
| criddell wrote:
| This is something I thought about recently. Say you are
| managing a fast food restaurant that pays employees $15 / hour.
| If you are selling $10 of food every 5 minutes, then that's
| $120 of food per hour.
|
| If you give your cashier a 10% raise, then you have to recover
| another $1.50 / hour so you have to sell $121.50 / hour or
| $10.13 every 5 minutes. So a 10% wage increase for one employee
| translates to raising prices by 1.3%.
|
| I don't know what the economics look like for a warehouse
| worker, but Amazon can afford it and the community Amazon is a
| part of will be better off.
| grecy wrote:
| It's always fascinating to see how the simplest solution of
| all is never even considered.
|
| Reduce profit.
| refurb wrote:
| Why would I invest in a company that returns less than just
| sticking it in the bank?
| anonquixey wrote:
| Raising prices by 1.3% also has some impact on sales. In
| theory it should be greater than 1.3% (or else why hasn't the
| restaurant greedily raised its prices already). To get higher
| wages for the workers you need one of two things.
|
| 1. Go upmarket in some way, either sell nicer food with a
| better margin or higher more oroductive employees.
|
| 2. Through collective action of some kind get all competitors
| to raise their prices and pass the cartel profits to the
| worker (for instance a minimum wage law could accomplish
| this).
| knute wrote:
| I don't think that those are the only two solutions. Off
| the top of my head you could
|
| 1. Reduce expenses in other areas
|
| 2. Accept the reduced profit
|
| 3. Find that the cost is offset by more productive
| employees either through morale increase or improved
| recruiting
| mjburgess wrote:
| Profit in most industries is a few percent, esp.
| retail/food which are often c. 1%.
|
| The markets are highly competitive, and consumers will
| compare two stores: A, B and choose the cheaper.
| knute wrote:
| I think there's a lot more that goes into where someone
| chooses to eat than price, otherwise Taco Bell would be
| putting Chipotle out of business.
|
| As explained above, I don't take it as a given that
| increased employee wages require increased prices.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Then have a look into how much a taco bell franchise
| makes: https://sharpsheets.io/blog/taco-bell-franchise-
| costs-profit...
|
| It's 15% "profit" on paper, but a franchiser is typically
| in debt for the first 12 years of the store before they
| make any "net profit".
|
| So we're talking an industry where most of the so-called
| "capitalists" are in debt.
|
| This is a hyper-competitive market place, and one play
| only adding on %s to their products will be a hit to
| their competitiveness.
|
| _They_ dont decided prices, the market does.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| It's incredibly naive of you to forget important business
| expenses that NEEDS to follow any price raise: exec bonuses,
| stock buybacks, etc. After all of that is done, maybe there
| is room for a 1% infreas in the cashier wage? Obviously, if
| the cashier isn't happy with that, that's because the new
| generations don't want to work and just want to TikTok all
| day. /s
| xeromal wrote:
| I'd posit the majority restaurants in your /s example don't
| have executives, bonuses, or stock buybacks. They're tiny
| little operations with tiny little profit margins.
| bwestergard wrote:
| "On the other hand, some portion of inflation is caused by
| increased labour cost. So by the time the strike demand is
| fulfilled, the next strike is in theory in the brewing."
|
| It depends on both "technology" (the inputs required to produce
| each output in the consumption bundle for workers) and purely
| distributive variables (how revenues are split between labor
| and capital). Generally speaking, widespread strike activity
| will tend to shift revenue from capital to labor.
|
| Countries where labor is organized and thus has a credible
| strike threat generally have a much more equal distribution of
| income, and most workers work fewer hours per year.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > E.g. The impact of striking, short term and long term, and
| its competitiveness relative to region without striking.
|
| That one is simple. The US for example has at-will employment,
| no mandatory paid time off, not even a right for mothers for
| paid time off post-birth [1]. In contrast, the entire EU has
| minimum four weeks paid time off, mandatory minimum time
| advance before a firing (exceptions apply for cases of gross
| misconduct), and plans to have a mandatory minimum of six weeks
| PTO post-birth and 20 weeks in total for the parents.
|
| Additionally, even in Europe one can clearly see the difference
| between riot-happy nations such as France, which has a pension
| age of 62, and Germany which has 65-67 (depending on how old
| you are). France's Macron is trying to reform this and raise
| the limit, he has already tried once and got burned by a
| massive strike and riot wave and right now is on his second
| attempt, and again massive strikes.
|
| > On the other hand, some portion of inflation is caused by
| increased labour cost.
|
| Only minimally. The worst contributor to inflation is simply
| corporate and CEO greed - wages in Europe have stagnated over
| the last decades [2].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave_in_the_United_S...
|
| [2] https://www.boeckler.de/de/boeckler-impuls-die-wirtschaft-
| wa...
| Closi wrote:
| > That one is simple. The US for example has at-will
| employment, no mandatory paid time off...
|
| I think they were more talking about the impact on strikes in
| terms of foreign direct investment - where there is definetly
| a link (albeit i'm not sure how strong).
|
| If you are choosing where to locate an international
| manufacturing plant within Europe for instance, the strength
| of unions in each country is 100% a factor which will be
| considered in determining where to locate the factory (not
| the sole factor - but it's absolutely a consideration).
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Germany has the strongest unions there are (at least in
| automotive), and yet Tesla set up shop here. France has a
| sizable amount of industry as well, as does Italy. When
| setting up plants in Europe, unions aren't much of a factor
| - wage costs and infrastructure are more.
| kome wrote:
| a whole field of sociology and industrial relations study just
| that, there is a tsunami of literature on the subject
| a_c wrote:
| I'm extremely ignorant on this subject matter. Any pointer,
| like an author or a book will be highly appreciated!
| kome wrote:
| it's not an easy read for non sociologists, but I would
| start here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00
| 3232920203000...
|
| Korpi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Korpi) is one
| of the big figures of Scandinavian social democracy, and a
| researcher that studied for years the connections between
| social class, welfare, strikes, etc.
|
| But again, I just pick one text, among a tsunami of them.
|
| Check also those journals:
| https://journals.sagepub.com/home/EJD and
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1468232x and
| basically all the journals in this list:
| https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?category=1410
| soperj wrote:
| > On the other hand, some portion of inflation is caused by
| increased labour cost. So by the time the strike demand is
| fulfilled, the next strike is in theory in the brewing.
|
| I think the strikes at Amazon have more to do with working
| conditions than pay. That being said, at already organized
| unions I'd say it's the opposite. No one was looking for big
| pay raises when inflation was low, they look for it when
| inflation is stripping away their salary.
| davidf18 wrote:
| [dead]
| lnsru wrote:
| It's shocking, that there are millions of people picking various
| objects from the boxes every day all over the world. I know,
| robotics is hard. But I would guess, that is couple orders of
| magnitude easier than self driving for example. Light is
| controlled, temperature above freezing point, size of the box
| known, shape and size with weight as well as weight distribution
| of the object are known. Why it is not happening?
| pharmakom wrote:
| I think the tech will get there.
|
| For the shorter term though, imagine a telepresence robot so
| you can hire workers from anywhere in the world.
| iceTA wrote:
| This is the plot of Sleep Dealer.
| monkeydust wrote:
| This is doable today with a robotic arm at least. My friend
| is working on it here in UK.
|
| https://www.extendrobotics.com/
| fortituded0002 wrote:
| > Why it is not happening?
|
| Amazon has been working on robotics for years and has been
| incorporating it into their warehouses for a long time.
|
| https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/warehouse-robotics-
| auto....
|
| Not sure how much I agree with this, but a buddy of mine for
| years talked about how problematic it was for warehouse workers
| to fight for higher wages and more support because their jobs
| would likely be automated away in the near-ish future. His
| argument was that these jobs are not intended to be long-term
| career jobs and that by pretending they are, you run the risk
| of doing people a disservice as they stay longer and they
| become less employable over time.
| Retric wrote:
| The key takeaway here is: "Although many are prototypes, the
| company aims for the bots to _eventually_ make an impact in
| the company's logistics network."
|
| They really don't make significant use of robots.
| fortituded0002 wrote:
| They do. I've seen it. It's been in the works for years.
| Each time I've worked in the warehouses things have
| changed. It's not fully automated, but improvements have
| been made.
| Retric wrote:
| Yet, their number of warehouse employees is still growing
| like an exponential curve. Compare the number of items
| shipped per 1,000 warehouse employees in 2012 vs 2022 and
| no it's not wildly different.
| fortituded0002 wrote:
| > Yet, their number of warehouse employees is still
| growing like an exponential curve. Compare the number of
| items shipped per 1,000 warehouse employees in 2012 vs
| 2022 and no it's not wildly different.
|
| No idea where this data is coming from. But there are a
| lot of factors at play and this is pretty high-level data
| on what could be going on. It doesn't account for changes
| in how the company operates, the number of warehouses
| that are spinning up, how packaging and shipping has
| evolved (moving between warehouses to consolidate
| multiple orders into single shipments, etc), the massive
| spike in orders during the pandemic...
|
| But really, What's your goal here? It seems like you just
| want someone to say you are right instead of discuss? If
| you wanted to discuss, I'd expect that numbers thrown out
| would have some sort of backing behind them and
| displaying curiosity as to why things may be operating a
| certain way as opposed to already deciding how things
| work.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Because there's nothing easy about those things, and nothing
| cheap about building and maintaining a robot that would do
| them? When you ask the robot to move to another position on the
| line because they're caught up and the other positions have a
| backlog, they don't move, and they don't explain why. Also,
| when they break, you can't yell or threaten them into operating
| normally again.
| hbgl wrote:
| In the places where automation is not happening, manual labor
| is still cheaper. The more these people strike though, the
| sooner they will get replaced by robots.
| blamazon wrote:
| Humans are, in many ways, in many places, the best, least
| expensive robot. To me the bottleneck is not technology, it's
| the labor market.
|
| Basic human labor planetwide is generally not expensive enough
| for full automation yet. This is not lost on an HR-heavy
| company like Amazon that employs over a million humans.
|
| Such an equilibrium is a long way away too. We are systemically
| undervaluing the life energy of our species, en masse.
| ghaff wrote:
| There are a ton of things that, if labor were arbitrarily
| expensive, it would be replaced with some combination of:
|
| - Robots/automation
|
| - Self-service
|
| - Poorer service
|
| - A lot of people collectively deciding they just just don't
| need $X if it's going to cost that much
|
| Compare the US overall to many places in southeast Asia for
| example. There is generally a lot more personal service and
| staffing overall where the labor is cheaper.
| amalcon wrote:
| I've heard tell that in some cities with low labor costs,
| it's cheaper for a disabled person to pay someone to carry
| them up and down stairs than to rent an apartment with an
| elevator. That particular robot has been around in more or
| less its modern form for at least 100 years.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| It's interesting to consider how basic income if
| implemented, could potentially greatly speed up the
| development/rollout of robotics in industry.
| nicbou wrote:
| > A lot of people collectively deciding they just just
| don't need $X if it's going to cost that much
|
| A lot of people decide that it's their God-given right to
| enjoy a certain service at a certain price, even if it
| requires exploited labour to achieve.
|
| They will actively support legislation that enables this
| sort of exploitation, because again, this service is too
| nice to pass on.
| noobermin wrote:
| I moved to singapore just as the covid measures were
| loosening last year. Most restaurants are still using QR code
| menus and web apps to make orders. Each time we get our food,
| the waiter has to guess which drink and meal belongs to who,
| or they just leave it on the table and expect you to take it.
| The apps also make it harder to ask for exceptions to the
| menu (no tomatoes, more hot sauce, etc). Of course, the
| restaurants also hire just one waiter, who now runs around
| like a headless chicken fulfilling orders, so it's not like
| automation is making the individual worker's life easier. But
| management gets to things to look nice on their spreadsheet
| with less labour costs so they keep the changes.
|
| I really don't think consumers like automation. There are
| some cases where's it's convenient (vending machine) and
| times where it isn't (dining in). But it's being forced en
| mass because vendors can get away with it, not because
| there's _demand_ but because _suppliers_ like it.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > or they just leave it on the table and expect you to take
| it
|
| what is wrong with that?
| latchkey wrote:
| I went to a restaurant recently that did the QR menu thing.
| It was a long list of terrible UX on my phone. I'll never
| do that again. If a place can't give me a menu, I'm walking
| out and finding another place to eat.
| Idk__Throwaway wrote:
| You must not have gone out to eat much recently then. I'm
| on the road a lot and I'd estimate that over 50% of all
| restaurants I visit have a QR code menu.
| bbarnett wrote:
| In palo alto, I have not seen a QR only menu anywhere.
| noobermin wrote:
| It certainly hasn't hit the US as much as it has hit
| elsewhere.
| ghaff wrote:
| I saw it here and there during the pandemic in the US but
| not especially common.
| latchkey wrote:
| Correct, I rarely eat out now. I've seen the QR code
| menu's before, but the place still had regular menus as
| backup. This most recent place did not.
|
| This should be illegal as it really discriminates against
| elderly. My 75 year old dad has an old shitty phone that
| he can barely use... what is he supposed to do? I could
| barely read the menu on my iphone 13 pro max...
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Not everything you dislike should be illegal.
| latchkey wrote:
| Very true!
|
| That said, we do have laws in the US around accessibility
| for handicapped and disabled people and this could easily
| be added as an extension to that.
|
| Had this been a place where there were no servers and you
| could only order and pay by phone (which also exists),
| then that brings up the question of exclusion of people
| who don't embrace technology or can't afford a phone.
| I've seen this one come up a lot on HN in the past too.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Same here. Ordering is a hack, usually with some silicon
| valley schmuck trying to insert themselves between me and
| the business, the prices are outlandish, and the service
| and quality is usually abysmal (the Mexican restaurants
| here in Ohio are great..probably due to the workers all
| being from the same culture).
|
| Every time I go out to eat now I have buyers remorse.
| Except the Mexican restaurants...they feel pre-pandemic
| still.
|
| I recently ate at a Brix. Before the pandemic it was
| solid, great quality and reasonable prices (wood fired
| everything, craft beers). If I didn't feel so bad for the
| old decrepit workers I would have cussed them all and ran
| out. Cost a fortune. Never going back.
| latchkey wrote:
| Funny enough, this was a Mexican restaurant that I used
| to go to as a kid that was amazing. I had such good
| memories of going there. It was eventually sold to
| another company that remodeled the whole place and
| changed the name.
|
| In addition to the dumb menu thing, the food was
| terrible... to the point that the rice tasted like
| plastic. The prices were off the charts, but I'm used to
| that at this point. To add insult to the whole
| experience, tips were auto calculated _on top of tax_ on
| the receipt (which was even noted on the receipt), just
| to boost it up higher.
|
| So yea... lesson learned. I wonder if there are any
| statistics around post-covid return rates for
| restaurants. I bet it is terrible.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I wonder if there are any statistics around post-covid
| return rates for restaurants. I bet it is terrible.
|
| There's probably more takeout and you have to take into
| account the effect of inflation on dining as well. But
| the number of people dining out in the US is broadly back
| to pre-pandemic levels although people are eating out
| somewhat less frequently.
| latchkey wrote:
| I'm more referring to the concept of buying food at a
| restaurant multiple times. Takeout and/or in-dining, not
| about the frequency of doing such things.
|
| Interestingly, the place I went to last, was packed full
| in the late afternoon (~3pm), on a monday. The large bar
| seating was full.
|
| My experience so far is that the quality of nearly every
| dish I've eaten has gone down significantly to the point
| that I keep trying new places and almost never repeating.
|
| It could be that now that I cook more at home, I'm just
| not used to the amount of butter/salt that is being
| (ab)used in restaurants, as well as the quality of the
| ingredients (I mostly buy/eat "organic", whatever that is
| worth...).
| ghaff wrote:
| I can't say I've noticed a real change in food but it's a
| small sample size as I don't eat out on a very regular
| basis.
|
| In terms of the percentage people who dine in or get out
| at least sometimes numbers seem to be pretty much back to
| pre-pandemic levels.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I really don't think consumers like automation.
|
| It depends.
|
| I like depositing checks by app rather than having to go to
| an ATM--much less a bank clerk.
|
| And I'm generally OK with self-service checkout if I just
| have a few items and everything is barcoded.
|
| But, yes, there are many cases where automation (e.g. chat
| bots) and self-service save the business money at the cost
| of making the consumer experience worse.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Depends on the consumer, I'd far rather order in my own
| time on my phone. You want to pay more to employ someone to
| serve you then fine.
| noobermin wrote:
| Have you ever considered that you pay the same amount and
| management keeps the change while not employing anyone
| else? I don't notice my bill being cheaper.
| iso1210 wrote:
| And thus competition pushes those prices down.
|
| Either way I'd personally pay more to use an app, so win-
| win for me.
| [deleted]
| ben_w wrote:
| It is happening. The humans now on strike are what's left after
| most of it was automated.
| mabbo wrote:
| tl;dr: Robotic picking requires higher shipping costs, and
| shipping costs are much higher than the labour costs to pick
| the item.
|
| I spent years in Amazon Fulfillment Tech, a lot of in the
| Picking software space. It's all about tradeoffs, and shipping
| costs.
|
| Amazon will spend far more money getting the item from the
| warehouse to your front door than they will on labour costs
| getting the item into the box, ready to ship to you. Shipping
| is expensive, labour is relatively cheap when each item is
| touched by maybe 2-4 people for a few seconds each.
|
| Robotics are getting better, but the typical storage bin in an
| Amazon warehouse is optimized for density, not for easy
| picking. Humans do a great job of picking items despite the
| storage density. We fish it out, feel around, use our
| incredible vision powers. We're great at it! Robots suck at
| that sort of thing (today).
|
| Amazon could build a warehouse that is optimized for robotic
| picking. But if you built it with today's robots, you would
| have a fraction of the item storage density. That means you'd
| either need many times more warehouses or you'd need to reduce
| your selection. When you reduce selection, that means a
| different warehouse is handling those other orders, and it's
| probably further away from the customer.
|
| Further away from the customer => higher shipping costs.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| Do you think in the future some form of standardized shipping
| packages will become the norm? Much like the standard metal
| shipping container became the norm in the trucking industry.
| That way more automation can be incorporated across the whole
| shipping chain.
| mabbo wrote:
| But that's the same problem: you'd use more storage space
| per item, needlessly, decreasing storage density.
| kmlx wrote:
| https://www.ocadogroup.com/about-us/ocado-technology/
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Human hands are an amazing technology that we haven't been able
| to artificially replicate.
|
| I expect that in the (near?) future when AI has replaced
| software engineers, lawyers, writers, and bloggers that humans
| will still be needed to be warehouse workers, fruit pickers,
| plumbers, and surgeons.
| have_faith wrote:
| We think of ourselves so highly, yet mastery over boxes eludes
| us.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| If a robot cost PS1mil (including install) and lasts for 10
| years with zero maintenance or other costs, then it's cheaper
| to employ 4 people on 25k a year to do the same job. And that's
| without things like seasonal demand changes or government
| grants for hiring people.
|
| 1mil for a robot isn't that much. Does anyone make a robot that
| can work (at least) as fast as 4 people and never need
| maintaining etc?
| willcipriano wrote:
| It's the same economics that made slavery not viable. Sure
| you don't have to pay labor costs with a slave but if they
| break their arm you have to call a doctor, otherwise you are
| out the money you paid for the slave (and that is many years
| of a typical man's wages), and either way you aren't getting
| any work until they are healed. It's much more economical to
| work humans that you've paid a wage, to the bone, and once
| they are broken, fire them for lack of performance and hire
| another. No upfront capital outlay, no ongoing costs when
| they are injured and can't work for you, hell you don't even
| need to pay them enough to survive, wage slaves beat actual
| slaves every time.
|
| Amazon's problem is they hit such a scale they are starting
| to run out of wage slaves. They either broke them already or
| the potential worker has friends or family broken by them so
| they are wise to the deal. If this wasn't the case they would
| have little interest in automation.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Slavery was economically viable.
| notch656c wrote:
| Economically viable but not economically competitive. The
| populace of North Korea are basically slaves yet their
| economy is in the shitters. Workers competing for most
| productive use of their labor leads to better outcome for
| the rich capital owners.
| willcipriano wrote:
| After the post Civil War recession, economic growth rates
| increased dramatically[0]. While slavery made individual
| southerners wealthy, it's abolition resulted in a broader
| more dynamic economy that took millions out of poverty.
|
| [0]https://fee.org/articles/no-slavery-did-not-make-
| america-ric...
| hourago wrote:
| > It's shocking, that there are millions of people picking
| various objects from the boxes every day all over the world.
|
| I just read the article and does not talk about automation. Did
| I miss something?
| philipov wrote:
| There are a lot of places where manual labor is preferred to
| automation, not because automation is hard, but because
| automation is expensive, while labor can be found for dirt
| cheep.
| sct202 wrote:
| Also if you only need labor part of the year like for
| Christmas for Amazon, if you fully automated Amazon would
| have to have a bunch of expensive idle robots for the rest of
| the year. With people you can hire them as seasonal temps for
| just when you need them.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would think that goes the other way, as a benefit to
| automation. People are a lot more volatile than machines,
| so scaling up and down in periods of high and low demand is
| more predictable with machines.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Machines are a capital expenditure. You basically can't
| scale them down below their initial investment cost to
| acquire.
|
| Order picking is, in the grand scheme of human
| employment, essentially unskilled labor. It takes a bit
| of practice to get efficient, and a certain level of
| perseverance and endurance to operate at top efficiency,
| but it doesn't take any form of higher study,
| credentialing or apprenticeship to become qualified at.
| Scaling seasonal workers in this role is relatively
| trivial in terms of expense compared to purchasing
| robots.
|
| Final note: humans take years to become obsolete and
| replaced by newer generations. The same isn't true with
| robots. If you can get full use out of one year round, it
| is much easier to justify investing now rather than 5
| years from now than if you only get two months a year use
| out of it.
| datavirtue wrote:
| How about WFH drone robot operators? You could automate
| and macro some things and wouldn't need people onsite.
| zdragnar wrote:
| That sounds a lot like the worst of both worlds. Massive
| capital outlay to manage peak capacity, and your
| employees need to be a bit more specialized- they need a
| solid internet connection at home, and sufficiently
| skilled with technology to remotely operate a robot. Not
| only that, but now your robots aren't autonomous and are
| controlled by someone outside of the building. Operations
| security becomes significantly more complex, as does
| managing what happens when a robot gets stuck and your
| remote operator is interfering with the people onsite
| trying to fix the problem.
| johnfn wrote:
| Like... the UK? Not exactly the first place that comes to
| mind for "cheap labor".
| ben_w wrote:
| Perhaps it should. The UK has both low unemployment and
| also a cost-of-living crisis, which implies (to me, I'm not
| an economist) that labour is underpaid locally compared to
| other economic inputs.
| rjh29 wrote:
| It also has a relatively high minimum wage (compared to
| the US) and high employment tax and lots of pro-employee
| regulations. Hiring people is very expensive for
| employers here, even if _average_ salaries are low.
|
| The cost of living is not just related to salary but also
| energy being 3x more expensive than usual, house prices,
| food prices going up 30%, Brexit, etc.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Either that or due to political restrictions preventing
| more housing being built, land is overvalued.
|
| Any increase in wages is taken by landlords who increase
| the rent. The competition for a house isn't the next door
| house, it's not living in the city at all.
| francisofascii wrote:
| "We're cheaper than droids and easier to replace." - Line from
| Andor, Episode 9.
| monkeydust wrote:
| It is happening and Amazon are a big investors in this space
| afaik (https://amazon.jobs/en/teams/amazon-robotics).
|
| I think the issue is that there are some tasks that might seem
| easy for a robot to do but they are not, either too expensive
| vs human capital or the failure rate is not tolerable. The
| human body is a pretty amazing machine.
| moonchrome wrote:
| We are fascinated by intelligence/reasoning but if you think
| about evolution - motion/sensory response were optimized for
| billions of years, human reasoning is a more recent development
| - I'm not surprised these things are harder to solve than
| generating text that appears to be written by another human.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Same thing with chess, but written word is much older. Maybe
| spoken word is next, since chronologically it's much older.
|
| Moving through an environment, self-healing, reproduction,
| and being powered by pretty much anything that grows are last
| on the list.
| onion2k wrote:
| _But I would guess, that is couple orders of magnitude easier
| than self driving for example._
|
| You would guess wrong then. Robots don't handle variability
| well _at all_. Making a robot that can pack _anything_ like a
| human can is a huge challenge.
| js8 wrote:
| The solution will eventually be similar to shipping
| containers. Every producer will have to use one of several
| hundreds (because of different sizes) standard ways to
| package something, if they want to sell with Amazon.
| onion2k wrote:
| That's a possible solution but the fact it hasn't happened
| yet makes me wonder if there's a hard problem with even
| that.
| sct202 wrote:
| Putting things into specific for Amazon containers for
| automation is going to be a cost to the manufacturers to
| modify their production lines to accommodate and may be
| more labor versus what they do today. Plus no matter
| what, it might be that Amazon has one package, Walmart
| wants a different one so you end up having a bunch of
| different packages that are all the same thing, which
| becomes harder to manage because you can't ship excess of
| the Amazon SKU to Walmart without repackaging.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| I wondering if one country stepped in and called for
| standardized package (and fined those that didn't use
| it), would it be a tipping point?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| How would a country (in the absence of egregious levels
| of regulatory capture) benefit from that? It would strike
| me as both ridiculous overreach, and something for which
| the only benefit would be some megacorp having the
| ability to cut jobs, while adding to waste (not all
| things need packaging!), reducing the capacity for
| manufacturers to innovate, market and reduce their own
| costs, and creating a system that would wind up rivaling
| the tariff code for complexity, all so that Amazon can
| sort and fill packages with fewer humans.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| IIRC the cost of processing in the 'fulfillment center'
| is way lower than the cost of delivering it to your door,
| so there is only so much benefit you can obtain by
| optimizing the warehouses.
| ape4 wrote:
| The packages I receive seem like they are packed by a simple
| algorithm. Find the longest dimension of the object, get a
| box that holds that size. Fill the box with packing material.
| onion2k wrote:
| That's not what I mean. Picking a box isn't so hard
| (although box packing algorithms for non-uniform objects is
| still tricky).
|
| The robotics part is more like "how do I make a robot that
| can pick up a pen, a 50kg weight, and a silk blouse, and
| make it put all three in the same package without messing
| up?" In a factory that would be three distinct robots
| because that variability in weight, size, surface friction,
| malleability, etc makes it a _hard_ problem. In a warehouse
| it would need to be one robot. Even if you compromise and
| accept additional packaging like putting soft items in
| boxes or bags it 's still quite difficult.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Picking a box isn't so hard
|
| Though, frankly, Amazon often seems to do a terrible job
| of optimizing packing--both over and under. I'm guessing
| that within some range of the right size and some range
| of not having too much breakage, it's cheaper for them to
| half-ass it to some degree.
| detaro wrote:
| Even alone making grippers that reliably can pick up arbitrary
| objects is surprisingly hard (I believe Amazon did have some
| prizes offered to anyone who comes up with improvements there).
| So for now it's cheaper overall to have humans do the tricky
| part of actually picking stuff up and putting it in boxes, and
| where possible move other things to/from them. E.g. various
| "self-driving" shelving systems etc.
|
| And Amazon ships all kinds of stuff in various packaging
| formats etc, so is kind of the worst case here. I could see a
| company that produces and packages its own stuff choose
| differently here, and design packaging specifically with its
| logistics robot capabilities in mind. (For larger packaging
| sizes, that tend to be large-ish plain boxes, that's already
| what is happening)
| oliwarner wrote:
| What I find shocking is that they'll work for a billionaire for
| PS10/h, and let him micro-monitor break time.
| rjh29 wrote:
| What choice do you think people have? At minimum wage pretty
| much all jobs are like that.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Supermarkets pay more than that and while aren't exactly
| cushy, they aren't as bad as the reported warehouse
| conditions of an amazon factory.
| netrus wrote:
| Tells you something about the alternatives they have.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Other warehouses, despite what internet pundits will tell
| you, are much the same.
|
| Tech workers in air-conditioned buildings are out of touch
| on how the underclass live and work. BUT I PICKED TOMATOES
| FOR A SUMMER JOB WHEN I WAS 15
| kansface wrote:
| > But I would guess, that is couple orders of magnitude easier
| than self driving for example.
|
| The more I think about this, the more I believe you to be
| incorrect! Identifying the correct item in the bin is _hard_ -
| things are in random arrangements and orientations. They may be
| buried under other stuff. Packaging continually changes. Things
| will be in the wrong bin. Things will be packaged by the
| manufacturer incorrectly! Things expire but you can 't rely on
| expiration dates, which you'd have to be able to read and parse
| in the first place. Anything in the bin could be extremely
| fragile. Some things are both fragile and heavy.
|
| The act of picking stuff up is _hard_. Grip too hard, you break
| it. Grip too soft, you drop it and break it or something else.
| Grip it the wrong way, you break it. Crush stuff around it
| rummaging, you break that. Some things must be pinched, others
| grasped, cradled or supported at multiple points. You break
| something, then what? You 've contaminated who knows what
| around it roomba style - you can't send stuff out to customers
| thats covered in shards of glass or unknown liquids.
|
| How do you identify when something is broken or defective in
| the first place? Packaging may be damaged while the item is OK,
| or the item may be broken while the packaging is intact. Humans
| can do this because they have a model of the world with
| interactive feedback. Things with broken glass may sound wrong
| or just feel wrong when moved.
|
| The stakes are lower on average, but putting the wrong item in
| a cart will eventually kill someone. Consider allergies,
| medical supplies, the blind or illiterate. All the while, you
| have to do this for less than $15/hour? I can only see robots
| currently succeeding for hyper specific items - perhaps those
| that are low value and heavy for instance.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| There are many "lights off" warehouses and subsets of
| warehouses. Lots of stuff that ships direct from a
| manufacturer's warehouse is like this. The orders amazon picks
| and packages are far too diverse for that to be economical and
| current levels of technological progress.
| hhthrowaway1230 wrote:
| This is fantastic. A milestone I'd say. Good for them.
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