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The Secret Lives of Amazon's Elves
theodp writes "If Amazon is Santa, says Gizmodo's Joel Johnson, then the 400 folks living in RVs outside the Coffeyville, KS fulfillment center at Christmas time are the elves. Amazon didn't always lure in 'workcampers' from the RV community with the promise of free campgrounds and $10.50-$11 an hour seasonal jobs. 'Amazon had a bad experience busing in people from Tulsa,' explained tech nomad Chris Dunphy. 'There was a lot of theft and a lot of people who weren't really serious.' Workers from Tulsa were adding a 4-hour round-trip commute to a grueling 10-to-12 hour shift, Cherie Ve Ard added. 'They'd get there exhausted.' The work wasn't exactly what Cherie had envisioned."
They accepted terms of employment. A willing employer got a willing employee. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this, if the employees are unhappy they can always get another job, no shortages of those!
Aren't industrial robots able to do most of the packaging tasks Amazon needs done? Given the enormous size of Amazon in terms of books sent, even just one plant catering to the US automated with robots could well make a significant impact on costs/delivery times/etc. Restricting automation to just ordinary books could be a great way to demonstrate methods to calculate the optimal packaging/arrangement per order.
Local hippie couple heads to the heartland and learns about hard work.
Seriously, wtf is the point of this article?
Driving 45 minutes each direction (northern KY, near Cincinnati Airport). (And yes, I rode the motorcycle to work Dec. 24 -- just ask Chan, Ian or Jim. They all saw me). Safety tips, announcements, and stretching. And the day begins. I've been there (CVG1) for 18 months, and I'm still amazed at all the products we carry.
I'm making more money than I ever have before (I'm 43), the work is steady, benefits are nice (including the exercise I get working), and everyone has a good sense of professionalism. As for firing you for taking off sick (Huff. Post article), um, sorry, no. Not here. (See, someone does read the articles before posting!) Cheating on overtime? I'm going over my financial records right now, and the occasional mistake does get corrected. And I take off for the Men's room whenever I need to.
Fascinating article, though. Always wondered about our other operations. Sorry some of the campgrounds aren't so nice, hopefully that will improve.
- I'm thankful Amazon has this system down pretty much pat. There were a few toys my nieces and nephews REALLY REALLY wanted, and I was coming up dry on in the brick-and-mortar stores around here. Amazon listed them as "in stock", and I was able to order them on the 22nd with standard shipping - they shipped within a few hours and arrived on the 24th.
- Having read the article... I'm thankful Amazon had the policy of "employees can't carry anything in that is an item we sell". The idiot featured in this story talked about wanting to "tweet" about stupid crap (my description, not his) that he saw. Any policy - even a draconian one - that prevents some dullard from tweeting is okay in my book!
#DeleteChrome
I think its fascinating. Its a mix of the itinerant fruit pickers here in southern Australia and the RV borne populations popular in cyberpunk books by Bruce Stirling and Neal Stephenson.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I am not one to advocate socialism in any form, but capitalism only works when those who benefit from the system perform their social responsibility towards their employees and treat them right.
That IS socialism. --And anybody against it deserves to be treated like a slave because slavery is *exactly* what they're asking for. The primary argument against socialism always boils down to this: "Mine! I don't want to share!"
Great. When all the little capitalists are starving because somebody greedier has won Monopoly and turned the world into slave-land, I'll remind them when they come asking for a bread crust. "Look around you! This is YOUR fault. Are you beginning to learn yet why self-service doesn't work? --Or do you want to be stupid livestock for another dozen life times? We WILL repeat this until you learn."
I'm all for idiot FOX viewers being punished for being idiot FOX viewers, but I am not content when others have to put up with the fallout from the knuckle-dragging propaganda-swallowing moronics of the pack man.
Humn. Pac Man. I just got that. That only took twenty years. --The pie-shaped dude is the archetypal pack animal, locked into a state of stupid because his genetics make him easy to subjugate into a ridiculous life-long race after crumbs through a rat maze. The Ghosts. . ? Ha! That actually makes sense too, but it's an idea too alarming for most people to deal with so I'll pardon myself from trying to explain.
What a depressing metaphor. Sigh.
Happy New Year.
-FL
Their fulfillment centers are pretty impressive. Before I started working there I would have never realized that so much though, planning and technology went into packing the right stuff into the right boxes.
The basic system is a century old and was invented at Sears, Roebuck and Company, the first really big mail order operation. They had several city blocks in Chicago for what they called "The Works", their fulfillment center.
In the "schedule system" at Sears, orders came in, and each order was assigned a assembly bin for a 15-minute window. Picking tickets were generated for the various departments, each with the bin number and 15-minute window. The stock pickers in each department started on a new batch of tickets every 15 minutes, and as they picked items in their department, they attached the pick ticket to the item or a basket containing it, and sent it to the order assembly area by chute, conveyor, or pneumatic tube. At the order assembly area, incoming items were routed to the appropriate bin. At the end of each 15 minute window, each assembly bin was dumped to a basket, which went on a conveyor to the checking and accounting section. There, the items in the bin were matched against the order and the bill totaled up. The baskets then went to the packaging and shipping section and out of the Works.
Amazon's plant works about the same way, except that their computers know what's in inventory, so they don't have many "fails", where an item can't be found. They don't have to work to such a rigid clock-driven timetable, because the computers know when an order is fully assembled, and can allow more or less time depending on the complexity of the order. The basic concept, that a set of orders is being picked at any one time, picking orders fan out to departments, and items come back to an assigned bin for checking and packaging, remains the same.
Superior talent for moving boxes ? You're kidding right ? And not just in this specific instance ... The large majority of jobs are low-skilled, low-productivity and very low margin jobs, even in IT.
You want better conditions for these people ? Lower the cost of labor so this work can be done with more people, without increasing costs too much. Obviously if you increase costs per employee like you suggest (and force people to accept conditions they may or may not care about, e.g. Any student I know would much rather have a short, very intensive (even little to no lunch break), and better paid work) than the conditions you force on them.
Otherwise you're simply forcing companies to destroy jobs that are below a certain productivity. Since the bulk of employment is at the very low skill (and productivity) level any raise in minimum productivity (minimum wage = minimum productivity for obvious reasons) will cause staggering numbers of layoffs. Raising minimum productivity by 5% would certainly kill over 20%-30% of jobs, nationwide.
That's how it works, you know. A company hires a person, at cost X, and then makes that person do work of value Y to society, which is then sold for price Z, which correlates very strongly with Y (in a free market society). Obviously unless Z >> X (significantly larger) that person will be fired.
Before you say "we'll simply outlaw firing people" so you know one of two things will fire these people :
-> the company's (or government's) good sense
-> the company's (or government's) bankrupty
And if printing more money is your solution to that, you might want to look at countries like Zimbabwe.
The solution ? Make sure a better life becomes possible at a lower wage. Of course that means lowering costs, and increasing choice. Increasing choice, both for employers and employees. The more competition there is in the labor market, at both sides of the equation, the better life will be in America.
Labor listens to the laws of supply & demand just like everyone else. Ideally taxes should be limited at the level that say 98% of supply is utilized. Needless to say, they're seriously above that level for the moment, and Obama's done nothing but raise them. Granted, some (even a lot) of the cost raise was entirely not Obama's fault, but at his paygrade that's no excuse. Obama's not some box mover, who only gets judged on mistakes and targets, he has to perform massively better than status-quo (govt. doing nothing at all). He's spent trillion(s ?) while making the situation worse than his own predictions of what would happen if they didn't do anything at all.