BBC: Amazon Workers Face "Increased Risk of Mental Illness"

Rambo Tribble writes "The BBC is reporting that an investigation into a UK-based Amazon facility has uncovered conditions that experts believe foster mental illness. At the root of the problem seems to be unreasonable performance expectations combined with a fundamentally dehumanizing environment. From the article: 'Amazon said that official safety inspections had not raised any concerns and that an independent expert appointed by the company advised that the picking job is "similar to jobs in many other industries and does not increase the risk of mental and physical illness."'"

Comments

"similar to"

[i kan reed]

Working at hopelessly automated amazon warehouses where you are treated as a physical automaton with no free will is "similar to" working in a traditional warehouse in the same way ozone is "similar to" O2. It's made of roughly the same thing, but isn't exactly good for you.

Re:"similar to"

[jcoy42]

I would argue that very few jobs are actually "good" for you.

But we can't all run around naked in the forest eating nuts and berries.

Quite the conundrum.

Re:"similar to"

[Mr D from 63]

Call me back when they find evidence of actual people with actual mental illness which is actually attributable to the job. Until then its just finger pointing at a big target.

What prompted this investigation? Sounds like a news crew just looking for a story they can call big.

Re:"similar to"

[i kan reed]

That's reasonable to consider, but strong enough correlations say something. Not necessarily causation, but implies a relationship of some kind. Thankfully us plebs are spared the actual p values to make a judgement for ourselves.

Re:"similar to"

[Anonymous Coward]

Occasionally one must have a Mountain Dew.

Re:"similar to"

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Call me back when they find evidence of actual people with actual mental illness which is actually attributable to the job.

What, you're asking for causal attribution in individuals? You're aware that there are huge swathes of medical science where you simply won't get any? Unless you're willing to undergo a premature autopsy, that is. It's quite disingenuous to dismiss the study results for this reason alone.

Re:"similar to"

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked in a couple of warehouses around 10 years ago, and the work then was certainly "similar" to this description. Even without electronic automation most warehouse jobs are repetitive, it is the nature of menial labor. Imagine a never ending series of boxes coming down a conveyor belt, which must be read and sorted based on destination, then lifted and stacked on the appropriate pallet. For 9 hours, with a 1 hour lunch. It was hard, but it made me in the best shape of my life. It was actually not terribly mentally crushing either, at least nobody was calling me at 4 am on a Saturday to come in to fix the office VPN. I since worked office jobs with passive aggressive bosses that were much more deleterious to my physical and mental health than warehousing. The Amazon warehouse are possibly worse than most, but they honestly sound like par for the course. I worked overnights at a convenience store one summer and that was far more dangerous.

Re:"similar to"

[geek]

Call me back when they find evidence of actual people with actual mental illness which is actually attributable to the job.

What, you're asking for causal attribution in individuals? You're aware that there are huge swathes of medical science where you simply won't get any? Unless you're willing to undergo a premature autopsy, that is. It's quite disingenuous to dismiss the study results for this reason alone.

He isn't talking about "huge swathes of medical science," he's talking about one very narrow one where its very possible and in fact reasonable to get a diagnosis. Since there hasn't been one, it's also reasonable to deduce that the whole thing is a money grab. Not exactly hard to deduce either considering Amazon employees are striking right now in Germany (soon other places in Europe) for higher pay.

Re:"similar to"

[sjames]

How many bodies do you need for this? Must they be permanently disabled or will it be OK if they recover 80% in a year or two on the dole? How overt do the signs need to be? Must they don their Napoleon hats and bobble their lips in the corner all day or is it enough that if a voice like the one in their headphones says "invade France and slap people with a herring" they do it without question?

It's funny that your deduction doesn't meet the level of proof you demand.

Re:"similar to"

[QRDeNameland]

Working at hopelessly automated amazon warehouses where you are treated as a physical automaton with no free will is "similar to" working in a traditional warehouse in the same way ozone is "similar to" O2. It's made of roughly the same thing, but isn't exactly good for you.

My experience as a warehouse worker consists of exactly 4 days from almost 30 years ago. It was a distribution warehouse for a major NJ supermarket chain and reading this article immediately brought me back to that experience.

I was in college and I needed a summer job, as the land surveyor I had worked for the previous summer wasn't hiring. The warehouse job was available and conveniently located so I took it figuring 'how bad can it be?' My recollections:

1) The job was basically to drive a pallet jack up and down endless rows of various products; pick A number of B product, C number of D product, etc.; stack and arrange the boxes so that they didn't all fall off as you continued picking, then bring it to the wrapping machine and finally drop it off in the loading zone. For every pallet you got a computer printout noting the maximum time allotted to fill the pallet. By the end of the fourth day, I was still struggling to get the orders picked in even TWICE the allotted time. It was far and away the suckiest work I ever did.

2) On top of that, the people who worked there were just sad and pathetic. The 'old-timer' union guys looked like they were entirely used up even though none appeared to be past their mid-40s, to a man they all appeared lifeless, joyless, and miserable. Then there were the younger guys, not in the union yet, mullet-headed yokels who *aspired* to be among the 'old-timers' with the blank gaze of death. I was struggling with the idea of tolerating the job for the summer...how one signs up for a lifetime of that...I can't even imagine.

Luckily for me, the evening after that 4th day the surveyor I worked for the previous summer called me and said they had a guy quit and if I still needed a job. I said unequivocally 'Yes!' and called in 'quit' at the warehouse the next morning.

That was a 'traditional' warehouse job, and I can fully relate to how it would affect workers precisely as the article states. I can only imagine how much worse it is now.

Re:"similar to"

[BreakBad]

But we can't all run around naked in the forest eating nuts and berries.

I do this all the time and nobody has sent me a paycheck yet!!!! Fucking monster.com..LIES.

Re:"similar to"

[InsightfulPlusTwo]

I read the article. Some guy worked 2.5 hours of overtime one day and got sore feet. He spoke of "hobbling" so he probably just didn't feel good that day, and he described feeling "absolutely shattered" because of his feet.

According to the article, his average speed for his shift (11 miles in 10.5 hours) works out to about 1 mile an hour. My walking speed is 4.5 miles per hour. I assume that he was simply unused to being on his feet all day or maybe overweight or has badly fitting shoes. The truly ironic fact is that my job involves sitting all day and is way less healthy than his. However, I can understand why he might complain about the sore feet, which would make his job more difficult and less pleasant.

The "mental illness" of the title was just a generic embellishment by some professor. Unfortunately, he didn't specify what characteristics he thought were risky about this job, so I didn't learn very much.

Re:"similar to"

[geek]

How many bodies do you need for this? Must they be permanently disabled or will it be OK if they recover 80% in a year or two on the dole? How overt do the signs need to be? Must they don their Napoleon hats and bobble their lips in the corner all day or is it enough that if a voice like the one in their headphones says "invade France and slap people with a herring" they do it without question?

It's funny that your deduction doesn't meet the level of proof you demand.

How about a simple diagnosis? I didn't know hyperbole was enough to condemn a company of employee abuse but I guess in your narrow little mind an accusation is all thats needed without any fucking evidence.

Re:"similar to"

[QRDeNameland]

I assume that he was simply unused to being on his feet all day or maybe overweight or has badly fitting shoes.

Or maybe...like many if not the vast majority of warehouses, they have hard concrete floors, which are brutal on the feet. The husband of one of my co-workers' works at Home Depot with the concrete floor, he is slim and in good shape, and has tried every orthopedic shoe solution available and still it's problematic. And I know for me personally, I can walk or hike for hours on end without a problem, but more than 30 minutes in a Home Depot or Costco on the concrete floors and my feet and calves are aching.

Re:"similar to"

[sjames]

I'm not suggesting condemnation, just mitigation. One might HOPE Amazon would be quite willing to make adjustments because it's the right thing to do. Failing that, make sure they know they will be on the hook financially and see if that motivates change. Only then dig deeper and see if any of their practices deserve an outright ban.

Meanwhile, I'm sure plenty of Amazon workers have been diagnosed with something. That is true of any large company and doesn't necessarily mean the company caused it. Unfortunately with mental illness it is usually not possible to determine an exact cause. Sorta like you often have no idea who gave you the miserable cold and even if you are 'pretty sure' it's just a good guess./p.

Re:"similar to"

[BringsApples]

But we can't all run around naked in the forest eating nuts and berries.

What a statement!
Do you mean that we cannot run?
Do you mean that we cannot be naked?
Do you mean that we cannot eat nuts?
Do you mean that we cannot eat berries?
Oh, no I see what you mean. The forest(s) are not big enough to house us all. Well my friend, that's because of Western culture. It's Western culture that 'we all' cannot do, as this article is trying to point out. The bit about running, being naked, eating nuts and berries is the only thing that can always be done, and by everyone.

Re:"similar to"

[i kan reed]

Not just that, but "correlation is not causation" is only true in that those could be correlated due to a secondary cause. The phrase isn't meant to imply a complete lack of connection, just that the connection isn't necessarily the intuitive one.

Re:"similar to"

[Anonymous Coward]

"For example, Amazon employees face a zero tolerance policy to talking to each other during work hours"

Not true at all.

- signed, an Amazon warehouse employee

Re:"similar to"

[geek]

I'm not suggesting condemnation, just mitigation. One might HOPE Amazon would be quite willing to make adjustments because it's the right thing to do.

Based on what evidence? You want a company to make a major adjustment in working conditions because you can't help yourself from fucking whining about them? Prove it or shut the fuck up.

Re:"similar to"

[Dishevel]

You realize that you still can go hunting and foraging. Things are nice but do we really need electricity, chlorine, bleach, antibiotics, painkillers easy access to a wide variety of food, do we really need to collect and have access to vast amounts of human knowledge?

No. We do not.

But I want them. Them and a new PS4. I like working for a living.

Re:"similar to"

[war4peace]

What do you mean "intended as humor"??? GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHAHAHAAAAAAHHHH!
*runs away, hands flailing*

Re:"similar to"

[danlip]

To go hunting and foraging you need to own the land or have the permission of someone who does. Even on public lands such activities would be restricted. You might get away with breaking the rules for a long time, but that doesn't mean it's allowed. Owning land requires money which requires some job other than hunting and foraging. Also there is absolutely no way that this planet can support 7 billion people (or even 1 billion) via hunting and foraging.

Re:"similar to"

[sjames]

Yes, absolutely everyone has the responsibility to not do anything wrong, including corporations.

Re:"similar to"

[ffflala]

Amazon employees face a zero tolerance policy to talking to each other during work hours. Speak to anyone, lose your job.

Well that just seems like it would shut the warehouse down in a hurry.

First, one guy talks. "Man my legs are killing me!"
"You're fired!" says his supervisor... who is now going to get fired for talking on the job.
"You there, talking supervisor, you're fired for talking when you fired that guy!" And now *that* guy is next, and up it goes until Jeff Bezos finds himself out of a job.

I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.

Re:"similar to"

[rsilvergun]

Yeah, but rarely is the question asked: is it worth it? Is making this many lives horrible worth what we're getting out of it? Most of us /.ers are in the 'haves' category though, so we're likely to say 'yes'. Occasionally somebody spares a thought for kids making toys in China or the dead garment workers in Indonesia, but then along comes the next year and we move on.

I don't really think we should live in a world were people live that desperate and frantic. But then again what can I really do about it?

Re:"similar to"

[ElectricTurtle]

It'll only cause most the of the world population to die, so please, get on that immediately.

Re:"similar to"

[gagol]

You can spit out crap all you want, single payer healthcare in Canada, actually allows you to consult the doctor you want, not the ones listed as covered by your "land of the free" insurer, get as many opinions as you like, and all of it for much less per person than you guy are paying in private healthcare down there. You all have to get insurance anyway, why not get together and get a real bargain for once? I feel much more free in my "socialist" system than under your "free enterprise all profits to the rich" system. Bonus point, poor people here don't die of cancer out of being poor, they can get productive once again after the fact. Healthy population is not a burden, it is an asset, and it is the right thing to do. But catering to the rich elite is the american dream I guess...

Re:"similar to"

[Xest]

I actually watched the associated documentary last night and can say it's a bit of everything.

Part of it was simply just whiny workers and union reps who work simply averse to doing the type of job they found themselves doing. For this I have little sympathy and would have to side with Amazon here. It was the classic union story of wanting lots of money for doing fuck all work. According to the worker undercover and whining he was getting over £8 an hour which is about 20 - 25% more than minimum wage and it worked out to about £17k - £18k a year which is well below the national average, but pretty good for a menial job requiring no qualifications. This is about what some bottom of the run IT support staff get that are at least required to be able to perform some diagnostics and have at least a level of IT competence that would require a few years of learning about IT, networks and so forth even if not formal learning - especially in the low income area where the warehouse in question was situated (where hence cost of living is also much much lower meaning a lower salary gets you more than elsewhere).

Part of it annoyed me, I knew Amazon pays no real taxes in the UK because it uses it's subsidiaries to avoid those responsibilities but I wasn't aware parts of the UK such as Wales and Scotland are outright subsidising their existence here meaning it's actually a net cost to the tax payer to have them here, especially when you consider the burden of bad health their premises are genuinely causing some staff on the NHS, which all wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that in subsidising them we're also destroying competition by allowing them to offer cheaper goods which puts indigenous businesses out of business. Something needs to be done here, the whole setup with Amazon is detrimental to competition and detrimental to our country.

But then there was the last part of it, the part where it was clear cut that Amazon was breaking the law. Lights going out in the factory regularly forcing workers to work in the dark, this was a blatant breach of health and safety law and they need to be pulled up on this. The second clear breach was that they were giving staff disciplinaries for going home ill, even if it was work caused illness such as a bad back for lifting heavy goods. This is also out and out illegal, you can only discipline someone for faking illness or self-caused illness (i.e. hangover from drinking too much) not for genuine illness, and most definitely not for work related injuries - on the contrary, in the latter case the employee should be getting compensated if they ask for it, not disciplined.

So it was a mixed bag, some of it was Panorama being typically full of shit as it normally always is, some of it was up for debate depending on your political views such as whether it's better to pay a company to be able to employ people even if that means other people going out of business, and some of it was Amazon unquestionably breaking employment law.

But make of it what you will, the bulk of the documentary focussed on Panorama talking shit and listening to lazy shirkers whining about having to actually work.

I'm personally not keen on Amazon, I think they're anti-competitive and immoral when it comes to things like tax hence why the revelation that not only do they dodge tax but accept public subsidy makes me sick. But despite that I think they deserve some defence here, whilst some of the documentary exposed illegality, much of it was simply unfair criticism.

Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cause

[Anonymous Coward]

This Thanksgiving I am going to hear from all of my pro-union family members about how evil Walmart (my employer) is, and how they treat their employees. All the while comparing books they are reading on their Kindles and shopping for Kindle Fires for their kids.

Liberals are so awesomely hypocritical.

The bourgeoisie creates its own gravediggers

[For a Free Internet]

Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!

Where would we be without experts?

[jamesl]

A BBC investigation into a UK-based Amazon warehouse has found conditions that a stress expert said could cause "mental and physical illness".

Well, that settles it.

Re:Where would we be without experts?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to believe this, so I'm going to make "expert" sound like it's a bad thing even though I have no real argument

Re:Where would we be without experts?

[jythie]

I don't know, I see a lot of conservative garbage come out of their reporting too.....

Re:Where would we be without experts?

[0123456]

Then, some Romanians, Poles, Bulgarians come in, get the same jobs for 70% of the initial wage the UK natives were whining about and work harder and are happier with 0% insanity.

That's because they're getting paid ten times as much as a doctor would in their own country for doing menial work, and can save enough in a few years to go home and set themselves up for life.

If 'Lazy Britons' could earn $1,000,000 a year for fifteen hour days cleaning offices in Poland, they'd be out there with a big smile on their face eager to do as many hours as they could.

Re:Where would we be without experts?

[Anonymous Coward]

No it isn't. The BBC is full of Oxbridge-educated upper middle-class types & their kids. Some may be lefties but only in a wooly 'lets be nice to the gays' sort of way, however many of its top names and power-brokers are typical right-wingers (Andrew Neil, Jeremy Clarkson, Chris Patten, Michael Portillo). Sure the Daily Mail and other cretinous rags will insist the BBC is a heaving mass of Communists, but the Daily Mail is perhaps the worst excuse for a newspaper since the Sunday Sport. I would concur that the BBC have a fair few liberal dramatists, but this is probably because right-wing entertainment really doesn't sell with a general audience (don't recall everyone rushing out to make Atlas Shrugged a big hit...)

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[Rob the Bold]

This Thanksgiving I am going to hear from all of my pro-union family members about how evil Walmart (my employer) is, and how they treat their employees. All the while comparing books they are reading on their Kindles and shopping for Kindle Fires for their kids.

Liberals are so awesomely hypocritical.

So we trade families for Thanksgiving. You can have my awesomely hypocritical conservative in-laws instead.

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[Anonymous Coward]

Generalizations aren't going to do much. Some conservatives are much the same.

Re:Welcome to a world run by Republicans

[genner]

This is the type of life they want for all of us.

YEah......the UK is just a bastion of republican ideals........

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[i kan reed]

Oh, is your employer the one that held a food drive for you because you wouldn't have enough food for thanksgiving with the shitty pay you get, or was that a different wal-mart?

Also, I don't own a kindle, and I'm aware of, and try to avoid the modern slavery in electronics production.

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[Shakrai]

Why would you two trade families when you can get married and have the worst of both worlds at the same time?

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[bennomatic]

Liberals are so awesomely hypocritical.

I can't decide whether to respond, "...says the AC" or, "...how the heck did this turn into a liberal vs. conservative issue?"

11 Miles a shift?

[jddeluxe]

I once accidentally worked for the US Postal Service for a year and a half and my job involved walking that much every shift; I must say that I was probably at my best physical shape of my life outside of military service...

Re:11 Miles a shift?

[dysmal]

Having worked in a warehouse before, the physical toll of WALKING on a concrete industrial floor can be bad. My back, feet, and knees were in bad shape after about 9 months. You need to wear proper foot attire but most people working these jobs don't learn that until it's too late. Brand new athletic shoes were "flat" after 2 months yet they looked like they were in mint condition. There's a reason why they have the padded safety mats anywhere that people tend to stand in one place for hours on end. Look under the feet of your checker at your grocery store! I don't doubt the job is mindless and can be torture for someone who has independent thought but to say that someone is at risk of "increased mental illness" is garbage. The plight of the Amazon.com workers is nothing new. Amazon isn't treating their workers drastically different than other warehouse/shipping companies. They're just getting picked on because they're the biggest (like Apple getting attacked for the child labor at their suppliers). If we as a people want this situation to change, then we as a people need to stop clicking on "express shipping" and be patient.

Re:11 Miles a shift?

[Njovich]

I once accidentally worked for the US Postal Service for a year and a half

Accidentally? How did that work? Did you think it was a sysadmin job when they were talking about mail delivery system?

Re:11 Miles a shift?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I once accidentally worked for the US Postal Service for a year and a half

Accidentally? How did that work? Did you think it was a sysadmin job when they were talking about mail delivery system?

He just means he has been collecting pay checks from the USPS for decades, but accidentally, in spite of himself, without really meaning to, inadvertently, he performed some activities that turned out to be working.

Re:11 Miles a shift?

[slew]

Having worked in a warehouse before, the physical toll of WALKING on a concrete industrial floor can be bad. My back, feet, and knees were in bad shape after about 9 months. You need to wear proper foot attire but most people working these jobs don't learn that until it's too late. Brand new athletic shoes were "flat" after 2 months yet they looked like they were in mint condition.

Having worked a warehouse before, I can tell you that one problem is finding a pair of remotely comfortable osha compliant steel-toed shoes. Anything remotely similar to athletic shoes with inserts would have been a godsend.

Re:11 Miles a shift?

[afidel]

Get a decent pair of redwings or keens and put in sorabathane insoles, I put a pair in my hiking boots at the recommendation of the owners daughter who basically lives outdoors half the year and they worked so well that after 127 miles in 7 days my feet still felt good. She apologized about selling me $25 insoles for $250 boots but after that first trip I went back to thank her.

Balancing Act?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the correct balance between societies desire and expectations of highly automated system's (virtual and physical) behavior and outputs and the real social need for low-skilled positions? As we move towards better working conditions for some, the stark contrast between the "old" way of working, however much we improve it and the standard "perks" of more modern positions, is there anyway that we could measure that doesn't result in "dehumanizing conditions"?

What is the replacement for these positions that doesn't have the same end result? How can you possibly make packing boxes, something that common sense shows is going to go away quickly, any more "human" when they are surrounded by large automated machinery?

I don't think we have even begun to talk about this, and IMO it's at the core of most of the labor conversations that are going on. Personally I would love a 6 month work year. It would give me 5 months of full-time training/learning and 1 month of vacation and I believe would allow me to be more focused those other 6 months. As much as I don't like the modern US organized labor organizations, the idea that as we increase productivity through automation, the ability to share the rewards of automation through shorter work hours I think should be revisited. Perhaps in those 6 months off you could work for a plucky startup? Go volunteer? Teach? Etc. People want to be productive and do things they enjoy, I think that is how we could solve at least one aspect of the issue; making the end results more humanizing.

Re:Balancing Act?

[Andrewkov]

Any gains in efficiency never result in less work or more vacation time... it results in layoffs and cost cutting to be more competitive and increase margins, which in turn forces other companies to do the same thing. Combine that with globalization, it's a race to the bottom.

BOZOS for BEZOS!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Hell comes to your house, one box at a time!

Remind anyone of Manna?

[GameboyRMH]

The gear they're using sounds like a very primitive precursor to the headsets from Manna...which are already very close to completely possible. Just some Google Glass units and the rest is software (where the difficulty lies, in object recognition of course).

Re:Remind anyone of Manna?

[Jeng]

Yes, that was my first thought when reading the article.

And since you did not provide a link here is one for people wondering what we are talking about.

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Re:Remind anyone of Manna?

[OzPeter]

Yes, that was my first thought when reading the article.

And since you did not provide a link here is one for people wondering what we are talking about.

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

just started reading from that link and then I found this paragraph in the story:

Ultimately, you would expect that there would be riots across America. But the people could not riot. The terrorist scares at the beginning of the century had caused a number of important changes. Eventually, there were video security cameras and microphones covering and recording nearly every square inch of public space in America. There were taps on all phone conversations and Internet messages sniffing for terrorist clues. If anyone thought about starting a protest rally or a riot, or discussed any form of civil disobedience with anyone else, he was branded a terrorist and preemptively put in jail. Combine that with robotic security forces, and riots are impossible.

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[beelsebob]

It turned into a liberal vs conservative issue because those who aren't in favour of workers not being made ill by their work needed a way to justify that, and therefore did their best to associate it with what's commonly seen as an extreme, and slightly insane political affiliation. They then burned this straw political affiliation man at the steak to demonstrate how dumb it was to support the idea of workers not being made ill by their work.

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[Pinky's Brain]

Problem is that robots are already waiting in the wings ... Amazon pickers have only a couple years of job left as it is (unless minimum wage craters faster than robots get cheaper, at third world wages they can outcompete robots for a few years longer ... hard to see who will be left to consume though). If they unionise robots will take over faster.

Re:Total Crap

[beelsebob]

Ah right, illness that you can't see manifest on the surface is not illness at all, right?

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[jythie]

At least one generalization is probably true... a lot of people are hypocritical jerks. As are horses.

Re:Total Crap

[SimonTheSoundMan]

I wouldn't class stress or depression as a mental illness, it is a physical one.

AC, at least the BBC have the balls to do this, unlike other commercial broadcasters.

mod parent up

[mekkab]

In-Laws: because we're not happy unless you're not happy.

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[Anonymous Coward]

And then they eat the steak, well-cooked by the straw-fueled flames.

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[CraftyJack]

Thanksgiving: It's like the /. comments, but with turkey.

Today's Tautology

[carlhirsch]

Dehumanizing Work Is Dehumanizing.

Re:Let's just replace pickers with robots...

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair Thatcher tripled unemployment, introduced student loans, sold nationalised industries off for peanuts (and no, the service isn't better or cheaper, See: BT, British Gas etc.), allowed foreign companies to take over much of what was left, treated whole swathes of the country like shit, allowed councils to sell off school playing fields to property developers and, well, created that whole property-owning landlord monster class who is still fucking over the masses & means a typical house the size of a matchbox in the UK costs more than a middle-class home in the US.

And while we're at it she presided over a cover-up concerning Hillsborough, a cover-up over police actions during the Miner's Strike and was best pals with England's most famous TV presenting paedophile rapist - Jimmy Savile (actually demanding he should be Knighted by the Queen).

There's a lot more that can be said about Mrs T. Sure, she didn't outsource to Eastern Europe (no one did then - Cold War and all that). However, she was meant to be 'tough' on immigration while the inner-cities filled up with all manner of immigrants. Yeah, I know many down South still love her, but much of the rest of the country see her as someone who did more to kill the social fabric of Britain than the Germans in WW2.

As for the BBC, you do know many of its top staff are Conservative supporters don't you? Since the coalition got in the BBC has bent over backwards to push a right-wing agenda (including those numerous God-awful 'Oh look at all the benefit scroungers' documentaries). They also appear to act as a job agency for failed Tory MPs who litter its programmes. The BBC is and always has been the Establishment. Sad really.

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[sjames]

I thought that was right wingers and homosexuals..

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[FlyHelicopters]

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/amazon-com-buys-kiva-systems-for-775-million/

Amazon is working on it, it is just a matter of time.

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[Unordained]

Yes, it's really amazing we haven't yet declared ourselves mentally ill, for putting people first. I mean, really -- minimum wages? Food and shelter? Safety regulations? Non-discrimination in the workplace? Civil rights? Healthcare? Are we nuts?!?

Re:Let's just replace pickers with robots...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, an organisation run by posh people and full of Tory MPs that appears to devote half of its political output to bashing poor people and praising multinational corporations just screams fucking left-wing, doesn't it?

I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave, By Mac McClelland,

[Anonymous Coward]

I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave, By Mac McClelland, March/April 2012 Issue, Mother Jones.

"My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine."

So what

[SDrag0n]

I worked at a factory for 9 years. It sucked. A lot of people were "lifers" and would be there their entire life. In the warehouse we had a job almost exactly like that.

In a 12 hour shift you would walk around a giant stretch of belts and racks and throw things weighing between 2-40 pounds a piece on a moving belt. I would only throw things on the belt that had a LED indicator next to them with a number because *shock and fucking awe here* that was what was ordered. It was ridiculously hot in the summer (no air conditioning and the belt system was about 30 feet off the ground and heat rises), you walked several miles over the course of the shift in steel toes.

I didn't really like it because it tore up my feet but some people actually preferred to do that most nights. I didn't like working there at all so I put in a lot of effort outside of work and got a job in databases which I love. My point being: boo hoo. If you can't handle it, grow a pair or find a different job. I'm sure the special reporter snowflake felt very dehumanized because no one cares about you very much unless you show you are going to be around for a while and he obviously probably wasn't.

Re:So what

[Nimey]

He had the privilege of having the opportunity to study after hours. Not everyone's got that privilege, e.g. people with small children or those who have to work two or three jobs to get by.

Granted there are people who have that opportunity but waste it, but not everyone's got even that.

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[fredrated]

"My liberal family members are hypocrites, therefore all liberals are hypocrites"
Your conservative reasoning is awesome.

Re:My warehouse experience sucked too

[jeffmflanagan]

>We will need to figure out another way to distribute resources at some point, having a job won't be it forever.

The Republicans are going to push back hard against that idea. Having a society that doesn't keep wage costs low and concentrate wealth is considered evil in the right-wing bubble, and they're not going to change until they're the one's suffering.

We've seen the right-wing empathy deficit over and over again. They don't break from supporting toxic policies until their own families are harmed by the policy, and maybe not even then since they've merged evangelical Christianity and the conservative movement, leading them to believe that they're doing the work of a sky-fairy.

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[Unordained]

Really? Because I'm pretty sure the standard conservative argument is that if you create an obstacle, people will always "find a way", and in fact you should purposefully do so. Don't give them food or shelter, and they'll magically educate and empower themselves.

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[CraftyJack]

Thanksgiving: It's like the /. comments, but with turkey and alcohol.

Fixed it for you.

Not even alcohol can fix it. Not even alcohol.

Crybabies

[nurb432]

Millions have worked on assembly lines ( and similar jobs ) for generations and they did just fine.

Sounds like more of the 'me me me' crap. Fire their ass.

Never seen anything like that.

[luis_a_espinal]

I assume that he was simply unused to being on his feet all day or maybe overweight or has badly fitting shoes.

Or maybe...like many if not the vast majority of warehouses, they have hard concrete floors, which are brutal on the feet. The husband of one of my co-workers' works at Home Depot with the concrete floor, he is slim and in good shape, and has tried every orthopedic shoe solution available and still it's problematic. And I know for me personally, I can walk or hike for hours on end without a problem, but more than 30 minutes in a Home Depot or Costco on the concrete floors and my feet and calves are aching.

I worked at the Home Depot for two years, and I never got what you described. I never met one HD worker who complained about chronic foot pain due to hard concrete floors. I trust this observation because we, Home Depot workers always complained about other physical things: like dust from the Building Materials and Flooring departments. Back pains (the company gave us elastic back braces to help with lifting heavy stuff). Incredibly rude customers. Getting our fingers smashed when carrying tiles or concrete blocks or whatever.

We came in all shapes and sizes, male and female. We even had a joke, that whenever we finished our day, we would have been "Home Depot'ed" (beat up to crap by work.) But I never heard people complaining about chronic foot pain from walking 8+ hours on the concrete floor.

I'm not saying that what you describe is false. But it is not something that I ever experienced, or witnessed, when I worked at a Home Depot store.

Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau

[Xest]

Which is interesting because this documentary revealed that Amazon were getting paid tens of millions to build some of the UK warehouses to create jobs.

So what happens if those jobs are automated? does the tax payer get their money back?

Of course I don't blame Amazon, the councils/governments in question were utter fools for subsidising a company as big as Amazon including building roads explicitly for them and are getting what they deserve, but I'm intrigued all the same.

This is about Amazon jobs

[ToddInSF]

Not the job in a warehouse at some other company you had, years ago.

Comments here are lacking the details of this specific issue.

I know people who've worked for Amazon. The shifts are long, the breaks are useless because the walking to the break area eats up half your break time. The pay for the toll the job does doesn't compensate for the the physical wear on your body, and the job is a classic dead-end job.

And Amazon is a perfect example of an evil monopoly that got that way buy brutally undercutting competition to the point of putting them out of business. Accomplished by Amazon securing political favors and payoffs.

Instead of looking at Amazon policies, which are nothing to be proud of or an advocate of, people here are relating irrelevant experiences with this company. It's not the same thing. Look at where Amazon's major US facilities are, where there aren't any jobs and there's high unemployment in "right to work" states where workers are treated like shit, and disposable.

Then decide if you really want to do business with Amazon, or encourage your friends and relatives to do business with them. Amazon COULD make those jobs significantly less horrible, but there is no motivation to do so, because here in the US we make excuses for, and accept that workers are disposable and abuseable, and that executives "earn" their bloated salaries by doing so.

It's disgusting and it's everyone's fault for permitting it.