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Amazon To Hire 20% More Holiday Workers To Meet Growing Demand (bloomberg.com)
Amazon.com is hiring 20 percent more seasonal workers this year, suggesting it anticipates a strong holiday season. Bloomberg reports: The e-commerce giant will add 120,000 seasonal positions, up from 100,000 last year, "to support growing customer demand," said Mike Roth, vice president of customer fulfillment, in a statement. The workers will fill spots in fulfillment and sorting centers and at customer service sites in the U.S. Last year more than 14,000 seasonal employees were shifted to full-time roles after the holidays and the company expects to increase that number this year, Roth said.
. . . fewer workers, more robots. I give them 5 years, and they may well have an entirely robotic warehouse. . .
The people who work for them are at-will employees and can leave anytime they like. Temp workers are probably grateful for the extra holiday hours as well, or I'm guessing they'd not be accepting temp work.
I stand ready to defect to a more altruistic company as soon as someone builds a better moustrap.
The sad thing is, despite our bad full-time employement statistics, we're still doing better than most of the developed world with full-time and part-time employment figures. The world is a lot different place than what our parents and grandparents grew up in. Everyone having a full-time job might not be a reasonable expectation anymore.
What's the solution? Do we need a new "new-deal"? Obviously, such a suggestion would not bode well for people centre and rightwards.
It's interesting, part of the justification for Communism was that automation was eventually going to make it so that there was not enough jobs for everyone. Turns out they were right, just jumped the gun 60 years. Problem with communism is it sucks and drags almost everyone into poverty. So what's the solution? Micro-managed hybrid states like modern China? Basic income for all? A new "new-deal", pay people to do things that the economy isn't directly driving just to keep them employed?
There's not really an ideal path yet.
I always thought it ridiculous on sci-fi shows like Star Trek (yes, I know it's fiction), that such an advanced ship would require such a huge crew when the computer was so advanced and could probably fly the ship better by itself. Now I understand why they had such a big crew... busywork to keep more people employed and artificially deflate the unemployment figures.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch