Thousands Show Up For Jobs at Amazon Warehouses in US Cities (apnews.com)

Thousands of people showed up Wednesday for a chance to pack and ship products to Amazon customers, as the e-commerce company held a giant job fair at nearly a dozen U.S. warehouses. From a report on Associated Press: Although the wages offered will make it hard for some to make ends meet, many of the candidates were excited by the prospect of health insurance and other benefits, as well as advancement opportunities. It's common for Amazon to ramp up its shipping center staff in August to prepare for holiday shopping. But the magnitude of its current hiring spree underscores Amazon's growth when traditional retailers are closing stores -- and blaming Amazon for a shift to buying goods online. Amazon said it received "a record-breaking 20,000 applications" and hired thousands of people on the spot, and will hire more in the coming days. That number represented fewer than half of the 50,000 people it had said it planned to hire.

Comments

The flip side...

[__aaclcg7560]

Although this is good news for people looking for work in the cities, Amazon is also closing warehouses in rural communities that are turning into the new inner cities that are lacking in jobs.

Starting in the late 1990s, Amazon.com Inc. began opening fulfillment centers in sparsely populated states to help customers avoid sales taxes. One of those centers, established in 1999, brought hundreds of jobs to Coffeyville, Kan. -- population 9,500. Yet as two-day shipping became a priority, Amazon shifted its warehousing strategy to be closer to cities where its customers were concentrated, and shut the Coffeyville center in 2015.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/26/rural-america-is-new-inner-city-2.html

Re:The flip side...

[nine-times]

I hate to bring this to a political place, but I feel like there's a bit of irony and double-think here. I've heard Republicans and "conservatives" saying that suburban and rural locations need help, while vilifying cities as playgrounds for detached elites. I've even heard this kind of statement that the rural areas are "the new inner cities".

But meanwhile, they're also holding onto the idea that cities are decaying liberal wastelands, populated by lazy degenerate criminals and "welfare queens". They've spent decades complaining that the people in the inner city need to take responsibility for their own lives, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

But now rural areas are the "new inner city", but it's not their fault. It's economic factors beyond their control. They're not responsible, and don't need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Even when describing the problem in terms of the "inner city", they're often still failing to recognize the similarity between this "new inner city" and the old inner city that they continue to criticize.

Maybe it's time we recognize that the government has a role to play in alleviating the burden of poverty, whether the poverty occurs in the inner city or in rural areas.

Re:The flip side...

[swb]

I think in some ways it's all true at the same time.

A lot of this is just vilifying your opponents supporters, both to discredit your opponent and to undermine their supporters' claim on resources.

But it's not like the claims are wholly baseless. How many generations of inner city poor have come out of out-of-wedlock parenting? How much crime in the inner city is the byproduct of gang participation and toxic cultural values that their own community leaders refuse to acknowledge or repudiate?

On the other hand, their defenders have points like generations of racial discrimination, unfair policing, inadequate schooling and lack of civic investment.

In rural communities you also have a lot of investment in low-rent "traditional values" which wind up being things like science denial and religious hucksterism both in the community and being enforced as "educational" policy. Nor are they free of the self-inflicted problems of alcoholism or drug use, either.

On the other hand, a lot of rural communities have seen their economic base go from thriving to crashing in time periods that really no one could have predicted or could have adapted to. If you suck some large plurality of the economic base out of a rural region, there often isn't a fix for it besides closing the towns and mass-relocating the population. If there's any "fault", its in the hands of local civic leaders for not purposefully diversifying the local economy, a difficult task when it needs to be done at the crest of economic prosperity (when the big plant was setting output records), when nobody understands it could all end and when diversification may have failed due to lack of labor or access to markets.

And there are weird dichotomies in cities, too. Islands of prosperity occupied by elites in good housing and with good jobs but which are closed to outsiders. I can think of a couple of areas in my city with a couple of square miles of million dollar homes with impoverished areas within 3 miles in nearly every direction. It's worse in some suburban areas which start to resemble dynastic clans, generations of elites whose children get high quality educations and use their parents influence to get good jobs, a closed loop cycle.

Re:The flip side...

[nine-times]

I agree with some of your points, but do not agree that "it's all true at the same time." I'd sooner say that there may be components of truth to these ideas, but some of the interpretations and conclusions are very poor.

That is to say, sure, there's some out of wedlock parenting. That's happening in various populations in this country, perhaps some populations at different rates than others. However, even if there's a greater rate of single parents in cities, it's not justified to jump to the conclusion, "Therefore these people are irresponsible and deserve to suffer." And at least to some degree, when inner cities were suffering, it wasn't that lawlessness and weak morality had caused economic problems, but rather that economic problems caused some degree of lawlessness and a breakdown of social order.

On the other hand, a lot of rural communities have seen their economic base go from thriving to crashing in time periods that really no one could have predicted or could have adapted to. If you suck some large plurality of the economic base out of a rural region, there often isn't a fix for it besides closing the towns and mass-relocating the population. If there's any "fault", its in the hands of local civic leaders for not purposefully diversifying the local economy, a difficult task when it needs to be done at the crest of economic prosperity (when the big plant was setting output records), when nobody understands it could all end and when diversification may have failed due to lack of labor or access to markets.

Part of my objection is that I've seen/heard people say this sort of thing about the current rural problems, who at other times have blamed inner-city poverty on things like "having children out of wedlock." I think the reality is that you could also argue that the inner cities went from thriving to crashing in a time period that no one foresaw. The people with money fled to the suburbs, pulling a lot of the functioning economy out of the cities. If there's a "fault", it was in civic leaders, government officials, and economic circumstances outside of the control of the people being affected.

I don't want to get into a whole argument about the causes of each of these problems, and my goal isn't to diminish the concern for the suffering that's going on in rural areas right now. I just want to point out that, if you're currently holding both the position, "The government needs to help the poor working class white rural communities!" and also holding the position, "Black people in inner cities need to take responsibility for themselves instead of looking for government handouts!", then maybe you should consider whether you're exhibiting a bias.

Echoes of the Depression era

[ErichTheRed]

This kind of reminds me of longshoremen having to turn up at the docks every morning and stand on the stones just for a chance to get picked to work that day, with no guarantee that you would be working tomorrow. At least Amazon is providing health benefits, but I've heard horror stories about working for them, both in the warehouses and in technology positions.

In my opinion, scenes like this are going to be more prevalent in the future as more stable work gets offshored or eliminated entirely due to automation. I've said this before, but working in big company IT you see positions all the time that could easily be dumped the second some MBA with a spreadsheet gets around to it. This has been the way of the world for decades though -- big companies were big enough and made enough money to afford to have a little slack in the system and still return profits to shareholders. With the push to put everyone through college instead of training them right out of high school, you have a lot of random business grads who may not have gotten good grades or learned much between all the partying. Big companies still hire a ton of these entry level graduates to do some random task. These graduates get/got a decent salary, stable work, and were able to build their lives around the fact that they would have income. As they settle down, new grads get promotions, buy houses, have children, pay taxes, and consume at increasing levels as their salaries increase. Because of this, the consumer cycle continues on -- companies produce goods that customers can afford to buy because they have jobs because companies can produce goods...

Scenes like this are what make me think this cycle is breaking down. If you squeeze so much that an operation is 100% efficient and you have no more need for the vast majority of employees, then you cut out the ability for those former employees to participate in the economy. Forgoing a new grad hire at the help desk or support team for $40K because Tata will give you a "replacement" for $10K in India means that that new grad is going to have limited options and may end up in line at the Amazon warehouse for just over minimum wage. I don't know how to solve it -- people propose a universal basic income, and i think that's the best answer, but the people who happen to be on the positive side of this shift will never go for it. You would have to have massive unemployment, 50% or more, just to register that there's a problem in most people's minds, and I think that will lead to a pretty big upheaval in the not too distant future.

Does that mean we should give people make-work? I think so, unless anyone has a plan for breaking society's dependence on getting an education, going to work, consuming, saving for retirement, and spending down your savings at the end of your life.

Re: Health benefits?

[darthsilun]

He said that he thinks they should only have to pay 12 a year, not that they already do.

Making fun of Trump is really easy, how did you fuck this up so badly?

Says the apparent new expert of fucking up badly.

"But in one eyebrow-raising moment, Trump told the Times that health insurance costs about $1 per month when you're young. "Because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance, ..."[1]

Actual Twitler word salad quote: "... Because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance,[2]

And for good measure [3]

It's pretty clear that he thinks (to the extent he actually thinks about anything) that insurance does cost 20-somethings only $12 per year. Not that he thinks that's what they should pay. That that's what they're paying today.

Sending you back to seventh grade for a redo on reading comprehension.

[1] http://fortune.com/2017/07/20/...
[2] http://www.newsweek.com/donald...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Well, ain't no point in working brick and morta

[bobbied]

Seriously?

If we are ever going to beat this racism thing, we've simply got to start ignoring people's race, both legally AND in practical day to day business matters. This applies to ALL sides of the question including discrimination AND affirmative action laws. Folks will have to drop their victimhood status along with those who think they are better by virtue of their race,

MLK's dream was exactly this, judgment by the content of one's character, not the color of their skin.

Of course, nobody cares what I (A middle age white dude) say on this subject because I'm not a member of a politically recognized group of victims...

Re:Well, ain't no point in working brick and morta

[jellomizer]

Here is the thing about computers and automation. They do not make your lives easier, they make them more difficult. Computers and robots are taking away the easy jobs, leaving the hard jobs, that requires more complex thinking, creativity and problem solving skills, and a wider range of movement. Where every day your job will be different.

We cannot try to slow this down (AKA America First), we cannot really ignore the problem (AKA basic income). However there needs to be an effort to get people onto the fact that they need to change, because people can change faster then a computer can. This includes Training the employees, and changing businesses to allow people who do not have the experience to get in and build the experience.
 

Re:Dow 22000!

[tsqr]

Failing a drug screen doesn't automatically mean you're going to cause an accident or not show up to work.

Of course not. It means you're statistically more likely to cause an accident or not show up for work. What it automatically means is, your employer is going to be saddled with higher insurance premiums, and that automatically means you won't get hired.

Re:Dow 22000!

[Rockoon]

The point of drug screening isnt to prove that the applicant doesnt do drugs. The point of drug screening is to prove that the application doesnt have such a big problem that they cant go without.

You pass a drug screening by not doing drugs for a few weeks. If you cant do that then the drugs are more important to you than the job, and who wants to hire you then?

Re:Dow 22000!

[Khyber]

"You pass a drug screening by not doing drugs for a few weeks."

That doesn't work for those of us who require medical cannabis for pain management. Let's see you attempt going one week in my condition without it, let alone three.

Can't take opiates because of allergies.

Can't have 'caine'-class painkillers because they cause heart arrhythmia in me.

Prior research into sea cone snail venom toxins had to stop because the species that produced the compound of interest was endangered.

If you think naproxen/ibuprofen/aceteminophen/aspirin even stands a chance against chronic neurological post-operative pain, you're deluded.

So what fucking option do I have?