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Amazon Employee Explains the Poor Working Conditions of An Amazon Warehouse
Earlier this week, James Bloodworth, a former UK Amazon employee that worked undercover in the "fulfillment center" for six-months, released a book detailing the mistreatment of warehouse employees at the commerce company. He described the work culture as a prison after discovering that Amazon warehouse staff were peeing in bottles to avoid taking too many breaks. Since the report first broke, many Amazon employees have come out to share their thoughts on the working conditions, including one Reddit user who claims that "the post is pretty spot on": They don't monitor bathroom breaks, but [your] individual rate (or production goal) [doesn't] account for bathroom breaks, or... let's say there is a problem like you need [two] of something and there's only one left, well you have to put on your "andon"... wait for someone to come "fix" for you, all the while your rate is dropping. The [two] most common reasons [people] get fired are not hitting rate, and attendance. They don't really try to help you hit rate, they just fire and replace.
My first week there [two] [people] collapsed from dehydration. It's so [commonplace] to see someone collapse that nobody is even shocked anymore. You'll just hear a manager complain that he has to do some report now, while a couple of new [people] try to help the guy (veterans won't risk helping [because] it drips rate). No sitting allowed, and there's nowhere to sit anywhere except the break rooms. Before the robots (they call them kivas) pickers would regularly walk 10-15 miles a day, now it's just stand for 10-12 hours a day. [People] complain about the heat all the time but we just get told 80 degrees (Fahrenheit obviously) is a safe working temp. [Sometimes] they will pull out a thermometer, but even when it hits 85 they just say it's fine. There's been deaths, at least one in my building... Amazon likes to keep it all hush hush. Heard about others, you can find the stories if you search for it, but Amazon does a good job burying it... Amazon has denied the allegations, saying: "Amazon ensures all of its associates have easy access to toilet facilities which are just a short walk from where they are working. Amazon provides a safe and positive workplace for thousands of people across the UK with competitive pay and benefits from day one. We have not been provided with confirmation that the people who completed the survey worked at Amazon and we don't recognize these allegations as an accurate portrayal of activities in our buildings."
My first week there [two] [people] collapsed from dehydration. It's so [commonplace] to see someone collapse that nobody is even shocked anymore. You'll just hear a manager complain that he has to do some report now, while a couple of new [people] try to help the guy (veterans won't risk helping [because] it drips rate). No sitting allowed, and there's nowhere to sit anywhere except the break rooms. Before the robots (they call them kivas) pickers would regularly walk 10-15 miles a day, now it's just stand for 10-12 hours a day. [People] complain about the heat all the time but we just get told 80 degrees (Fahrenheit obviously) is a safe working temp. [Sometimes] they will pull out a thermometer, but even when it hits 85 they just say it's fine. There's been deaths, at least one in my building... Amazon likes to keep it all hush hush. Heard about others, you can find the stories if you search for it, but Amazon does a good job burying it... Amazon has denied the allegations, saying: "Amazon ensures all of its associates have easy access to toilet facilities which are just a short walk from where they are working. Amazon provides a safe and positive workplace for thousands of people across the UK with competitive pay and benefits from day one. We have not been provided with confirmation that the people who completed the survey worked at Amazon and we don't recognize these allegations as an accurate portrayal of activities in our buildings."
so how exactly are there "veterans" of the workplace there?
are people that lazy to find another job?
This is news?
Welcome to Jeff Bizzaros Bizzaro World!
Yeah, to a sweat shop in India. Oh well, without sufficient resistance, don't expect any improvement. People have to stand up and defend themselves,
"He described the work culture as a prison"
If he think's it is prison then he has no concept of prison. He is free to leave any time. Poor man's deluded and should seek professional help.
Caption Obvious makes his predictions for Amazon:
(1) Improve working conditions? No.
(2) Improve screening of new hires? Yes.
(3) PROFIT!
Bibliophile that I am, I will NOT ever buy another book from Amazon. I reached that conclusion more than 15 years ago, and I've resisted every temptation since then. Amazon is just Walmart on steroids--and I never shop at Walmart.
How long until they starve me into submission?
Anyway, remember the creed of the corporate cancers that have killed capitalism and communism and that are now working (AKA bribing and lying and scheming) to kill the last vestiges of socialism, too:
"There is no gawd but profit, and Amazon is gawd's #1 prophet!"
That's calling it on market cap in relation to the current proprietor, but on profit alone it should be Apple. Top 10 for gross profit (and I do mean gross) includes a bunch of gigantic casinos pretending to be banks.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Slashdot Poster Explains the Poor Working Conditions of An Amazon Warehouse
It's a warehouse.
Their denial doesn't really deny any of the allegations. Like the report says that they aren't being denied access to restroom facilities, they're saying that you are indirectly penalized for using them. Amazon's denial doesn't address that portion of it. There have also been documented reports where Amazon was paying to have ambulances sitting around outside their warehouses in case someone passed out from heat stroke instead of just installing some AC. Kind of seems like the AC would be cheaper, but I'm sure some beancounter did the math and figured it was more expensive.
...so it must be true?
Such a good boy.
Waiting for the next Triangle Shirtwaist Fire incident to happen in the United States.
Profit Uber Alles
I worked in a comic book warehouse. It wasn't like that. It was decent work for decent pay.
"There's been deaths, at least one in my building... Amazon likes to keep it all hush hush. Heard about others, you can find the stories if you search for it, but Amazon does a good job burying it..."
Uh, huh. Deaths. But its all "hush hush".
"Last month the company was named by LinkedIn as the seventh most sought-after place to work at in Britain.
So, I guess these stories don't really affect people's choices. If they like to be abused, who am I to argue?
Sounds nearly identical to the working conditions of being a 'picker and packer' at toysmart.com. The only way to meet their quotas was to F-over everyone else / leave a mess / steal boxes from the people next to you so you wouldn't have to walk to the restocking station.
Every society has some dumb people. Some not-so-smart individuals. They can be hard-working dumb people but the best thing you can expect them to do is to follow simple instructions in a factory-like setting.
There is no problem until you raise the minimum wage enough to make it much more profitable moving production to other continents. Now any job would do. Even if it is in the most horrible conditions.
You trying to be funny?
I know funny.
Watching Trump is funny.
You are not funny.
If you set up conditions where people need to abuse themselves in order to stay competitive and employed, they will do it. That's a big part of why governments have labor laws. Because the free market *doesn't* work for everything.
If Amazon doesn't get their act together, sooner or later governments will.
Yes
They sit in a reinforced hole all day waiting for the end of the world.
They can be fired for pea breaks "Anyone Caught Urinating in This Area Will Be Discharged"
And constantly live under the cloud of being replaced by electronic relays (within 30 days).
James Bloodworth, a former UK Amazon employee that worked undercover in the "fulfillment center" for six-months, released a book detailing the mistreatment of warehouse employees at the commerce company.
He was undercover for what reason? It sounds like he went looking for some anecdotes to put in the book he was writing.
I worked at Amazon for eight years, starting as a temp warehouse worker doing cycle counts in the Inventory department going through the entire IT department then ending my career there back in the Inventory department doing development for data dashboards and various ETL work.
I have no formal education other than high school, everything else has just been through hobbies and self learning. I managed about one "promotion" every 18 months or so, traveling the country, to other countries, moving to new states. I say "promotion" because you get the fancy new job, etc but the pay is worthless. Depending on where you join Amazon that is the benchmark of where you will go due to policies on pay raises etc, and yes those apply to promotions too, not just yearly reviews.
Since I started as a temp that basically sealed my fate, after 8 years and 6 or so promotions I was making 23 dollars an hour, with about 20 shares of stock included (which vest after 2 years with a 40% tax) - building custom apps for one of the largest companies in the world. When I was an IT Engineer I was given $20.50 an hour and 3 shares, to launch new buildings, train new IT teams, manage servers, manage site wide DNS, phone systems, the expansive network. Yet a new peer hired from outside the company would come in and make 27-28 an hour plus stock.
I think the problem with Amazon isn't the grueling work conditions, etc. As I've had far worse jobs (that were union even), and it's fairly easy to transfer or promote into an "easy" position but that they are constantly dangling the carrot, you always feel like one day you'll make it, and even if you do you'll have nothing to show for it.
SK
So now the conditions at Amazon are getting to be like the conditions at Foxconn.
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Slashdot Poster Explains the Poor Working Conditions of An Amazon Warehouse
It's a warehouse.
Maybe. But Amazon also employs people for software/tech jobs to keep all their automation running. I have a fulfillment center near near and I have always heard stories about how crap the pay and conditions were for even the tech jobs.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Earlier this week, James Bloodworth, a former UK Amazon employee that worked undercover in the "fulfillment center" for six-months, released a book
Not that I'm saying he's lying, or even exaggerating, but you've got to at least acknowledge the fact that he went in with an agenda, and is coming out with a book to sell.
Though he obviously didn't think it through. If he'd gone undercover somewhere else, he could've sold the book on Amazon. D'oh!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
*Reads post with furrowed brow and hand cupped over mouth, slowing shaking head all the while. Then proceeds to order 2 Echos and a Firestick*
Don't like it, QUIT! Anyone holding a gun to your head? These stories are just another attempt at forcing Amazon to unionize. And, when that happens, productivity will drop, prices will rise. How it works...if enough people quit, and refuse to work, then Amazon will have to change working conditions, and or raise wages.
When I jumped countries and came to live in the UK I was forced to take the first available job just to get going. I ended up in a large Tesco distribution centre which supplies the whole North West from Manchester to Liverpool and Wales.
Here's what I witnessed: ...but most days the strong ones were expected to work at least 10 hour shifts and it was a common practice for supervisors to ask for 12.
- 80% of the staff consisted of agency workers, most of them foreign.
- Rota was a myth; you were informed about the hours you were expected to work 2 to 4 hours before the beginning of your shift by a text or a call if you failed to respond within an hour.
- No guaranteed hours. The weakest workers could be told to go home after as little as 2 hours of work...
-
- Everyone had to wear a wrist-mounted scanner (AMT - arm-mounted terminal) which also tracked your performance. You were not given any extra time for toilet breaks.
- Agency workers (who, again, were the majority) were paid wages based on their performance. 80% - minimum wage (£7.50 p/h at that time), 100% - £8.10p/h and 110% (upper threshold) - £8.60 p/h.
- Your performance was often affected by random events. Sometimes one issue was enough to wreck your performance for the entire day. Crowded lanes, missing products, missing pallets, spillages, oversized products, jammed or damaged printers, random restarts of your AMT.
- If the above wasn't enough, supervisors were allowed to "steal" your performance by reassigning your already completed tasks to extremely low performers to bump their stats so that the agency as a whole looked better before the client (Tesco). Sadly, this is a fact and not a personal speculation (and common knowledge/practice).
- Agency workers who worked with frozen food in -21C were not given any additional protection equipment. They were expected to work in very thin gloves and suffered from frost burns daily. They usually happened to be the same people over and over again until they quit are replaced with other lucky ones.
Your mom's funny.
Of course now they have to compete with other Europeans who will work their asses off for half as much and they don't much care for it.
The word that confirms the testimonies.
So what, try working for XPO Logistics
I'm glad we can give the paranoid schizophrenic his time on the soap box
Seriously, when has a boycott of ANY nationwide or multinational chain really accomplished anything? In a best case scenario, you get so much media attention that the company decides it's a good P.R. move to do some token thing to show how "good" they are. When the furor subsides, they go back to business as usual.
With WalMart for example? So many people claim to hate them, but they provide employment for the relatively unemployable. If there's one thing I *really* dislike about them? It's the way they're able to work our welfare system, so they pay people JUST low enough wages so they qualify for govt. assistance while working full time for them. That's something that government itself really needs to address though. If they leave the loophole there, companies will come along and take advantage of it. IMO, those assistance programs should be there as TEMPORARY help for people who are in-between jobs. It shouldn't be supplemental income that allows someone to accept a job at a wage they'd normally consider unacceptable.
With these reports about Amazon's warehouses, I think you've got a similar situation. Most people with the ability and knowledge to do better would just quit a job in those conditions, and do something that pays at least as well to work in a better environment. If you're risking passing out and peeing in bottles to avoid bathroom breaks, you're basically trying to stay employed as a simulated robot. Amazon and others trying to run things this way are sending a clear message; we would really rather just use robots. And IMO, that's inevitably where this will all lead.
The unions want you to think they can fix this, by FORCING employers to give you better pay and better conditions doing these same tasks. But that only works when the employer still needs HUMAN labor. It used to be, that was a given. But today, it's not.
There are at least 7 things wrong with that.
I'm not a faggot.
I didn't cry as Trump was imprisoned.
- Trump isn't imprisoned.
- I wouldn't cry about it if it were to happen.
News of Trump being imprisoned wouldn't wait until 11.
- My crying about it (which wouldn't happen) wouldn't be newsworthy.
- - If it somehow did make the nightly news, my local market (most likely to air my crying / not crying) runs nightly news at 10 PM.
or large swaths of the Southern United States? You just plain get trapped. It's got nothing to do with your abilities. There just isn't much work unless you're rockin' a college degree and then you probably get out of Dodge because the schools suck and the water's full of lead.
.com boom. Stop blaming the victim. GP is 100% right. Any attempt to Unionize it met with the full force of their corporate legal team plus every lobbyist they can muster.
Walmart hasn't been scrapping the bottom since the
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when the Teamsters ran them.
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Karl Marx talked about how capital would flow to where ever labor was cheapest in a never ending race to the bottom but all anybody can remember about him is that a couple of fascists borrowed his books for rhetoric.
Here's a crazy idea: Instead of the folks in the UK getting worse lives how about the rest of Europe get _better_ lives?
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Have gnu, will travel.
30 - 40 years of declining wages mean we're all doing whatever we can to hang on. The most obvious thing is buying cheap stuff from China through online retailers.
It saves me a couple grand a year, which has just barely kept my income ahead of inflation these last few years. I'm just trying to make it until the kid's out of college. I know full well the human cost of it all, but I'm a pretty weak guy. I can barely hang on myself. I know logically that if we'd all stand together we'd be saved but I also know that's just not what happens. I'm an American, and I can't even more than 60% of us to agree that we should all get healthcare. And most of that 60% is in two out of 50 States.
I think the race to the bottom is just going to accelerate. We could stop it whenever we want, but it would mean accepting the occasional guy like this. From what I'd see folks would rather starve to death in the streets than see a guy like that get food stamps and health care.
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I remember reading about the working conditions at Amazon warehouses maybe 3-5 years ago. It hasn't changed. Amazon still makes the same BS claims about how it isn't true. Funny that the claims of the workers are so darned consistent, several years and states apart.
Warehouses used to be a not bad job for someone without much education or skills, at least according to the people I've known that worked in them. Nothing fantastic but not shitty like this is described.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
If you can do 10-15 miles a day you have no excuses. There are better jobs you can get and if you can't get one where you live now you only have yourself to blame for not moving. And don't give me that non-sense about people being too poor to move. If you are doing 10-15 miles a day you can easily get yourself a used $15-25 bike and a tents and started riding. I know people who've done 1000 miles on a bike each day for many months on end and people who have rode cross country. Distances far far greater than the UK.
This whole mentality of helplessness is pathetic. The way a free market works is jobs are offered and if there are too many jobs and not enough employees the wages decline. Employees that aren't mentally challenged then move to where the jobs pay better or for that matter exist. It's up to you as a sane person to go find a job that pays decently and that job may not be where you currently live.
No, seriously. Have a port-a-potty on a pallet robot. If you need a break hit a button on your tracking bracelet and the bathroom will come to you. Easy peasy.
That's a interesting thought. There was a time when US legislator (I forget whether Senator or Representative) went to prison and continued to hold his office. Would the same be true of a President? It's not the same as impeaching him. Would the Vice-President be allowed to sign and veto bills if the President were in prison? Or would someone need to cart the bill over to the prison for me to sign?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
would someone need to cart the bill over to the prison for him to sign?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The South has lower unemployment than the national average.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, US national average unemployment rate is 4.1%.
From that same source, average unemployment rate for Southern states only, comes out to 4.18%.
For the average to be below the national, more than half of the Southern states would have to be discounted, concentrating only on Tennessee (3.4), Virginia (3.5), Alabama (3.7), Arkansas (3.8), Florida (3.9) and Texas (4.0).
Of the rest, only Oklahoma and Kentucky are at national average, while the remaining 50% of Southern states average out to 4.55%, with their range spanning from Maryland (4.2) all the way to West Virginia (5.4).
And that's seasonally adjusted. With raw data, average unemployment in the South is higher, at 4.35%.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
... if you set standards that require the workers to use it unsafely.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
than you lot. shamelessly x posted. :
https://www.reddit.com/r/world...
whole thread is full of stories like this. problem is that they are so damn cheap you cant NOT buy from amazon, because face it, we are all poor in this new world order.
How many people from the original Amazon Elexa team still work there? NONE. Seriously every single scientist, engineer, and expert quit as soon as the contract was up with the Amazon echo. The current team probably was flown in from India on the cheap.
They treat everyone but board members like shit. I was going to apply as a senior desktop and jr system engineer and the recruiter told me $35K a year as a contractor ... I hung up the phone. Sorry, employers have shown me not trust them if they promise you the world and will give you promotions or job security.
They simple do not care and will simply fire and replace until they find someone willing to work below value.
http://saveie6.com/
Warehouses used to be a not bad job for someone without much education or skills, at least according to the people I've known that worked in them. Nothing fantastic but not shitty like this is described.
The problem is freaking metrics. I hate them!
Call centers are horrible too ans run by them. Literally if you give yourself a break more than 3 seconds the team leader RUNS right behind you and freaks out and points to a watch. It was crazy.
THey hurt Dell, GE, and others. I have been let go from a job over them and it was rediculious as it was not a call center or warehouse. It was an MBA from a customer who only saw the numbers in one area that is measurable. GE and Dell came up with firing 15% every year. As a result no one can retire as you are eventually fired. As a result Dell lost alot of good people and many refuse to work under these conditions.
You always need to be careful with them. They ruined product quality and employee morale.
http://saveie6.com/
Missouri summers, metal building, not enough airflow, was regularly 90+ degrees. Bathroom breaks? This ain't no Union shop! If you're not working hard enough to sweat it out you're not working hard enough. Ah the good ol' days...
BS, it was worse way back when there was no internet. Under 90 degrees, what a dream that would have been... bathroom breaks? Obviously not working nearly hard enough if you are not sweating it all out. Kids these days.
There are informative links to relevant stories about Foxconn and Pegatron (the sweatshops Apple switched to after Foxconn) on Richard Stallman's website. Some on Amazon's worker exploitation as well.
Digital Citizen
I know several people that work or have worked at Amazon in tech and it's almost as bad with management and incompetence. A Friend of mine who's working as a contractor describes what he's running into with the Echo team and the incompetence he's running into there. I also have a close relative who spent quite a long time there. Managers are basically at each other's throats and the politics are insane from what everyone tells me. My friend who's a contractor there working on the Echo keeps telling me horror stories about the incompetence he runs into daily from lead developers. Another friend of mine who left told me that most of the competent people leave.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Stop, just stop.
What do you expect when you keep eradicating labour rights? These rights were a great achievement after industrialization that solved those exact problems. Now you throw all zhat away ans complain.
you took the words right out of my mouth
"Amazon ensures all of its associates have easy access to toilet facilities which are just a short walk from where they are working. Amazon provides a safe and positive workplace for thousands of people across the UK with competitive pay and benefits from day one."
All of *Amazon's* associates, not necessarily the contractor's associates (like Integrity Staffing in the US)
"We have not been provided with confirmation that the people who completed the survey worked at Amazon and we don't recognize these allegations as an accurate portrayal of activities in our buildings."
They worked for a contractor, which allows Amazon to wash the blood off their hands, rinse, and repeat with another agency.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
That's a big part of why governments have labor laws. Because the free market *doesn't* work for everything.
We have crony capitalism now.
When you stop exporting production, importing cheap labor, and then re-importing manufactured goods, you end up with
more local investment and local competition. Muh $15/hr is useless when the only option is either;
1. Outside your skill level
2. In a sweatshop
The main reason why people voted for Trump, and why they loathed Obama is this;
"Those jobs aren't coming back."
Except, many jobs didn't disappear, they just got shipped to a different country, or filled someone who jumped the border 3 nights ago.
People aren't blind, nor are they stupid. They know when they are being fed a line of BS, and the jobs line by 44 was a major stinker.
you dont get to be one of the richest man on earth without some dead bodies
But... how come that many people keep praising Amazon ?
And how come so many "makers" sites keep condoning Amazon practices (working conditions, tax escapes) by linking to Amazon ?
I seem to recall a few years ago someone who had quit retail for amazon warehouse work... quit the warehouse and went back to hating retail due to it being too physically demanding. This was before the picking robots and whatnot, so they basically were almost running around to pick orders fast enough. She had to quit due to health issues that started popping up and the recommendation of her doctor. I don't think it was her, but someone else that told me the next part. Something about some of the hotter locations in summer would just have emergency vehicles outside because now and then people would pass out from heat exhaustion during the hotter summer days.
Do you know what you're talking about? More than 20 years ago I worked in a shipping warehouse in college for a company that only hired college students for those jobs. It paid pretty well compared to other crummy jobs available in a student saturated college town, but the conditions were not great and because it was a shipping company it was all about the numbers. The company kept an account at the doc-in-the-box down the street for the injuries which happened ALL THE TIME. Ever loaded a trailer that's been sitting out in the sun in the South for hours when it's 100 degrees outside and 95% humidity?
There really is something called "hard work." It's hard. Some people--like college students--only have to do those jobs for a little while. Some people are stuck in those jobs. I can't imagine waking up everyday and knowing that my college job was the best it was going to be for the rest of my life. These jobs have been pretty tough for a long time.
Make love, not reality television.
Having seen their hiring process and the kind of questions they ask during interviews, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to work there for any amount of money.
I have a feeling it's actually a kind of age discrimination. Ask university exam style questions that no-one with a few years of experience remembers any more. Make the fresh graduates think they are good because they answered it, and then run them into the ground until they quit.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Years ago I remember reading someone saying Red Venture was a great company to work for. I was still in retail and thought I'd try them out. Then I started reading employee reviews and saw people saying stuff like: "You have to raise your hand to use the bathroom, usually you have to wait 15 minutes and they might tell you that you can't go and to wait til break time." Decided not to bother.
$35K? That's serious coin dude.
"Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to."
-Jeff Bezos
'Slashdot Poster Explains the Poor Working Conditions of An Amazon Warehouse
It's a warehouse.'
Its not just any warehouse. Its a shithole warehouse. Where people regularly collapse from fatigue. That doesn't even happen in the so-called shithole countries like India and China that you racist Slashdotters like to rant about.
Until then, we only have innuendo. I have no love for Amazon, but those are very serious charges that must be supported by solid evidence. Tall stories do not fit the bill. Present your supporting evidence.
Example: Trump.
Upper middle class by New Delhi standards, even.
Well, considering that until President Trump was elected, the unemployment rate was rather high,. I'd suggest laziness was the least of their worries in finding another job.
But my question is, do we not have some rather stringent regulations for Occupational Health and Safety? How does Amazon get a pass on OSHA?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
My son briefly worked as a "manager" in a warehouse in Seattle/Tacoma several years ago. His stories to us about a "driven" work environment correspond with what's in the article. Needless to say, he's not there any more. It wasn't a voluntary departure.
Apr. 12, Juche 107 (2018) Thursday
Editorial
Let Us Dynamically Advance under Guidance of
Respected Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un
April 11 marks the 6th anniversary of the respected Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un's assumption of the top posts of the Workers' Party of Korea and the State.
His assumption of the top posts of the WPK and the State at the Fourth Conference of the WPK and the Fifth Session of the 12th Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK in April Juche 101 (2012) was a historic event in which a fresh milestone was set up for accomplishing the cause of building a powerful socialist country, the revolutionary cause of Juche.
This made it possible to glorify the noble revolutionary careers and undying feats of President Kim Il Sung and leader
Kim Jong Il forever and invariably inherit the bloodline of Paektu, the tradition of single-hearted unity.
An ever-victorious great guiding force and a powerful and promising socialist state--these are the prestige of our Party and country led by Kim Jong Un.
His guidance ensures the authority of the WPK, the independent dignity of Juche Korea and the worthwhile life and rosy future of our people.
His august name and image as the heaven-sent great man have been kept deeper in the minds of the Korean army and people through the violent storm of history decisive of the destiny of the country, the nation and socialism. Our army and people have grown into those strong in idea and faith, absolutely trusting and following the Supreme Leader, and built a manifold fortress to protect the Party.
It is thanks to him that our Party and State have displayed their dignity as the glorious party and state of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and Korean-style socialism could advance full of vigor and dynamism, opening a great heyday of national prosperity.
How many people from the original Amazon Elexa team still work there? NONE. Seriously every single scientist, engineer, and expert quit as soon as the contract was up with the Amazon echo. The current team probably was flown in from India on the cheap.
They treat everyone but board members like shit. I was going to apply as a senior desktop and jr system engineer and the recruiter told me $35K a year as a contractor ... I hung up the phone. Sorry, employers have shown me not trust them if they promise you the world and will give you promotions or job security.
They simple do not care and will simply fire and replace until they find someone willing to work below value.
I have a completely different perspective. I know several people who have moved to dev at Amazon for around $160k plus signing bonuses and 125 shares of Amazon stock (vested over 4 years) which seems like a pretty decent offer. They love it and have given no indication of high or unfair turn over. That's not to say there aren't problems and stupid decisions made from time to time but good luck finding an employer where that isn't true.
you're adding in health care, the cost of which has long since spiraled out of control and is several times inflation. That's not more wages because it's not more wealth. My company might be paying $2000 a month for my health care on top of the $500 I pay but that doesn't mean I get $2500 worth of value. That money just gets filtered back up to the 1% in the form of stock dividends. It's another trick to keep wages low. Nothing more, nothing less.
Cheap electronics I rarely buy don't solve the wage decline problem. You need to consider what I call "Real" inflation, which is the rising cost of necessities (food, shelter, healthcare, education, transportation & retirement savings). As those things become an increasingly large percentage of your expenses your actual buying power goes down. This is why a woman who got laid off from K-Mart recently after 44 years started at $3/hr ($16/hr inflation adjusted dollars) and ended at $10.50. She lost a third of her pay over her career.
You don't get better results by cherry picking your stats, you get the Establishment's results. The funny thing is your sig rails against that same establishment but you're falling in line with their narrative. Wake up and go watch some clips from Bernie Sanders. You've been had.
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He supports DACA, TPP, the endless wars and neo-liberal economics. Take away those massive tax cuts and the attacks on Obama care and you've got a Hilary presidency with a little more racism and a few more pot heads in jail. I suppose the latter matters if you're one of those pot heads or on Obamacare, but my point is we're still in the world of incrementalism. We coulda had Bernie and some real change but folks got scared.
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You're free to find another job...
"As a result no one can retire as you are eventually fired."
What disgusts me most about the work situation in the US (I'm British) is that for many professions, you only get the pension if you are still employed at the same firm on retirement day. There's a huge incentive for employers to churn employees for that reason alone. This is not just private employers - it even happens with State and Federal employers.
As an IT manager I had to deal with loading and unload semi's in that kind of heat and it is definitely hard work. That said it is fairly easy to avoid injury. For some reason I always ended up overseeing the loading of the trucks despite the fact that my stuff was only about 6 servers racks and a couple of cases. I made sure the people in the truck were regularly swapped with people bringing the loads up to the truck and of course made sure water and drinks were readily available for anyone that needed it. Some of the guys loading were in their 50s and some were in their 20s, we all followed basic common sense and could load a semi in about 2 to 3 hours. We basically packed up the entire company to do a show in Florida this month, or Vegas another month.
That said, shipping companies live and die by metrics and again, as someone in IT I deal with metrics all day everyday in terms of SLAs and how many tickets the helpdesk can handle on a given day before we need to hire more people versus training our existing people better. When metrics are over-weighted because managers don't actually want to be out and about managing then crap like what we're seeing here happens.
I guess none of these people ever worked outside in the summer or were in the Navy. Temperatures in the engine room of the WWII era destroyer I was on easily reached 110 degrees F. It was 10 degrees hotter in the boiler rooms. I do not remember anyone collapsing, much less dying.
As a farm owner in the South I have worked under a pole barn with the thermometer at 104 F all day. You just drink plenty of water and keep going.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
As defined by the United States Census Bureau,[1] the Southern region of the United States includes sixteen states. As of 2010, an estimated 114,555,744 people, or thirty-seven percent of all U.S. residents, lived in the South, the nation's most populous region.[27] The Census Bureau defined three smaller divisions:
The South Atlantic States: Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
The East South Central States: Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee.
The West South Central States: Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas.
You can't be a virgin when you've been molested by you're dad and uncle at the same time!
I will always think circles around you little idiots.
APK
P.S.=> I'm a raging lunatic. Hoo-ooh, hoo-ooh, fancy me a fancy man
I've seen it a number of times, shitty employees put up with this because they don't want any light shed on them. Or they just don't know what the fuck proper hygiene is. In manufacturing, I'd see 2-3 competent people run the floor, and a dozen people who would stand around and need to be told every fucking thing. The competent people get promoted, leaving just shitty people. Then some new person gets hired and again, bests the shitty dozen. If it takes you 50% longer to do your job than the person next to you, you should be fired. Whenever I hear of people working 50+ hours a week (and not getting paid overtime) more than once or twice are just hiding the fact they're not capable of doing the job. The other year when I was at a contract manufacturer, I was there to setup test laptops for programming the devices. The employees would operate slowly, forcing overtime (part covered by us, part eaten by the company) because they fucked up so often and needed rebuild and repairs, not counting damaged components. It drove us nuts how much they chatted mindlessly instead of concentrating on doing their fucking jobs. Companies need a way to weed out shitty workers. If companies don't meet the labour laws, complain to the government. If there's no labour laws to protect you, fucking make them.
I write warehouse control systems, have spent a lot of time in, and talked to plenty of people working in many of the large warehouses featured in some of these articles (although not this particular one, as I think Amazon make their own software).
I don't honestly believe they are as bad as is made out. It's never going to be thrilling work, it will always be monotonous for the pickers and packers, and I suspect many working there would wish they could get a different type of job. But people I've met generally seem OK with life there. Particularly out in the warehouse diagnosing issues, I can often see/hear people chatting away at adjacent workstations while they do the job, or short chats with people on pick walks as they pass each other. It's not exactly a hellish environment anywhere I've seen.
One warehouse I commissioned back around 2004, one of the warehouse workers got to grips with our software really well. I've come across him a few more times since then gradually moving into the IT world, last time he was on the CAB committee for changes across all their sites. Someone has posted their own first hand equivalent story elsewhere I've seen. I've seen plenty of similar situations.
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