BBC: Amazon Workers Face "Increased Risk of Mental Illness" 321
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."'"
Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Balancing Act? (Score:2, Interesting)
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:"similar to" (Score:5, Interesting)
What prompted this investigation? Sounds like a news crew just looking for a story they can call big.
Re:Remind anyone of Manna? (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [marshallbrain.com]
Re:11 Miles a shift? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"similar to" (Score:3, Interesting)
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:11 Miles a shift? (Score:4, Interesting)
Accidentally? How did that work? Did you think it was a sysadmin job when they were talking about mail delivery system?
Re:"similar to" (Score:1, Interesting)
There are differences. For example, Amazon employees face a zero tolerance policy to talking to each other during work hours. Speak to anyone, lose your job. Now while I'm anti-social as all hell, humans in general aren't, and that's a formula for stress.
Re:"similar to" (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon is working on it, it is just a matter of time.
Re:"similar to" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave, By Mac McClelland, (Score:4, Interesting)
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave, By Mac McClelland, March/April 2012 Issue, Mother Jones. [motherjones.com]
"My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine."
Re:"similar to" (Score:1, Interesting)
Did you read it? Of course not. Amazon are profiling people and setting targets. The harder, faster workers are being set increasingly higher targets, despite no reward. Failing to meet your personal target results in being reprimanded despite being one of the most productive workers. Those that are just getting by earn the same income as high performers, but have the benefit of much lower pick-n-pack targets.
So what (Score:3, Interesting)
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.