Amazon Asks Workers Staying At Home To Return Or Seek Leave (bloomberg.com) 58
Amazon is asking warehouse employees who have stayed away from work during the pandemic to return for scheduled shifts beginning May 1, or request a leave of absence. Bloomberg reports: The move sets up a critical choice for employees at a company that has become a lifeline for Americans locked down to contain outbreaks of Covid-19. After the coronavirus began spreading through the U.S., Amazon offered unpaid time off without penalty for workers uncomfortable with coming in, along with $2-an-hour hazard pay for those who report for duty. The offers run through April. In a blog post published Friday, Amazon said it would extend the raise through May 16 but made no mention of unlimited unpaid time off. Amazon said it was "providing flexibility with leave of absence options, including expanding the policy to cover Covid-19 circumstances, such as high-risk individuals or school closures."
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You jest, but China likely isn't running at 100%.
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Of course not. There is so many people in China, they're probably already at 5840%.
Makes sense... (Score:3, Informative)
Makes perfect sense... Little — if any — warehouse work can be performed remotely...
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I don't know, why you're cursing at those robots, but they'll be "a thing" soon. First — remote-controllable, and then AI-powered. It is easier to automate them, than create a self-driving street-safe vehicle.
Re:Well that was a waste. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is for warehouse employees... If they could telework, then that would mean all robots were doing the work, and if that were the case then no need for any of those workers anyway.
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This is for warehouse employees... If they could telework, then that would mean all robots were doing the work, and if that were the case then no need for any of those workers anyway.
I think there's still a 5 - 10 year window where robots staffing all positions that humans fill now will need human assistance to operate effectively, but once the AI catches up, then the robots can be fully autonomous and the humans won't be needed.
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I was thinking, they could make it an online game — not entirely unlike Tetris — with kids controlling the robots remotely competing with each other for prizes.
Of course, such use of "child labor" would never be allowed...
Re:Well that was a waste. (Score:5, Funny)
I was thinking, they could make it an online game — not entirely unlike Tetris — with kids controlling the robots remotely competing with each other for prizes.
Of course, such use of "child labor" would never be allowed...
And then, after all the trucks are loaded and they've won the war, they find out that it wasn't a game after all!
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Or Ender's Game yeah.
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That was actually a part of Neil Stephenson's REAMDE. Spot the wrong-way goblin and blow the Horn of Vigilance!
https://www.you-books.com/book... [you-books.com]
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What you are describing would require human-level "strong" AI. We have no idea how to achieve that. There is no good reason to believe that the current focus on gradient-descent training of tensor networks is leading in that direction.
Strong AI may be ten years away or it may be 100 years away. We don't know.
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Fine motor control outside of pre-defined paths and such.
So you whip up some humanoid robots, maybe with extending arms, etc.
And you make them basically Mechas. And you have your warehouse working at home with a few joysticks or a keyboard or whatever preferred input they use and there ya go, remote warehouse workers .....
Of course, you use their motions and actions to train AI to be able to control the robot warehouse workers so you can start replacing them after a while....
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One would have hoped that telework would become more of a thing after this passes
It will not. More likely there will be fewer remote working opportunities as companies have gotten a very large data set to compare productivity.
I think it will mostly go that way but there will be a few companies, particularly those with lower financial impact, that recognize many of their people do very little actual value add work so they will reduce headcount.
Dodging lawsuits (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, the obstacle course that this (trying to bend your employees to your will) has become. Damn. They were recently forced to wait until a former activist employee was guilty of a quarantine violation before terminating him.
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American outbreak hasn't peaked. (Score:2, Insightful)
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For the country as a whole, that's true, but not for all states, nor all areas of all states. For example, in Santa Clara County, there were only 39% as many total new cases in the week ending yesterday as in the we
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I agree that the local level isn't good enough, because people will travel to fulfill their perceived needs, but state-level data (or even region-level data) almost certainly is, because people really aren't traveling much right now. Either way, the point is that some areas are well past the peak, and talking about the country as a whole is a silly as talking about, for example, all of Europe as a whole. The scale isn't reasonable.
Re: American outbreak hasn't peaked. (Score:2)
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Chinese isn't a race; it's a nationality. And it's not racist to point out that people who were born in China or whose families live in China are a LOT more likely to visit China than the national average, so unless we're wrong about where the virus began, it stands to reason that areas with a lot of first-generation and younger second-generation immigrants from China would have a statistically higher number of people bringing this particular virus in from overseas, and thus a higher number of cases. (No
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"O[u]r daily deaths have plateaued too. They aren't declining."
Isn't that what you would expect if the new cases number had plateaued? If the same number of people are getting sick each day, and the disease runs more or less the same course, and we don't have a "cure" for it, then I would expect the death rate to plateau as well.
The deal is that we were supposed to be flattening the curve in order to avoid overwhelming medical facilities while letting the virus run its course in the general population. Th
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"O[u]r daily deaths have plateaued too. They aren't declining."Isn't that what you would expect if the new cases number had plateaued? If the same number of people are getting sick each day, and the disease runs more or less the same course, and we don't have a "cure" for it, then I would expect the death rate to plateau as well.
Yes, but that was my point. If our treatments had improved, while new infections remain steady deaths could still decline. That could serve as a good opportunity to begin to reopen the economy more. But that's not happening. Reopening the economy will cause more fatalities.
The deal is that we were supposed to be flattening the curve in order to avoid overwhelming medical facilities while letting the virus run its course in the general population. That goal has been met.
Not exactly. What you have seen happen is that our current SIP orders have caused new infections to stabilize. Opening up more of the economy will provide more opportunities for community spread, which will mean more infections and more deaths at a faster rate. But it's not just beds and ventilators. The primary choke point for the healthcare industry is doctors and nurses. ICU patients require lots of attention and staff. Significant numbers of people in ICU can cause exhaustion in the medial staff. Right now, most of America is doing ok. But an increase of 20-30% more ICU patients over a very long period of time will cause significant stress on the medical staff even if there are beds and ventilators available.
In fact, where I live the local hospital is empty and running out of money because they aren't doing any "elective" procedures either.
I'm generally okay with allowing more elective procedures. I live in Texas, and personally I think our governor's next-step isn't bad.
If we don't open things back up, the infection rate may go to zero or close to it. If that happens are we all going to just wait it out at home until a vaccine is available a year from now?
That's my point. The infection rate is steady, not going to zero.
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That's kind of what it means to flatten the curve. You just want to spread the load in the healthcare system, which the people in the US healthcare systems have done a great job at. Unless you have a vaccine that works (which now they're saying it will probably never happen, similar to the flu), you can't bend the curve down, people are going to get infected, you just don't want people dying because they can't get a hospital bed. The people dying are going to die anyway as we all are, those at risk had a life expectancy less than 10 years to begin with, very old age, obesity and diabetes are the primary indicators of risk.
Wow guruevi, just about everything in that post you just made up yourself.
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Prove me wrong
Prove you wrong guruevi...Why don't you prove you're telling the truth?
Not true. Show that you didn't just make it up.
You can. Places are. Show why you claim this is true and you didn't just make it up.
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It's just factually not true to say the outbreak has peaked. It hasn't. America has been gaining 30k new cases every day for the past two weeks.
The first derivative has peaked and is now (maybe) negative. Presumably that's what people mean.
Social distancing was never about not getting sick (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's a win-win idea ... (Score:5, Funny)
Amazon ships things to employee homes where they package them up to ship out to customers ...
To quote someone famous, "Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, what do you have to lose?"
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+5 Funny!
Oh, wait, you were serious?!
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To quote someone famous, "Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, what do you have to lose?"
The problem is that the answer turned out to be "Your life". Which I suppose is but a small price to pay for the stock market.
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Amazon ships things to employee homes where they package them up to ship out to customers ...
I say cut out the middleman. Have Amazon ship things directly to the customers for packaging.
Good luck with that.... (Score:2)
If an employee believes that the workplace is unsafe, all one them has to do is confidentially file an OSHA complaint and let them get an inspection.
I honestly find it surprising that Amazon is willing to risk it.
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The virus isn't going away. (Score:2)
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When is it socially acceptable for Amazon to have their workers back?
When it doesn't endanger the rest of the people in humanity (or even the people in their immediate city).
Rubbing it in (Score:5, Funny)
beginning May 1
Because if you want to assert yourself over your employees, this is the day to do it.
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I've started going to other places who most the time have a wider range of stock.
What places have you been visiting?
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What places have you been visiting?
Not the OP, but it depends on what I want. And whether I want it fast, cheap and reliable.
For technical, hardware, tools and some computer stuff I tend to favour one particular UK vendor (RS). Free next day delivery on orders of any size (without having to subscribe to an ongoing cost like prime). You can pay a lot for before noon and before 10am shipping too if you're really in a hurry. One of the biggest advantages is that for cheapshit electronics like cables and charge
No offense... (Score:3)
I voted (Score:2)
I voted with my wallet - I stopped buying on amazon.
I don's see how can someone be the richest person on the planet and pay fair and decent wages.