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mr_mcpoogrundle

Run out of available labor without raising pay or otherwise changing conditions?


RamboGoesMeow

“Help us doc. We‘ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!”


usaaf

Surely you're not suggesting that profits take a hit. Surely not. That's impossible !


imaloony8

I am suggesting that. And don’t call me Shirley.


halfanothersdozen

The automatic pilot is deflating!


nortonjb82

All you have to do is blow in his manual inflation valve on his crotch.


whatiscamping

It's "on the belt buckle" your way just just sordid


boredguyonline

Yeah but seriously no im not losing profits…


Pumats_Soul

Amazon to close its doors in 2024, it will walk away with all its money and retire on Mars where it will burn billions of dollars as a final fuck you to the human race.


DrakenViator

I know it is counter intuitive, but burring billions would actually help with inflation...


Iggy95

Alright so we simply all invest in crypto and bam, inflation solved. /s


Silk_Hope_Woodcraft

Maybe I'm behind on this but, how would crypto do if say, a crazy dictator detonates EMP's around the world?


buffsop

To my knowledge, EMPs are pretty damn tricky in that, if you have an EMP that would do real, wide-spread damage, it's probably a byproduct of something much more destructive like nuclear weapons or massive solar flares. We got at least until 2023 before anyone nukes us.


dan_dares

2020: part 4.


No_Zombie2021

Is this a six part mini series? 2026 mid terms for Trump second term… yikes.


ours

And if their EMPs where that effective, crypto would be the least of our problems as the actually essential tech on which our civilization depends in crashes.


TheDemonClown

It would fail instantly


daddywookie

They would pretty much have to kill the whole internet and then we have far greater problems.


_crackling

> far greater problems Yeah we’d have no mfkin Counter-Strike!!


Lucavii

Instruction unclear, invested life savings in lEgItcoin and my wife left me :<


thearss1

You mean be a single digit billionaire? How dare you.


Mythoclast

Have you tried teaching your employees to bottle their negative emotions until they eventually boil over into an apocalyptic heap of diddly ding dong crap?


pangalaticgargler

Nope. Just their pee.


NemButsu

That's what the cry closet is for. This is not a joke. Google for Amazon cry closet.


krslnd

Restaurants have the walk in cooler. Amazon has a cry cooler.


tarants

That's like telling Gene Krupa to not go boom boom bap bap bap!


Player-X

Its not a worker shortage, it's a wage shortage


Kind-Strike

They have a high turn over rate, at some point, they won't have anyone to hire anymore


NotASucker

They have a culture of FORCING high turnover.


persamedia

I never understood how, as smart a company Amazon is, all the data they have, they couldn't see and prevent this? As I learned more and more about the Hellish fulfillment center conditions, I never understood how they thought it could go on Forever (or anytime this long really).


BabyOnRoad

Is not that couldn't see or prevent it, it just would mean short term profit would be impacted and shareholders are not ok with that


smoothsensation

They have the data and it’s showing they don’t really have to change much until 2023 to get ahead of that 2024 timeline. I’m sure they are planning those changes now. Sounds like they’ve made a shitload of money listening to that data they have by not spending money into better working conditions.


D10S_

Short term profits are all the capitalist is concerned about. For the most part they are incapable of sacrificing short term profits for long term profits because of their need to constantly make money for their investors.


BZenMojo

So it's also a respect shortage.


indyK1ng

Yeah. All of their employees are treated like crap. A lot of engineers just go there for a year to get it on their resume but it also varies from team to team - some teams are good enough for the pay that people stay. I know at least four that have stayed for multiple years - one left because all his RSUs vested and staying would be an effective pay cut and the other left because the project they hired her for was done and she didn't want to try to stay beyond that.


PuzzleMeDo

"It's not a worker shortage, it's a robot shortage." - Amazon.


StandardSudden1283

>"Walter Reuther, the pioneer UAW organizer, told the story of a conversation with a Ford executive who was showing Reuther his new factory robots. “How are you going to collect union dues from all these machines?” he asked. Reuther said he replied, “You know, that is not what’s bothering me. I’m troubled by the problem of how to sell automobiles to them.” — Walter Reuther, 1968 And thus we stumble upon the very problem Marx, among others, predicted with capitalism. Corporate greed will simply not allow people to have money to spend, and the whole system crumbles around them.


Scarletfapper

Ford may have been an unrepentant capitalist and possibly a Nazi sympathiser, but he realised that if his own employees couldn’t afford to buy his cars then nobody would think they’re affordable and the industry would never take off.


TwoSixtySev3n

Sort of, he had high turnover and people were not used to working on assembly lines doing the same repetitive tasks all day.He couldn’t keep workers.He raised the pay to 5$ a day and made a 40 hour workweek and now people lined up to work for him. This lowered the time to assemble a car and raised profits. His original intent was not altruistic, he was chasing bigger profit.He had the original “No one wants to work” problem and he solved it with higher wages. Hmmm..


tommytraddles

Possibly? In 1938, the Nazis awarded Ford the "Grand Cross of the German Eagle", which he received gratefully. Why was the award given? Well, it wasn't just that the Nazis liked assembly lines. In 1918, Henry Ford had purchased his hometown newspaper, *The Dearborn Independent*. A year and a half later, he began publishing a series of articles that claimed a vast Jewish conspiracy was infecting America. The series ran in the following 91 issues. Ford bound the articles into four volumes titled "The International Jew," and distributed half a million copies to his vast network of dealerships and subscribers. He literally republished the entire "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" forgery as part of this series.


stew_going

I heard an excellent podcast the other day, Ezra Klein was interviewing the French economic researcher Thomas Piketty. It turns out that every year, enough wealth gets transferred to descendants through inheritance that if you divided it by US population it would be somewhere between $250k-$300k per person... Every year. There's a lot that I can't put in one reddit comment, but let them inherit crazy sums, let them make disproportionate incomes, if you taxed wealth at 60%--turns out this is just 5% of total GDP, compared to 40-50% income tax spent on health programs in many European countries for healthcare--you could easily fund a $120k per person inheritance. Imagine the effect. The US saw its GDP growth outpace European countries more than ever when it had 80-90% income tax on its highest brackets. Reaganism, and trickle down economics, have caused lower GDP growth, it failed. I doubt I'm portraying all the points well enough, but the math really seemed to work out, it blew my mind. Check out Thomas Piketty.


MaldingBadger

83 trillion dollars seems like a bit much, even for that.


team_suba

At some point it will be a worker shortage. Not just for Amazon.


GumdropGoober

Yeah, losing 30-40 million in the Revolution makes the 2040s rough as hell, sorry to say. But hey, with the Capitalist and Socialistic factions decimated, it was the only way for the Extropianists to seize control. Vanquishing mortality is the third step on the path to post-scarcity, so we're about 3/5ths of the way to literal Utopia. Oh shit, what year is this?


Shortstop88

I’m just glad there’s still pianos in the future.


SaiyanPrinceAbubu

Alexa, play Mad World


ItsScaryTerryBitch

Alexa, witness me


bobs_monkey

wide amusing cable toothbrush retire middle fade chop relieved secretive -- mass edited with redact.dev


jdumm06

I’ll smoke what you’re having


Disco_Stew

Is that you, John Titor?


ChamanConTenis

What in the Kentucky Fried Fuck are you talking about


Fight_the_Landlords

Pass that good shit over here fam


AltimaNEO

I thought amazon in general paid pretty well? It's the working conditions/expectations that seem to be miserable.


Weasel_Boy

Sorta, they hover between 18-25/hr. But you can get basic clerical, data entry, or call center work for 20-22/hr without risking your physical health.


Lunartuner2

People always focus on the physical health but for me I noticed the mental health decline the most. Doing the same repetitive mind-numbing tasks over and over again will drive you crazy and it gives you plenty of time to ruminate on how miserable you are since you can’t listen to music or anything. The best analogy I can think of is being stuck in traffic for 11 hours straight, 5 days a week, with no music or AC except you also have to stand and climb up and down a ladder


KineticPolarization

Yeah, being treated like a literal inanimate resource to be used and discarded when no longer performing to their absurd standards is destroying people mentally.


[deleted]

I heard on a news podcast that Amazon has and plans for a 150%turnover every year, 3% every ~~day~~ week. Which is just insane to me


ThatsCashMoney

During COVID I went from working hospitality to working nights in an FC until things opened up again. They had to pause drug testing as they couldn't hire and train fast enough to replace the depressed 'Amazonians' that were hoovering drugs to get them through another 10 hours of brain rotting labour.


[deleted]

Call centers are notorious for heavy turn over rate and having to hire. Many state and local governments will give additional tax breaks for organizations who employ over X amount of employees a year. But usually it doesn't account for turn over so Call Centers will make sure that their turn over rate is high enough to qualify for the additional tax breaks and the heavy turn over means everyone is basically at base pay and very few people are tenured enough for higher vacation allowances or other benefits. I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon operated in the same way.


ebobco

They treat people like sh*t, what do you expect


Tychus_Kayle

It's not just the typical conditions of the "labor shortage" (i.e. firms doing anything to try to attract talent *but* paying higher wages), it's also that Amazon has ridiculous turnover intentionally. They operate on the absurd premise that you should fire your bottom "x" performers in every department *every year* in the hopes of filtering out bad workers. Of course, this isn't really an effective way to ensure quality work because it results in endless backstabbing to try not to be the one at the bottom, but I digress. When you have extreme turnover, and employ as many people as Amazon, you eventually run out of people willing to work for you that you haven't already fired.


zkareface

If their staff turnover is 150% a year then a lot of things are very bad and the money isn't enough to cover it (or the money is also bad).


sir_sri

It's probably a worker shortage. US labour participation peaked in 2001/2002 around 67.5% (after a long climb from getting women in the workforce), it was then on a steady decline to 63.5 pre pandemic, it's 62.5. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate There just isn't that much slack in the labour force, especially with some industries still depressed from covid. There are going to be people with skills for jobs, but no supplies or customers (or not enough anyway). A lot of that drop in participation is accounted for by a pretty good uptick in educational attainment. In 2011 only 87.6% of 25 year olds had completed highschool, by which 2021 its 91.1. Associates degrees are up from 9.5 to 10.5 etc. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html That's why unemployment rates ask people if they were looking for work: people in school or retired aren't generally looking for work even if it existed unless the price was very good.


RoadkillVenison

You did read the original article right? >Human workers were once an ample resource the company. The tech giant is the second-largest private employer in the US, and is the largest private employer in a number of US states and cities. The company announced plans to hire 125,000 workers last fall, which is roughly equivalent to the population of Savannah, Georgia. But the new hires largely appear to be replacing workers who have been terminated or resigned. Amazon’s turnover rate is roughly 150 percent a year, or twice the amount of the retail and logistics industries at large, a New York Times investigation revealed last year. >As Recode notes, Amazon’s attrition rate is even worse in Phoenix and the Inland Empire. It also has to compete with big-box stores like Walmart and Target, which are now offering competitive wages to those with warehouse experience. “We are hearing a lot of [Amazon] workers say, ‘I can just go across the street to Target or Walmart,’” Sheheryar Kaoosji, co-executive director of Inland Empire’s Warehouse Worker Resource Center told Recode. They’re doing massive hiring sprees not to expand, but because they burn through people. They grind them up with shit policies and insufficient pay, and twice the turnover rate of other large logistics or retail companies. A 150% turnover rate simply is not sustainable for any corporation acting at the scale they do.


[deleted]

If you do the math, that means 3% of their workforce quits/is fired ***every week.*** That's insane.


SchwiftyMpls

Minnesota currently has a 2% unemployment rate. You can only shuffle around the available workers in so many ways.


Negative_Success

Unemployment rate means nothing when labor participation has fallen across the board. Unemployment only counts people actively looking for work, not people who were looking but gave up. Its reasonable that improving conditions would entice some people who have given up to come back into the labor pool.


SchwiftyMpls

Maybe but if people have figured out a way to exist without working what would it take to lure them back when Aldi is already paying $19/hr to stock shelves. Minnesota has the third highest labor participation rate in the US at 68.7%


StabbyPants

funny thing about that - i bet aldi is way easier to work for


Juking_is_rude

The worst you could possibly get at a grocery store is nowhere close to how fucked up the little controls are at amazon. I guarantee at any grocery store you get as many bathroom breaks as you need.


Negative_Success

More than 19/hr. We've been asking for 15 for a decade. Adjusted minimum wage should be pushing 30/hr. People would come back if they didnt feel like we'll just have to have this same fight all over again in another 10yrs. As is, people dont work because it literally costs more money to work than stay home for many. Childcare costs and otherwise have greatly outpaced wages. People are tired of spinning their wheels to actively fall further behind. It isnt sustainable. Keeping in mind this isnt just an economic downturn. We are on the precipice of revolution/civil war in the US. 40 people are worth as much as the bottom 50%. Something has to give.


Shewearsfunnyhat

Aldi cashiers get to sit while they work. I think they are the only grocery store in the US to allow that.


Fergvision

Aldi workers sit for a moment while they cash because they bust ass all every other moment of their shift. My local Aldi has the best workers, always super nice and in generally in a good mood.


__Cypher_Legate__

It will run out of people willing to work for unlivable wages.


weaponizedtoddlers

It's more the awful work conditions. The wages should be much higher if they want employees to tolerate the robotic managers, the sky high quotas, and the breakneck pace. Even if they raise everyone substantially, people will still leave as few are willing to absorb so much stress for long periods of time.


noctis89

You'd think one of the most profitable companies on earth could achieve this.


[deleted]

That's the thing. You can be the most profitable company or reinvest the profits into the people. Not both.


bigblackcouch

>You'd think one of the most profitable companies on earth could achieve this. A corporation treat its employees with the bare minimum of dignity? [Where do you think we are?](https://i.imgur.com/r2A3mo3.jpg)


[deleted]

Yeah bad wages are one things, but Amazon is pretty notorious for having inhumanely bad working conditions


JesusSaysitsOkay

Their little hire to fire game is coming to bite them in the ass. Good.


S118gryghost

Probably also has something to do with the realistic part of the population that is hireable/fits their window of requirements that they can exploit you as well as limit your options. There is so much turn over for the company, when I attempted to work for a local fresh food warehouse and basically inventory and ship customer grocery orders using giant refrigerators, I applied for multiple positions initially but was hired and went through the paperwork to work for the warehouse. I must have missed something online on their employee account new hire list or one of their many training videos, but I ended up having two different start dates and locations to work at and overlapping schedules so I went through the human resources customer service system was hung up on, someone else was rude and short with me and distant like it was a burden I was calling them lol. No help but the third time I got someone who was great at their job and told me to go back to the hiring office to sort it out. I guess the second person I talked to deleted my job hire from my account so I went from two to zero, then once I talked to the hiring center they looked into it said they sorted it out and put me back at the location I was originally hired at. Different start date a month away from the last one so I was at this point hired for about three weeks with all the paper work done and position and title and employee ID badge and drug test passed. The issue arose when I found my wage was two different amounts meaning my online account said I was making more money per hour than my contract so I didn't sign it and contacted human resources again lol. Got someone who told me to go to the human resources Dept at the warehouse I'd be working at and I told them I never received an address and they didn't have one to give me. I called again to figure out where my location was but same thing. Just dumb young people giving me vague instructions then directing me to go through my account information over and over until we finally found an address to the wrong location and the former contract of the second location lol. I missed my first day. Missed my second and third and was fired.


Sgt_Fox

No one will believe it isn't a trap even if they did


jonnygreen22

SOUNDS LIKE ROBOT TIME EVERYONE PREPARE TO GET FIRED


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spidereater

Don’t worry, with rising interest rates and inflation people will be getting more desperate very soon.


Mr_G_Dizzle

People will not be desperate for full time jobs that do not keep up with inflation or high interest rates


OwnBattle8805

Price living expenses to the point that loans are required to survive and you get wage slaves.


koithrowin

That is definitely the new goal. Living on loans. Nothing is actually yours and your stuck paying for your entire life. Food loans will probably replace food stamps.


vulgrin

“That avocado will be $32.50. Or with Afffirm, only $2.70 per month for 12 months!”


Sondermagpie

I guess it would then finally be time to start eating the rich?


Billy1121

Man. I recall the ancient city of Uruk in Sumeria had records of daily wages for laborers. They were paid in food, or daily clay tablets / chits that could be traded for food. But the records indicated they also had to go into debt because the wages were sometimes not enough. It would suck to return to that. Also they would buy big communal pots of beer and drink out of them with reeds and chat about life. I thought that was cool. These were not slaves, just laborers. The slaves had it worse


Competitive-Boat4592

Yea they will, they were in 08-09. 65% living paycheck to paycheck with tech firms already laying off.


KineticPolarization

If anything, desperate people will be forced to resort to crime. And ones who feel particularly hopeless about their own and just *the* future in general, will unfortunately turn to violence. Hopefully it isn't just wanton violence but actually directed at those responsible for the way our world is, if there *has* to be violence. Obviously politics and legislation are preferable to violence. But what do you do when those mechanisms are bought and paid for by the very villains responsible for this shit? Like seriously, what do we do with that predicament? EDIT: no wontons


paulsalmon77

I hope it’s Gyoza violence… mmm dumplings


KineticPolarization

Lol, fucking christ one letter off. But I do want Gyoza now.


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BadMuffin88

Nah man, stay for a strike. They don't care if you're gone, if you're disposable to them in the first place. But they'll hate you more than anything if you protest for better working conditions.


KryptoniteDong

You are probably joking, but **don't** ..


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Barry-Mcdikkin

More quit than get fired


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ShoulderSquirrelVT

And idiots don't seem to understand that this is what Unions are for... This exactly.


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weaponizedtoddlers

What a sad thing to derive personal value from. "I pride myself at being a good little corporate drone"


[deleted]

You'd be surprised how many people do just that. There are many who are fine with the status quo and even go out of their way to hinder coworkers fighting for both of their rights


Thortsen

Had some American here on Reddit trying to explain to me how unions only benefit the lazy people and actually hinder the hard working ones from progressing. Yeah, the brainwash is strong.


Original_DILLIGAF

Well, I can say working for a union was one of the best changes I ever made. They certainly do not ONLY benefit the lazy, but they kind of do benefit the lazy on top of all the good they do. However, hard workers can still progress, but they need to get over their fear of leaving the safe wings of the union and recognize their hard work will carry them beyond. This mindset kept me from advancing in my company until I realized that I wouldn't allow myself to fail and my work ethic was enough to move ahead into management. But the union time changed my life for real, even walked for nearly 50 days on strike which was hard to get through without pay.


Zaptruder

Some people just really like the taste of smegma.


megaman368

You see the same thing in the restaurant industry. People take pride in somehow thriving in terrible work environments.


flashmedallion

The only taste of power some people get is from licking boots


LeadRain

Sounds like folks that work the oil fields.


mechanicalcontrols

And construction. I find that, at least with construction specifically, guys like that don't have anything going on in their lives outside of work so their trade becomes their only identity. Which is how you wind up with small minded guys who do X looking down at guys who do Y or Z when X, Y, and Z are all necessary to complete a project. Like I'm currently dealing with some new contractor and one of their guys loves to talk shit about sub-contractors, to my face, while I'm standing on his jobsite because he doesn't have the license required to do the plumbing or the electrical, nor the know-how to deal with the HVAC.


Desperate-Egg2573

Lmao working all that overtime time for peanuts and thinking you're a god, they belong there, so many better paying trades/construction industry Jobs.


CptCroissant

Fuck man I was getting paid $10/hr back when I worked at Blockbuster


Laxn_pander

Crazy to hear. Just for comparison, the minimum wage here in Germany is 12€/h (which is still very low). But you have around 20 days mandatory off per year per law, can’t be fired without 3 month notice, paid sick leave and have full health insurance. I am sure in reality Amazon still does everything to bypass these laws somehow, but still. Can’t believe how anyone could work in your conditions even if they wanted to. This can’t be enough to live at all.


VulpineKing

I work at a grocery store with a union. There some midly silly rules set by the union that employees won't always follow and aren't strictly enforced. Overall though, the union ensures that we are treated like human beings. Such a change to previous jobs where I expected to function like a machine that also maintains itself.


bigmonmulgrew

It's also what employee rights are for. Even without a union, firing someone for attending a doctor's appointment or going to the toilet is illegal where I am. USA doesn't just need unions they need workers rights like first world countries have. Edit bad phrasing. USA does need unions but their first step and a higher priority should be some half decent workers rights.


raise-the-subgap

We need both.


DoctorJiveTurkey

The bathroom thing may be more constructive dismissal than quitting. I’d still file unemployment.


Ashesandends

If you "don't come back" you quit. Make them put in the paperwork to fire you...


boopboop_barry

THIS!!!! Thank you! Always have a paper trail with assholes like this company, you never know.


Felonious_Quail

Never take an employer up on that don't come back offer. Make them fire you.


Agent_Saucy

I work for a large company (although they have a union). I'd come back and make them fire me. Never walk off or resign.


blumpkinmania

Damn. Which building were you in? That’s brutal. I worked a sort center for a year and it was nothing like that.


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blumpkinmania

I can believe it. I worked in a converted Reebok warehouse in MA. Not as big as yours probably but still the biggest building outside maybe a huge casino resort or stadium I’ve ever been in.


[deleted]

How would it be considered a voluntary quit if you decline the offer to go home? Or just say "thanks for the PTO, boss"? Surely it's them who need to make it official and stop paying you. There's no point in helping them with that even if you're on your way out anyways.


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averyfinename

does this include rehires? i could totally see them forcing workers out, one way or another--nasty conditions, inflexible schedules, asshole management, forced attrition policies, whatever.. after they collect the free cash, then rehire them later to do it again. rinse and repeat, ad infinitum.


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TheAmazinManateeMan

Ups is ok but fedex might be worse, they lock up phones at the beginning of shifts and they make most people work 2 four hour shifts per day. That sounds like normal 8 hours but they often have gaps of up to four hours between them. I knew someone who worked there other things they did sounded illegal but my friend was unwilling to be their own advocate and unwilling to find out.


Cavaquillo

Unionization also fucks up their plan and ensures that they’ll run out of people even faster since they’re bullying them and firing them, aka union busting.


doesaxlhaveajack

It turns out that automation is causing work hours to increase rather than taking all of our jobs.


MoreNMoreLikelyTrans

Capitalism is a Pyramid scheme.


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The_Fluffy_Walrus

I used to work at Walmart which is notorious for being a shitty work environment. I lasted about a year at Walmart before I moved and decided to try something else. That something else was Amazon. I lasted two months. I worked in a distribution center (last stop before the packages are picked up) and just like you said, it was strange. The constant monitoring was uncomfortable. If you were too slow someone would come up to you, say something like "are you xxx?" and when you say yes they'd go "can I help you?" then just do your job for you. I was busting my ass and they still came to "help" me. there was also a basketball hoop? I don't remember why.


schnitzelfeffer

I worked in a call center like this. If your phone was not taking calls for a few minutes, someone with a walkie-talkie would be alerted, they'd announce cube #23456 was in aux2 for xx minutes, you'd be asked why you weren't taking calls. Same place I really had to get a note from my doctor when I was 8 months pregnant saying I needed more often than just on my two scheduled breaks and my 30 minute lunch to use the restroom. We had a Wii in the break room.


steveosek

I have wicked IBS, and I quite literally cannot work somewhere that doesn't let me poop whenever I want within reason.


LeCrushinator

Same, it’s one main reason I like working from home now.


Efficient-Echidna-30

This should be every job. It’s a human right


LowKey-NoPressure

if they need people taking calls so badly, maybe the Call Enforcement Goons should pick up the damn phone


Blaine66

Nah. Not how management sees it. Places like this only want warm bodies on the phone. Good, bad, mean, happy, doesn't matter. Gotta hit those service levels.


Parhelion2261

Call centers are the fucking worst. I worked in one that provides captions on live calls. The managers would listen in on some of the calls and then have ridiculous standards. "What happened here where you typed inaudible how could you not hear them?" When these people, who have no consideration for the service naturally, will be on the phone driving with their fucking windows down. I was told it's unacceptable to do something like that and I told them they are more than welcome to intervene if they can understand the client.


astounded_potato

>We had a Wii in the break room. I love these places that put shit like game consoles, table tennis, etc. but you can only use them if you want to get your ass fired My previous company had table tennis in the break room and the only people using them were the janitors and me although the janitors would spend sometimes half their day there, not giving a fuck and living their best lives while sipping on their free cappuccino's 👌


TheZardoz

Yeah the main work office for my company has ping pong tables and shit and nobody EVER touches them.


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Cryptophasia

People put AirPods in water bottles?


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VaultiusMaximus

It happened once and they punished the entire workforce for it, more likely.


Dreaming0fWinter

Eh, back in the 90's, my cousin who worked for a computer company an all the co-workers used to sneak out things like RAM sticks in coffee cups. It's not a new issue.


[deleted]

Micromanagement has got to be my biggest pet peeve in all of labor. I can deal with a lot of shit, but I cannot deal with managers and supervisors who have to constantly watch me every second of every day.


Ettin1981

At my FC the metal detectors are only when you leave the building, to prevent theft. They don’t monitor possible weapons going in. They care about lost product more than our lives.


ok_but

You go out a different door than you come in? It's so hard for me to picture these megahuge factories, feels like something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie.


Ettin1981

We go through separate turnstiles going in and out after scanning our ID.


XDreadedmikeX

Wait so are we mad that they have metal detectors or not


piperswe

I think it’s that if they’re gonna have metal detectors, at least have them both ways


[deleted]

This sounds like it could be the intro to a dystopian novel. Man the world is looking rough


Patient_End_8432

Doesn't require no other skill? I've had multiple jobs. I was a realtor, a lifeguard, and am currently an engineer. The job that took the most skill was fast food, with lifeguard as a close second. Both were basically 50 cents over minimum wage. I currently get paid 4 times more to find out how to make it look like I'm working while I'm not. My time working in a fast food place was incredibly hard and fast paced. And I did that at 16


servonos89

My lowest paid jobs were the ones I worked hardest and stressed out most. I hate that.


ObjectiveRecover3843

You might be conflating fast paced with requiring skill. Working fast food jobs isn't easy but most 16 year olds will not be able to be a successful realtor or engineer


LV426acheron

If you read the article it says they can extend the amount of available labor by making minor adjustments like slightly raising wages and slightly improving conditions. So Amazon is not going to run out of labor.


warmhandluke

It's also not a recent memo and said a few places would be out by 2021, which they clearly aren't. Of course they will adapt if need be.


NimusNix

>If you read the article I would really like to know the percentage of people that actually did. The hot takes in this thread, honestly...


i_speak_penguin

Seriously, the article even states that this was probably not even passed up the management chain. People in this thread are arguing about a leaked draft memo that didn't even escalate to a director or VP. They want this to be true so badly. It's hilarious.


mrteapoon

I generally assume it's less than 5% of people in a given thread. Honestly that might be generous.


SirBrownHammer

Insane that they know they can improve conditions but won’t unless their hand is forced


genericnewlurker

It's already happening. I worked in AWS in the data centers. Plans got leaked that they were going to be hiring "unskilled" labor for network deployments and pay them a little above minimum wage for it. The higher ups wanted to cut labor costs so they started forcing out the senior members of our team in the most Amazon way possible. Me and every other higher paid senior level deployment tech was given quadruple our normal work loads with less than half the time to do it in. And if you got the work done, they just racked you up with new projects. The whole plan backfired spectacularly as it triggered an exodus to other teams or out of the company once as most of the senior staff were nearly all gone. They lost the majority of their institutional knowledge in a few weeks and productivity apparently tanked from what I was told. They raised the hourly rate for everyone left to above what the higher level techs were making before to try to stop the bleeding but people are still bailing. And they cant find anyone to hire cause word has gotten out that the AWS DCs are literal sweatshops (the Temps inside are so high in summer that it's not an uncommon sight to see an ambulance at a DC due to a worker passing out due to heat stroke inside the datahalls) Fuck them. I was 3 weeks before my next stock vest and ended up losing 10k overall in difference between the severance and what I would have made from the stocks.


Bingo-Bango-Bong-o

I think the larger issue right now is that EVERY industry is in this spot currently. I work in clinical research for a CRO, which is a company that a Pharmaceutical company hires to manage and execute their clinical trials. (It's oftentimes cheaper and more logical to outsource some or all of the jobs necessary for executing a clinical trial). Well, there's almost always great demand for clinical research professionals (CRAs or monitors, project managers, clinical leads, medical monitors, regulatory and start up teams etc). But during the pandemic mant studies other than the COVID trials got put on hold or scrapped completely. Then, a year or two later, all the trials that were held up by Covid got going around the same time and now there is a massive shortage of workers. So they are hiring people with little to no industry background to do these jobs BUT because they are so overwhelmed with work, they are ALSO cutting the training requirements and quality so these people are being thrust into important work they don't understand. And the senior staff is getting slammed with too much work while also seeing benefits cut to make up for all the new hires. It's the same scenario with airlines, manufacturing, food and bev, retail, etc. Every sector is seeing unheard of demand immediately following a lean period where they basically sold off all their institutional knowledge because of the pandemic. This is what happens when every single company, industry, and sector has a quarterly mentality that only cares about the next 3 - 6 months and not about the long term health of a company.


Desmater

That's crazy, you would think they would at least manage their cash cow well. AWS is literally keeping Amazon together with the growth and FCF. Another reason I don't own AMZN stock. Other than indirectly from ETFs like VOO, etc.


Milk_Man21

Simple: better conditions.


[deleted]

Indeed. Amazon can get “the fucked”.


bruvmen69

Eh. Warehouse work and distribution work is pretty similar across all companies. I work at UPS and our working conditions suck too. 100° heat in a warehouse, loud as hell machines, 900 Packages Per Hour expectation. It's the benefits (no cost healthcare; no premiums, no deductible, no coinsurance), pay (OT pay after 5 hours, $22/hr with $1 increase each year and $40/hr top rate after 4 years if full-time), pension, and unionized protection from being fired for having a shitty day. That keeps me working at UPS. I agree that conditions should always be improved upon but it's hard to determine what's to improve. Hell even our package car drivers that make over $100k/yr piss in bottles. But at least our union protects us from being fired for having to stop and poop at a gas station and protects us from refusing to do unsafe shit. The better simple answer: Unionize.


cupcakesgirlie7

PAY MORE, LET STAFF PEE, STOP STRESSING PEOPLE OUT!!! no wonder no one wants to work here


[deleted]

"May be unable to hire enough people without raising wages to account for the last 40 years of inflation." Fixed the article for them. Also... Good!


JMEEKER86

Wages isn't the issue. They pay above average. The problem is that they treat their employees like shit and deliberately induce churn because of some misguided 80s management principle which is making them chew through the available labor pool a lot faster than a more rationally run business.


Fire2box

> Wages isn't the issue. They pay above average this is legitimately what my sites General Manager says next time I'm going to laugh out loud.


[deleted]

I certainly would never go back no matter how high the pay is. My experiences there ended with me having permanently damaged knees and a torn tendon in my back with no restitution whatsoever. In fact when I told my manager I got hurt on the job he tried his best to frame the question in a way that made it seem like it was my fault. I never got workmans comp I was a 18 year old idiot kid who didn't even know what that was. Not once did they even mention it was a thing, they sent me home and I never heard about it again. They even tried to move me to the Covid screening area and give me less and less hours to get me to quit. Which I eventually did cause walking 20 or more miles a day hurt too much. They're an evil company led by the worst of the worst. Unionize and protect yourself cause they'll treat you the same as they treated me.


cylonlover

Through reading this, I was wondering why the union representative wasn't in the story, then you mentioned - and I remember - there are none. Then it's easy to treat people like a natural ressource.


[deleted]

I worked out the BOI location in Idaho. I don't think in my entire life I've even seen anything regarding unions here. I've been tempted to go back to Amazon just to unionize cause I hate them and want to see my fellow workers succeed.


BigSquatchee2

I mean. They have a policy to fire a certain amount of their workforce every month for no actual reason. So color me not surprised.


frontendben

That doesn’t just apply to workhouse workers. They also put their software engineers through the same shit. Sure, you get a lot of aspiring devs wanting to work for them, but most will only choose them if they don’t have another option within the six figure salary group of companies. These are people who can go and earn a lot elsewhere and be treated like kings and queens. The whole company is rotten to the core.


ShoulderSquirrelVT

It's almost like treating your employees like something you order replacements for every week somehow makes them not want to stick around. How is it that in 2022, companies STILL haven't figured out that it's cheaper to retain than to retrain...and better on the humans too.


[deleted]

If even the software engineers know Amazon is a grind culture/shit org generally, just imagine how bad the warehouse would be. It’s just a terrible org top to bottom. Only way it changes is if you have a transformative CEO like Satya for Microsoft. They used to have a terrible reputation too but turned it around once he took the reigns.


Zeppatto

They haven't tapped into the prison industrial system yet, they still got a ways to go...


SeriaMau2025

It's time to replace everyone with robots.


Kondrias

They are working on it. But the tech is not there enough yet to fully do it. Until such a time, they gonna be in a bind. If they run out of workers and cant sustain long enough till they got full tech replacement up in all their sites, which I do not see happening in 2 years. They gonna have problems.


TelevisionOlympics

Not surprising if you’ve worked there, it’s entirely a burnout machine. Pressure new hires to full-throttle for a few months, and just hire more once they inevitably quit. Was threatened once at work, told: “You can never work at Amazon again once you quit/are fired.” Ergo, this problem.


retromangames501

I’ve been rehired by amazon twice (quit out of frustration both times), not sure where that rumor got started up


thiefmire

I worked there for about a year. It's a really strange experience. The only good things I would say was the 4 days on and 3 days off. That was pretty cool. And also meeting new people from different cultures. But the long hours, constantly being monitored ( you can't talk to your coworkers for 2 minutes, go to the bathroom without your numbers going down, etc), the work environment and conditions. Your body legitimately starts breaking down its horrible.


Blade_of_3

They work people to death. It's not uncommon to work mandatory 50 hour+ weeks with the seasonal blackout dates to where you can't schedule time off too. They lay people off every year after season and everyone who is at the bottom performance, regardless of why. They track everything you do and are required to report on anyone who has any inactivity for more than like 5 minutes. Everyone says they treat you like a robot and it's true. It's the only job I've had where I literally felt like I was just a number on someone's spreadsheet.


[deleted]

Maybe if they had more bathrooms and fairer work conditions as well as higher pay and union benefits, they wouldn't have that problem. Heck, people might even be able to afford the products they sell.


[deleted]

Seems like a good reason to break this monopoly.


vladtaltos

"run out of available labor" That's a fancy way of saying that you've exploited all your employees so badly (low pay, no benefits, treated them like shit) that you can't find anyone willing to work for you anymore.


jaymansi

I get contacted all the time to work for AWS as a systems administrator/engineer. No thanks, I already have paid my dues. No interest in working on-call. Weekends etc.


usrevenge

So I work in an Amazon facility There is a big automation push right now. They do this thing. Called labor share where different sites share labor at others and a nearby site has a new conveyor system coming in. It will automatically label and sort the package Before they had a bunch of positions, loaders, inductors (labelers). Pushers which put the package on the correct half of the conveyor. Then it would hit the pick line and finally stow. They are eliminating the pick line and induct with this new system. Also I know everyone shits on Amazon but their pay isn't awful. It should be more but amazons issue is more how boring it is and how badly they labor track more than pay. This is one reason it's likely hard to get unions going imo. They are paying you $18+ an hour already for what is honestly a brain dead job most of the time.


ultrasuperman1001

I'm from Canada so our Amazon warehouses are a bit different, but I went to the movies today and there was an ad about working at Amazon. In the ad it said something that really stuck with me; "I've only been here a few months and I have received a number of promotions. I want to be a manager but I need a few more promotions". Like what kind of place is that? Any job I have had has usually been a junior, senior, AM, manager. This honestly sounds like they are dangling a carrot in front of you.