Amazon fulfillment centers don't have a good reputation in terms of employee treatment and benefits. And many consumers don't understand that those 1-day Amazon shipments take a toll on warehouse employees. There's a lot of work involved in getting packages to customer doors. If more people can understand this, maybe there could be some change to what type of benefits these workers can be given. I just don't know if a strike is the most effective method to achieve this. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/15/amazon-workers-prime-day-strike-begins-in-minnesota.html
When all the drama is over and people go back to living their usual lives, all the SJWism will be forgotten in the face of convenience that Amazon provides us with. People will go back to complaining where their orders are. Amazon is and will be one the best companies ever created. It's like the country USA. You can vilify it, call it names but the truth is it will always be one of the most innovative countries in the world and the next biggest achievements in technology will most likely come from here. In the land of the free and home of the brave there are ups and downs.
If it is tough, why they chose the job in the first place. There are plenty of jobs outside. I thought most of the heavy lifting job is done by robots. Is it not true? Supply vs Demand problem. More employees wants to work at Amazon, I guess.
Yes, most of the heavy lifting is done with equipment (not really robots). Any item more than 49 pounds requires 2 people to lift it. I don’t remember the cut off anymore, but at some weight only mechanical lifting equipment is used.
Their complaints seem to be that the work is boring and that their productivity is tracked. Well, no shit. Any warehouse work is mindnumbing, and judging someone based off their performance is...every job ever?
It’s not the most effective way. In a consumer economy, the most useful way to influence a business is with your wallet or your feet. For the workers, I’m unclear at what point the notion that permanent, highly paid employment was an entitlement of every person. Some jobs are temporary. Some are low paying. With unemployment rates (all nine types) low, there are jobs to be had. It’s not convenient or ideal, but it’s an option. The injury rates, the pay parity (for unskilled labor) and the job security are what I’d expect from an industrial environment. There are worse and there are better. To Amazon’s credit, they’re attempting to balance safety and productivity with profitability. Can they do better, yes. Should they be vilified because they aren’t perfect, no. Children no longer work in industry (at least not in the US) for a variety of reasons, one of which was social pressure, but also mechanization and the elimination of the need for such a large manual labor force. Economics is a large driver of such things. Reference ATMs and self checkout kiosks that have (largely) replaced bank tellers and fast food workers/grocery clerks.
Yes this is the constant battle between labor and capital. I don't know why people get so upset about others trying to get better work conditions yet they spend their time on blind trying to find out what everyone else's TC is so they can improve their own. When AI starts competing for dev jobs and wages start to drop like a ball these entitled people will be there first to whine about it and feel victimized
Anyone here work in an FC and can provide more information? All businesses are run by people and its generally the shitty management that causes problems. If FC work quality was so terrible, I would expect global strikes. lf there are strikes at a few facilities, could it just be poor leadership/management?
I worked in our FCs, they are not bad warehouse jobs at all. I’m not saying that some don’t have bad experiences due to mismanagement, but on the whole what I experienced and saw was a good place to work, well paid (compared to like jobs in the area, this was before the $15/hr min) and no one had better benefits. Most people wanted to work together and do things as a team. Yes, there is a lot of walking or standing (depending on what dept/job you are in), but I always easily made rate walking at my normal speed. I never rushed and never got pressured my mgmt to go faster. I found the standing to be harder than walking. There were cushioned mats for any of the standing jobs, but by the end of the day my legs and feet hurt....with walking that wasn’t true. They may be tired, but they didn’t outright hurt. The people that complained back then were those that didn’t want to work (they could be seen chatting/talking and not working)...at least from my perspective. Others didn’t understand that it’s a warehouse job. You aren’t going to be sitting in an office. It’s somewhat physical. You aren’t lifting a lot of weight, but you are moving and/or standing a lot....and it takes a toll by the end of the day. The people who were smart about it learned to manage the physical side (your body adjusts after a bit, but you do have to take care of yourself till then and anytime there is OT). I never waited for breaks to go to the bathroom, I just went when needed and it was never an issue. I find the complaints in the news about limited bathroom time very odd. Even when I took a few extra minutes in the bathroom it never impacted my ability to get my job done and “make rate” as everyone talks about. I never saw anyone else waiting till break time to go to the bathroom either. Literally no one ever said anything to me about taking a bathroom break. A few years back people were complaining about the time it took too get through security. I never cared if it took a min or two, but others did. Never waited more than a few minutes so it wasn’t an issue for me. I find the focus on making rate a bit weird too. Most of the people I worked with never thought much about it. Yes, your scanner/gun does tell you how much time you have till the next pick (if you are a picker), but it’s an estimate (or was when I was in the FC) and sometimes you made it to the bin in that time....sometimes you didn’t. Getting that focused on one item you are picking never really occurred to anyone, it was more about getting everything picked or packed that shift that needed done. I didn’t want to leave the next shift at a disadvantage and was always happy to jump in and help pack, load, whatever. Sometimes I would work what was called hot picks, which means that the items you are picking need to go out that day/shift....those do not optimize your walking route and you can end up walking back and forth a lot. This obviously impacting how quickly you get items (aka, rate). But, anytime I picked one of those lists or was asked to do it, my manager made sure it didn’t count against me. Peak is crazy. It’s physically exhausting due to MOT. But, it’s 4-6 weeks long and not all weeks have MOT. Most people blow through their personal time (or any time off option in the FC) and then don’t have any personal time left during peak. This makes peak very hard. I always saved a few days of PT just in case I got sick or just needed to give my body a rest. Only once did I use it. Other than that, I had some managers that were better than others. Most were fine and reasonable people. I had more annoying coworkers over the years than I did annoying managers. Those that stayed around (mgrs and coworkers) all got to know each other. We’d help each other out with rides, support when something outside of work happened....just like any work place. I enjoyed my time in the FC. Obviously, I moved on to a corporate job....but I still keep track of my old FC. Like others have said, there are lots of jobs to choose from. Working in a warehouse isn’t for everyone.
Thanks for the perspective, Fetch! It sounds enjoyable, actually. I worked a lot of retail jobs in my past and loved it - this wounds comparable but with better hours and pay.
Ask any executive and any manager what their biggest challenges are, and every time they’ll say, among other things, “finding great talent.” If you take data science, there are millions of jobs and only a hundreds of thousands of people with the skills. Other engineering work too I’m sure. The means to learn how are out there, and if you want, you can either take the warehouse job or learn how to do the job that will contribute to automating the warehouse job away. Yes, I know it’s unlikely you’ll get into FAANG or whatever but still. Amazon succeeds because it plays to what people always gravitate towards: cheaper, faster, more.
If u don’t want to work for amazon, leave , simple as that .
And work at the other warehouses that have moved overseas, closed down or don't have openings?
I don't understand, they're not unionized so I guess that they are free to go? No one forced them to stay, right? Then what is the point of the protesting?
These are all omar batch. They want 5 times break a day for the prayers. They should adopt to American work culture rather than asking companies to adapt their culture. They also seems to be very concerned about climate change, may be they should work on non-profit for climate change
Amazon warehouses are better than the majority of warehouses out there. Full stop. Does manual labor suck? Yes. But that’s the nature of the work, not something that Amazon is creating. As others have mentioned, Bezos is trying to automate those jobs away - I hope the same people won’t be complaining about that too.
Their sign says "we are humans, not robots." Jeff B: "I know I know, I am working on it"
This one says Alibaba, but same thing, for automated warehouses. The robots pick up more of the work over time, coordinating among themselves more efficiently. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FBl4Y55V2Z4 🤔The system looks like they just pained them over blue and slapped a different company logo on it. I guess patent enforcement is up to the country?