Amazon drivers pushed to the limit as holiday deliveries reach a frenzy
latimes.com
latimes.com
> He starts each day with about 260 boxes, which he has to drop off at maybe 200 addresses across up to 80 miles in Southern California. Factoring in the time needed to load and gas up his white van, which sometimes sports a magnetized Amazon logo on the back door, Echeverria has to hit one home every two minutes, on average.
> Prime Now orders — an Amazon service launched in 2014 that allows customers to get a product within hours of clicking on it. She says Amazon gave her up to 72 packages to deliver in four hours, meaning she had to deposit one package roughly every three minutes.
Remote tracking via Android app:
> Amazon gives him an Android phone with an app that scans packages and determines his route. He says it is also used to track how much of a dent he’s made in his delivery load that day. He has learned not to stop for lunch because, he said, Amazon employees will call his dispatcher at any point in the day if they notice that he’s behind schedule.
Complaint threshold of 0.2%:
> Amazon does not want any individual driver to exceed a ratio of two complaints for every 1,000 packages they’re tasked with delivering. But he said that Amazon does not instruct LMS to fire drivers who have had a trend of high complaints. LMS independently starts a disciplinary process, he said, starting with retraining, if a driver has a high number of citations for two consecutive weeks.
Of course they don't get fired. But after several months of "disciplinary process starting with retraining" they quit voluntarily, perhaps...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management
Prime (free) Video could be seen as simply a sales channel for their paid video.
https://www.google.com/amp/www.techtimes.com/amp/articles/17...
They ought to be subsidizing it with higher prices.
If a market were as the simplistic theory describes, all the drivers would be completely independent, set their own terms, and all product manufacturers would negotiate with all the drivers and all the consumers would negotiate etc. It would be totally inefficient and impractical, but we'd have actual competition and supply/demand etc.
Reality is Amazon is a massive organization with a top-down power structure and massive power inequities. Consumers are individual people with no comparable organizational power. The idea that each individual consumer should make decisions that mediate the power of the massive corporation is a farce.
Nobody said consumers have to be individuals, consumers can organize just like low wage workers should. They have just been sold individualism thanks to centuries of propaganda. Rich people have no problem organizing, that's what corporations are, but somehow when people at the bottom of the ladder do, it is a bad thing? This is puritan morals, "rich are blessed with wealth, poor people only deserve contempt" and it certainly defines America.
I agree that massive organized consumer groups or institutions can make a difference.
You get a large bloc of people to act, they will notice.
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/do-boycotts-work-a-new-freak...
The fact is, if you want this service, you will create stress for drivers. Why is that bad?
That said, my post suggested that people would be better off if they purchased elsewhere because it is often cheaper to buy elsewhere than it is to buy off Amazon. That is an economic reality and one that naturally lends itself to people buying from Amazon's competitors. The suggestion of a boycott was the furthest thing from my mind.
A boycott is a powerful weapon in the context of a broader grassroots movement. We'll get there with Amazon soon -- they're too big to not step into a turd that generates sufficient discord.
Anyway, I listened to that podcast myself a while back. The conclusion was that boycotts rarely work, and when they do, it's mostly a bar PR issue rather than an economic per-sale issue.
I think right set of regulations is the answer. Companies should not be allowed to optimize people to such an extent.
I open browser, type amazon.com, search stuff, click 'buy with one-click'. I do not worry about delivery time, and I can just return without any hustle.
Compare with what you suggested, let's say we choose ebay (probably the 2nd-best online retailer): I open browser, search, found item, click through, buy the item, probably need to pay shipping, but the overall price is cheaper. I might get the item in time, or not. When I want to return, I might get a smooth transaction, or not. The customer service is guaranteed to be inferior to Amazon's.
In the process, I probably can save a few percentage on item price. But does it really make economic sense at all? If I buy one item on ebay, and for some reason I dont like it and could not return it; while with Amazon I am sure that I can always avoid this. Does the a few percentage saving actually save me? I don't believe that.
The plain trend of Amazon eating the retail market lends little credit to your claim "Buying things from Amazon no longer makes economic sense for most people".
No - the 'free market' is at work here. The workers absolutely do not have the power to set any terms at all.
The issue is that the 'free market' is ultimatley a game over power - and when one entity has a lot, and others are divided and weak - salaries would be basically zero for them: just enough to survive. It would be much below min. wage as an entire economy of 'sub-dollar store' communities would develop. Much like favelas in Brazil etc..
For most people, we have some market power because of our skills, but for manual labour, they have none, which is why worker protections and min. wage laws exist.
What I meant really is that the premise of "free market" the way the propagandists push it is a farce. As long as there are power imbalances, then the ideas about how free markets lead to all this efficiency etc. don't hold up, i.e. as long we we're talking about reality, free market dogma doesn't hold up.
I was speculating that the source of the "each consumer should make decisions, we as consumers can hold Amazon accountable" is rooted in some naive free-market type of dogma. I'm not sure the original poster indeed came from that (whether subconsciously or not)
Communism and Socialism is such a perniciously appealing idea: 'just let the government control everything and everything will be fair - take stuff from rich people and give it to the poor!'.
Young people have a really have a hard time with the paradox:
It's easy to understand an authoritative, centralized system that controls everything and 'maximizes efficiency'.
It's hard to understand how independent agents, working in a loosely collaborative 'free market' can actually provide much better efficiency in most scenarios.
Most nations had to go through some heavy duty socialism to realize that it doesn't work very well - and it will be ongoing: teachers and professors aren't a fan, and they push socialist ideals for the 20 years or so of your education, and it all seems cozy from inside an academic setting.
It's usually not until people have responsibility, i.e. children or management, or a small business (even consulting) do people start to clue in.
Yes - there are some hardcore people - like those at the Chicago school etc. who think that basically there should almost be 'no government' but they are not that common. Even Republicans usually expand government. Since the dawn of the USA... government has really never receded - it's only grown it's share of the economy - so the 'driving voice' that's needed is that of 'free markets with decent regulation', I think. And moral and benevolent leadership. Anyhow. I write too much :)
Now, if I was actually arguing or believed some anti-market dogma, it wouldn't be a straw-man here. But I fully agree that markets are valuable, are easy to over-regulate, and that there are many aspects of market freedom that are positive. I'm just not dogmatic about it. Dogma is what leads people to insist that things are a certain way because their dogmatic model says so rather than base their beliefs on evidence, etc.
But anyway, communist and socialist dogma may be wrong because they are dogmatic, but here's one thing I know for certain: your description of their dogma is completely wrong. Dogmatic communists and socialists don't believe what you just wrote in describing them.
Also, dogma is: "a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true."
There is not that much 'free market' dogma (i.e. free markets are perfect, and always good) in mainstream American society.
There is a lot of socialist dogma in mainstream society. Communist dogma would indicate that capitalism is inherently wrong (as an absolute truth) and this is promoted quite a lot. Socialist dogma would indicate that mostly free markets are incompatible with the wellbeing of society.
Socialist dogma pervades European elitist thinking and popular sentiment, so much so, that any contradiction of their 'dogmatic beliefs' is considered 'far right wing'.
Watch 5 Hollywood films: the 'evil bad guy' while be an old white banker or business man 3 out of 5 times. American pop culture goes out of their way to vilify business (unless it's startups). There are obvious hints of dogma in this.
You are now continuing to make more straw men. None of the rest of your comment is actually addressing anything I was saying, just arguing with some image you have of people who you think believe certain things.
Note that I happen to think your perspective is really skewed here — the vast majority of power in our society is vested in capitalist interests, the media and government and lots more are very much capitalist or capitalist-apologist, and truly dogmatic free-market ideologies (it doesn't matter whether there's a great-man behind some dogma, just the idea that the authority is some idealistic free-market theory, that's authority enough to be called "dogma" — it's super rampant, enough that it's easy to run into believers constantly.
>Young people have a really have a hard time with the paradox
It explains why many people feel they're entitled to a job and government ought to 'create' jobs. It is incredibly perplexing just how many people don't understand that they aren't entitled to anything! The concept that you have to provide value for someone else so that you can get compensated eludes more people than it should. It is no wonder employers find themselves trying to explain such simple facts to fresh graduates that think they're entitled to jobs. Many of them (employees) don't understand that once they're on-boarded into a business, they immediately become liabilities until they can provide more value than they're receiving in form of compensation (heck, it isn't even compensation at this stage because compensation implies some form of quid pro quo).
>Yes - there are some hardcore people - like those at the Chicago school etc. who think that basically there should almost be 'no government'
Actually, the Chicago school isn't as 'hardcore' as you might think. We, the Austrians, are the ones who think that a society can exist without conventional government. It may come as a surprise to you but based on your statement - so the 'driving voice' that's needed is that of 'free markets with decent regulation' - you yourself fit the description of what many would consider the Chicago school which essentially maintains that a government that is small in size, mildly favors laissez-faire, has minimal regulations and pumps in money into the economy in smaller doses would suffice.
If you're interested in learning more about these and more thoughts, check out a book called: Democracy, The god That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
No, this is not quite reasonable.
Consumers do not realistically have this kind of power, especially vis-a-vis very large entities.
It would take a massive, massive informational campaign, massive awareness, coordination, coordination in the press etc..
For the same reason in the 19th century, before unions, people couldn't just 'not shop somewhere'.
Labour practices are best codified in law and policy.
I'm not a big fan of unions, where they are entrenched, they often have too much power ...
But where unions are 'possibly forming', it's usually for a very good reason.
Salaries for many working class jobs can't be left entirely up to the free market, otherwise they'd be earning next to zero.
It's really quite a paradox how benevolent Bezos and his ideological friends seem to be, all their charities blah blah blah and yet they treat many of their labour workers terribly. There are some real horror stories from the picking/packing plants.
Most delivery services in general work their employees hard. An ex of mine drove for different food and drink vendors driving truck doing ltl to grocery stores and gas stations and they would consistently exceed maximum hours cdl drivers are allowed to work.
Just a reminder, there exists no maximum number of hours CDL holders may work, they just can't drive after a certain number of hours without a sleep break. Many truckers will operate in such a manner that they drive to the destination legally, reach their max allowable hours driving upon arrival, and then continue working several more hours unloading. Grocery warehouses are notorious for this.
It's an important distinction because if you are a local driver with a 'day cab', you can't exactly take your sleep break in the truck and would be more likely to break the law to drive the truck back home (or the company yard). An 'over the road' driver has a sleeper berth and can take a proper break most anywhere they can legally park.
I did many FedEx loads as an over the road driver and I found them to be good runs. Many were overnight runs from one airport to another and I definitely had enough time, it wasn't as if I had to skip breaks or hurry. And the FedEx staff and load/unload procedures were very organised and easy. FedEx loads were seen as desirable and hassle-free.
I've have friends who were freight truck drivers talk about it. A lot of young kids get sucked up into non-union shops and are told about how much better it is; how they shouldn't want a union. Most of the unionised freight companies do pay better though; or if they don't, they make up for it with more benefits and lower road time.
The green ones are contract drivers. In my areas a altmof guys who used to do bread routes bought FedEx routes.
A news like that would be worthy of some major headlines.
It's not a narrative that was pulled out of thin air. It was earned.
Once they time out, UPS needs another driver. From what I hear in my area, they're way understaffed.
1) Workers in the warehouse at Amazon are in pretty bad conditions but how does this compare to working in a warehouse in other companies? Not sure if things are rosy elsewhere
2) What I fear is the growth and normalization of this behaviour in the future. Crappy jobs and child labour were acceptable during the Industrial Revolution, it was always better then no job in the rural area. But now it feels like a step backwards. In the information age, when tech giants are changing/destroying entire industries to create this new (great?) future?
3) And then, what happens when delivery drivers are replaced by drones and autonomous car makes car ownership irrelevant? Cloud subscription has made hardware servers irrelevant. Will we have car subscription to Google, Tesla and Uber? How will we earn money to pay for those subscriptions and buy on Amazon?
:?
For example I ordered a small package from Amazon last week. I don't order a lot from Amazon but when I do, there seems to always be delays and problems.
They guaranteed it by yesterday but it's still not here and isn't scheduled to be delivered for another 2 days putting it 4 days past the "guaranteed" delivery time.
This was standard shipping which is treated in the same way as free shipping in terms of delivery times.
Reason? Who knows, all I know is it was very likely a human error out of my control.
- Amazon's dashboard tells me I requested an address change even though I didn't.
- Amazon's phone rep tells me the USPS screwed up by delivering it to the wrong zone's post office.
- USPS tells me Amazon tends to ship things in pallets of 100 parcels and the pallet for my zone was filled so they put it into a different pallet (clearly knowing it would delay the package).
- USPS won't compensate me (I was put into a 30min 3 way conversation with Amazon, USPS and myself).
- Amazon updates me today saying the item has been dropped from tracking and is tagged as "lost in transit".
- USPS tells me the package is on the other side of the state I'm in (NY).
- Amazon said they will ship a new item out with 2 day delivery which doesn't help me get the item when it was supposed to arrive.
I understand that every single US govt ran service tends to be horrendous in terms of efficiency and quality but Amazon is supposed to be one of the most efficient platforms in the world.
I'm guessing this entire issue was due to some over worked warehouse employee just saying "fuck it" and threw my box into the wrong pallet but a robot would haven't made this mistake and a drone would have likely gotten to my residence a few hours after ordering instead of closer to 11-12 days.
Perhaps. But the multiplier effect of each of these is zero. We may have those awful humans to thank for our jobs.
It's kind of sad really. It's like your item is being held hostage because you haven't bought into using Prime.
For the reasons you just mentioned (it takes a day or 2 for it to ship) is the reason I'll never buy Prime. I don't like the idea of paying for a service that says 2-3 day free shipping but rarely comes in time.
Back in the good old days of mid-2000 you could order stuff from NewEgg and you'd get your package in 3-4 days all the time for the same shipping price that takes Amazon 6-10 days.
You still work super hard and are watched carefully.
The worst are the Amazon sweatshops and the post office. Letter carriers mostly got buyouts and the replacements make $12/hr and have awful benefits.
Though thinking back, I did leave $1 or $2 tips here and there, depending on their service.
But, at a certain point you do start to feel a little scammed by the companies simply underpaying their workers and expecting you to make up the difference.
More recently, this trend of tip jars for people just ringing you up and other minimal things is downright annoying. Extra money for <20 seconds of minimal effort wherein the service quality level is relatively unimprovable? C'mon.
Having held one of these shit jobs in the past to get myself through college, I understand how much it sucks, but complaining/negotiating when you have zero leverage simply does not work (in the sense it is very likely not the highest expected value use of your time -- IMO a good way is education, get yourself ready for a slightly better job, repeat until happy).