Bonuses for warehouse workers, presumably throughput-based, seem like a way to optimize for maximum output at the expense of worker health. It's good that those are going away.
Is that something you expect a 16 year old to know is going to happen?
Biomechanics is a complicated subject.
I worked on a farm throwing hay from 12-17. I ended up needing back surgery at 25.
It is hard to tell nowadays, with multiple people coming out and saying things like "millennials could afford houses if they didn't buy iPhones!"
We make rules about a lot of things to protect the collective good at the sacrifice of the individual. Workers are not free to decide that climbing a tall tower without a safety harness so as to go faster and complete more jobs for more money is acceptable. Workers are not free to decide to put their unprotected hands into fast-moving machinery so as to be more efficient and complete more piecework for more money is acceptable. Workers are not free to decide to inhale toxic gases, labor in buildings without sanitary facilities, or be worked non-stop until the worker passes out from exhaustion. (These are, of course, generalities but, again, we as a society have also decided that carve-outs can exist where required but these are the exceptions to the wide rule.)
I would also note that the person to whom you replied expressed a favorable opinion of the trade-off for health against money not being made. No rule or law was proposed. That, too, is part of what society does: we debate things in good faith, not with the assumption that an opinion is a dictate by fiat. These rules are generally considered acceptable and good. It is up to you, the person with the view opposed to the current situation, to express why you disagree instead of simply turning the question back on the person commenting.
Also the part where the cost burdens of bad health outcomes are generally socialized.
There's also the fact that if you are free to choose it, you could also be pressured to choose it. Like companies that give you the freedom to cash out your vacation instead of taking it. It'd be great because not all of us want to go on vacation every year.
But unless there's a mandatory minimum vacation, some employees will be pressured into literally never taking a vacation. Think of Japanese work culture. Top down work-life balance measures are completely ignored because they're not mandatory.
These incentives are totally and completely voluntarily pursued by the individual workers. It doesn't appear in anyway that these incentives present greater danger or risk to the worker beyond the worker's own choice to increase effort and therefore whatever risk is increased comes from voluntary effort within the confines of the job. Sure, society makes rules around workplace safety (many of which can be reasonably debated) but those are not made in the context of how much effort a worker puts into their role but rather the conditions within which the worker's role places them. The difference here is in the power balance. The view society takes around safety rules is that we don't want a worker coerced into a scenario by the tyranny of their need for wages that is greater than a reasonable level of risk. That's fine, but that's not what's at stake here. These are workers who have opted into roles, in work environments that aren't exorbitantly risky and are then incentivized to increase effort beyond expected baseline with bonuses. The person I responded to claimed that the removal of these was good without any evidence or reasoning. Do you claim that similar performance bonuses in white collar careers are similarly amoral?
I would note that the person I replied to explicitly stated that the removal of performance bonuses was good without stating any evidence for such. In polite societal debate, I've never in my life seen someone suggest that a person stating naked opinions on the benefits or costs of a scenario shouldn't be challenged to provide evidence for their statements let alone seen someone suggest that asking for evidence or reasoning is not only inappropriate but should instead be provided by the challenger. Very strange.
We have seen what happens when you remove all restrictions on how employers can treat workers - workers get horribly abused and often times die. If you think this wouldn't happen to modern workers, go look at what goes on in Dubai and the UAE.
I find it very compelling to agree with you. But i also like to make my own decision, to negotiate. My ideal, at least. And i expect my elders and seniors to teach me about the dangers in this world. And I also think, its a two way street. I will not risk my life, and Amazon does not want dead people.
And is US and Dubai really comparable? Why do people go so far, to work there? Don't they tell their relatives at home, how shitty it is? Why are they going? Why do they risk it? And who am i to judge their decision making?
Many confusing signals i receive.
Because people taking this up live in even worse conditions in some of the most abject poverty there is and they have no way to climb up the social ladder that doesn't involve saving some money with this kind of work even at the expense of their physical safety.
Good luck to them!
It's not about the type of labor or physical effort but the completely inhuman conditions. How the heck is that a contradiction?
My personal elders and seniors don't know the first thing about how to judge whether workplace chemicals would be harmful to me or not.
They're just other human beings, very fallible like myself.
As long at it seems decently run, I trust a government agency full of experts and reams of research over the elders and seniors I happen to know personally, who are generally totally lacking in both expertise and knowledge in most areas, any day.
What i mean is, in whatever workplace i worked so far, there were people telling me, what not to do. Surely playing around with me at first, but always keeping me away from dangers.
In the long run, well, i agree, that there are many things, that are not very obvious to me. Like office work, sitting in the chair all day, not moving, looking at screens all the time. But iam sure my boss does not mean no harm. He surely looks more at his phone than me on a screen. We get smarter over time, i hope.
The thing is, not everyone working at Amazon is a young, single person without any ties, who can afford to simply quit at a moment's notice and not worry about the risk of unemployment, or losing healthcare. So it's not a binary situation where if Amazon's employees are willing to work there, then clearly they must be willing to accept anything the company does because otherwise they would quit. For low income people, the cost of quitting can be significant, much more so if they have families to support.
Which is why regulations are necessary - because the relationship between employer and employee is not equal, as is often assumed in a perfectly ideal free market model. The ability of a company to coerce their employee due to holding arbitrary power over that employee's livelihood must be limited somehow, and there must be some means by which consequences can result for bad actors.
In an unregulated market, there are no bad actors, only inefficient ones. That's not a game most people can win alone against a billion dollar corporation.
The history of planet earth is full of bad actors in all kinds of markets, regulated or not. The animal kingdom is full of examples of deception. Seeking personal gain at the expense of others is a very deep feature of life.
Dubai is part of the UAE for what it’s worth but it would be impossible to treat workers like that in the US because (a) the US does not do slavery, or indentured servitude outside prisons (b) you can sue people in the US because you have the rule of law and a functioning legal system where everyone has equal rights. Before OSHA if a worker got injured at your place they they could sue you, so most places had insurance, which got more expensive if injuries happened. People also notice if a workplace is more dangerous. They demand higher pay to work there.
If you look at this economic history link you’ll see a reasonably consistent trend, not universal, of decreasing workplace deaths.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-of-workplace-safety-in-th...
Unpaid internships are a great way to gate off poor people from high-paying jobs. No matter how beneficial they are to the intern, if said intern can't afford rent and food while on your internship it's simply not an option for them. Unpaid internships have no place in a society that wants to consider itself a meritocracy because the primary qualification for an unpaid internship is not merit but a well-off family.
What you say is absolutely true but if unpaid internships are a problems journalism schools and other forms of credentialist gatekeeping are much worse.
If the choice existed would you rather go to Columbia Journalism School it spend two years working for the New York Post unpaid? Wouldn’t you get more and more valuable experience as a dogsbody for a fashion photographer than doing a degree in photography?
Credentialism is bad for the sane reason unpaid internships are bad but does vastly more damage to oppprtunity.
Given the evidence, OSHA looks dumb and useless.
If you’ve ever worked in an environment with those sorts of incentives, it’s immediately obvious that they are loosely related to productivity and turn into tools of favoritism and control.
Amazon isn’t doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. They no doubt concluded that just focusing on objective, easily controlled measurements like hours ultimately made more sense. The workers themselves are disposable anyway.
Besides, the workers now have more guaranteed income that can be invested in Amazon stock! They gain the freedom of dollar cost averaging.
Such a decision would be short-lived, as the level of work required to maintain bonus-level status would become the new baseline. Minimum wage + bonus will become your new pay structure.
For white collar roles, we don't claim performance tied compensation will lead to this, but you do here. Why?