Reddit AMA: I'm a Former Amazon Fulfillment Center Employee

This mode of thinking makes a dangerous assumption - that any issue can be resolved simply by an individual action. It assumes that because one person is making the complaint, then the issue which the complaint attempts to access must therefore be individual. It's an anti-political stance; politics isn't only about individuals, it's about creating a better society at large.

Let's say that it really is such an easy choice as you're describing. It's implausible that it's the case for every worker who feels mistreated there. Therefore your solution means to them we say "tough shit". This is one consequence of the divorce of economy and politics. In no political situation is it viable in rhetoric or otherwise to say "tough shit" to a group of people. But it's fine to say that in economic circumstances. The examples go on - most of us are in favour of democracy in the political sphere, because we believe we should have a say over our lives, but in the anarchic economic sphere in which pressures arise which are extremely compelling (so compelling that there are even markets for selling one's own organs) we balk at the idea of democracy.

This is why I'm in favour of economic democracy - to stop statements like "It's a choice. You can go somewhere else." from being the end of these discussions, and to take away their logical basis which falsely assumes democracy should be relegated to politics.

I did a few in my post-graduation days (as the joke goes, "do you want fries with that?"). There's nothing notably hard about them.

> have been well above minimum wage for quite some time

be lovely if you could give some figures, ta

Newer, robotized FCs have much more tightly packed, human-inaccessible storage zones and have restrooms a reasonable distance from static pick workstations.

Not my industry, but I wonder if building code requirements for contracted facilities construction has anything to do with this. Would be interesting to hear perspective of civil engineers on this, in particular, those involved with standing up fulfillment centers.

For example, a few observations from the 2017 Florida Building Code[1]:

Minimum 1 lavatory per 100 and 1 drinking fountain per 1,000 in occupancies classified for storage (per Table 2902.1). Natural inquiry that arises in my mind is what the specified occupancy of the fulfillment center in question is.

In occupancies other than malls, lavatories normally located not more than 1 story above/below the target space, path of travel not to exceed 500 feet (per 2902.3.2). However, there's a possible exception for factory and industrial occupancies which allow this requirement to be waived with approval. I wonder if Amazon has pursued this exemption when contracting the construction of their fulfillment centers.

[1] https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/FBC2017/chapter-29-plumbin...

Amazon reduces costs by only having the minimum number of bathrooms legally required regardless of the size of the warehouse.

Is there a formula for non adversarial job structures ?

My experience of unions comes as an entrepreneur in countries with sectoral bargaining. Companies representing the whole sector negotiate against unions representing most or all workers in that sector. There may be company level deals also, but they are just a side show dealing with local issues. When the deal is made, everyone is at the same level of pain and gain. If company in retail business must allow their workers to pee, so does their competitor. You don't get competitive advantage if you fuck with your workers.

It's really just matter of arranging incentives.

I don't see any mystery in why employees would band together in situations like these. They'd be fools not to.

(Personal opinion, I have no special experience in the field)

I don't like what I hear about working conditions and agree it should be improved, and I also agree this is not slavery.

Amazon employees are voluntary and by definition would rather have the job than not. It's nothing like slavery. Saying it is waters the concept down and is incredibly disrespectful to those who were actual slaves.

That doesn't mean the job shouldn't be improved, but anyone equating it to slavery loses all credibility and can't be taken seriously.

You stopped reading because there were no practices of old school slavery in the so called modern day slavery?

Anyways, I did you the service of explaining why you would get voted down. If you aren't going to read something, and you have nothing useful to add, don't bother commenting. Comments like yours don't contribute anything useful and only harm HN.

Because you have a ten hour shift of difficult labor and twenty minutes of your thirty minute break is taken up with walking. And if you're in a FC with robots the time it takes for the Kivas to arrive at your station counts against you because you're expected to start working thirty minutes after your break starts, so on top of everything else you have to end your break early to make that time up.

>I don't see why they'd care if it's 30m or 2hr, since people could just make up the hours by working later.

I'm not aware of any business that allows its employees to take arbitrarily long breaks or to work arbitrary extra hours to "make it up." If such a company exists, Amazon is definitely not one of them.