It's an unusual twist on clearing the market - arguably they ought to raise wages, not so much to retain people by paying them enough that they stick it out in hell a bit longer, but so they can clear the market for people able to tolerate and thrive in the working conditions.
This is by far the best news I've heard about Amazon warehouses. It's so incredibly awesome that there might be something that Amazon can't lobby against that could force them to be more nice to their employees.
Another thing that was apparent was that some people were just better order-pickers than me. One part of my post above was kinda wondering how Amazon would do if they kept the demanding work, but paid enough to recruit (and treated well enough to retain) physical outliers, a bunch of warehouse athletes.
I've visited a car factory, a well-run Japanese marque, where it was mentioned that they had very high initial turnover - some people just couldn't take the pace of the production line - but high longer-term retention. In a sense they must be doing something right.
I would not put it past them or the lawmakers.
I really shouldn't be giving out ideas like these.
From my experience in the retail/restaurant/hotel businesses, it is a usual twist. It just gets articles about it because it is Amazon and it lands clicks.
These are jobs known to have a lot of turnover and the employers make no effort to reduce turnover, from a combination of their customers opting for cheaper prices at competing businesses with high turnover and employers having (historically) the upper hand in the supply/demand equation for that type labor.
Workers are renewable for annual exploitation
Obviously, working at Amazon as an SDE or whatever isn't quite the same as signing up for the military but the recruitment strategy isn't all that different.
This is why the army uses young men for combat and why apprenticeships in trades work exist. To exploit young people
soldiers can at least be promoted. apprentices may eventually become journeymen. both provide skills training that enable you to become an independent contractor, and the higher tiers offer quite decent pay.
but for now everyone knows amazon is just a dehumanizing dead-end survival-wage job that will wreck your body, and the executives know everybody knows this, thus tfa
Coupled with increase pay incentives, yeah they will come back.
If they were fired for not hitting metrics and not for misconduct, they're probably willing to rehire.
My understanding is that "hitting metrics" in these warehouses is so exhausting that most people can't do it indefinitely.
IIRC, there are quite a few people who work at these Amazon warehouses who are essentially nomadic (e.g. living out of camper or van), but I don't it's enough to really change that equation.
Honestly, the next step Amazon needs to do is get serfdom legalized. Then they could purchase a fief in these areas and require a customary amount of labor from each household per year.