California May Be the First State to Legislate Amazon Warehouse Conditions
themarkup.org
themarkup.org
"We’re committed to giving our employees the resources they need to be successful, creating time for regular breaks and a comfortable pace."
with a straight face, while being presented with the facts that the opposite is true.
"“Three times,” she said she responded, thinking about how it took five minutes to walk each way across the warehouse floor to get to the bathroom."
My guess is that Amazon managers, facing this horrible fact that people have to walk 5 min to the toilet, would introduce some innovative ML-driven solution like "fast portable toilet" (that is a pee bottles that employees will have to carry with them and managers will be cheering up that the solution fully meets all the company diversity and inclusion standards).
This was overall not a great company that gave two shits about their employees.
But they did have the punch clock in a central location, near the bathrooms.
To be able to punch out, you need to walk your ass over there in the first place. And that's how it should be.
From the video I saw from Amazon about their warehouses, they work like this.
1. The goods are stored in stand-alone cabinets containing multiple slide-out bins. The cabinets are stored in a large section of the warehouse that humans do not normally go into.
2. When an order needs an item stored in bin X of cabinet Y, one of Amazon's robots (a short flat wheeled robot--like a robot vacuum but squarer and beefier) moves to under cabinet Y and lifts it and brings it to the workstation of the worker who is packing the order.
3. When the cabinet arrives at the workstation the system shines a light on bin X. The worker grabs the required item from that bin and packs it into the outgoing order. Repeat for any other bins with items needed from that cabinet. Then the cabinet is taken away (back to storage or I would guess to the next worker who needs something from it).
4. Similar for received items. The system brings the cabinet the item is to be stored in to the worker, shines lights on the bins the worker can put it in, notes which bin the worker put it in, and when done with that worker takes the cabinet away for storage.
So...why not get a bunch of portable toilets mounted on bases that the robots can move (or better designed specifically for Amazon's needs)? When a worker needs a bathroom break they could inform the system and it could bring a toilet to them.
This would also allow the toilets to be brought to a specific area for cleaning rather than having a janitor have to make rounds. The toilets could probably be designed to make it easy to automate much of this.
setting up the plumbing to all areas of the warehouse is expensive.
>A 5 minute walk to the bathroom seems further than you would walk in any mall.
5 minute seems about right for a mall if you factor in the time looking for it.
What's unreasonable is not accounting for that time.
Every dollar spent on bathrooms is a dollar Bezos can't spend on going to space.
This would be the next best thing.
https://www.unitedsiteservices.com/what-we-offer/portable-re...
That does not seem strange? At one end you the scale you have sedentary office jobs so a warehouse job being ~2-3x higher seems pretty normal.
> Lightly added that the data on musculoskeletal injuries, such as sprains, strained muscles, and torn ligaments, at Amazon’s warehouses “is skewed.” She said that’s because the company’s workforce has many people in the 18 to 24 age range, which she said is more likely than other age groups to claim work-related musculoskeletal injuries.
Interesting if true since I would expect the opposite.
There are many other factors at play. If the warehouse is at a reasonable temperature, good airflow, etc. and you are provided/reimbursed the cost of footwear then it doesn't seem like it would be too bad compared to other physical labor jobs but since the number of workers is so large it makes the news.
I would be surprised if Amazon's warehouse was worse than farm labor jobs considering exposure to heat and the elements. If we want to raise the floor on work safety/comfort, IMO it would make sense to impose these requirements for all jobs rather than single out warehouse jobs.
There's a danger with targeted legislation like this because it could lead to a scenario where the 'cost' of these restrictions is more easily absorbed by a company like Amazon or Walmart but a small warehouse company or even a new Amazon competitor has a harder time competing because the new regulatory burdens increase the barrier to entry.
> Interesting if true since I would expect the opposite.
Hypothetically, I can imagine that older workers (who potentially have a harder time finding employment) under-report their own injuries, given at-will employment.
You're assuming that people can relocate on a whim, considering the rental prices right now? If an Amazon warehouse is what pays the most at a 30 miles distance, that's where people are going to go.
The "job shortage" isn't distributed equally on the surface of USA either.
It also takes a lot of resources (time + money) to get the skills necessary to enter a profession or some skilled labor job.
tl; dr: The alternatives are often another similarly poor job, losing whatever paltry support the government is providing, and/or being one medical condition away from financial ruin.
The same happens in higher qualified jobs too. Why do so many programmers work in abusive companies while there are better companies out there? Maybe they lack the initiative, qualifications or just understanding to apply at better companies. Whatever it is, the fact that people go for those jobs shouldn’t be an excuse for abuse by employers.
Otherwise we could tell abused spouses the abuse is ok because they should have left if they don’t like it.
Food service in particular, I think, is having a lot more difficulty hiring and retaining people than they're used to, even with considerably higher wages and hiring bonuses, but if you believe what you read in the news then it sounds like Amazon warehouses aren't (otherwise you'd think they'd ease up a little on being hardasses). These aren't exactly the same type of job, but they're "pretty similar" in many ways. So, what's the difference?
Location is a factor. Some of the warehouses are located in the far outer suburbs, making them the largest employer in some areas/towns.
- forest fires: newsom cut state wildfire prevention budgets
- rolling blackouts: pg&e neglected to properly maintain electricity lines
- rampant looting: prop 47, san francisco DA that refuses to prosecute minor crimes (like looting)
This just isn't true. Poverty has been decreasing in California (https://www.statista.com/statistics/205434/poverty-rate-in-c...), as has crime (https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/). Numbers more recent than 2019 seem to show that poverty is about unchanged; property crime is down; and violent crime is up, but not up to "lawless hellscape" levels.
> 3 screaming insane people in the parking lot
We used to throw "crazy" people into institutions without a second thought, but that changed a long time ago and not just in California. If you want to bring that back I'm afraid you'll face an uphill battle, but more power to you.
https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...
Comparing August 2021 to August 2020 Larceny/Theft is up 11.5%, Assault is up 34.6%, Robbery is up 16.3%. And that doesn't count the people who just don't bother to report crimes because they know nothing will be done about it. Your link says its data ends in 2019 and has only limited, preliminary data from 2020. If property crime is down, why are retailers closing stores and cutting hours due to rampant shoplifting?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/target-closing-san-fran...
> We used to throw "crazy" people into institutions without a second thought, but that changed a long time ago and not just in California. If you want to bring that back I'm afraid you'll face an uphill battle, but more power to you.
False dichotomy. We don't need to imprison people with Nurse Ratched and give them forced lobotomies to get dangerously unbalanced people off the streets. Whatever the solution is, CA's policy is clearly not working as evidenced by the growing tent cities.
I just don’t think it’s fair to call the state a nightmare hellscape.
On Nurse Ratched … you’re twisting my words. I didn’t say the alternative was torturing the mentally ill, I said it was institutionalizing them. Deinstitutionalization had benefits and drawbacks, one of the latter of which was the severely mentally ill now being homeless.
There are more tents and people camping on the street and openly using drugs and brazenly stealing than ever before. California looks like a failing civilization to people from Western Europe.
Nice try, though!