That’s because $20 is still humiliatingly low for the workload
Average Warehouse Worker Hourly Pay “Avg. Base Hourly Rate (USD)” $14.99/ hour and $19.57 is top 10%. https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Warehouse_Worker/Ho...
As to the job sucking, “Amazon warehouse workers suffer serious injuries at twice the rate of rivals, study finds“ https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/12/study-amazon-workers-suffer-...
According to their own data, Amazon only had higher rates of "light duty" injury (most of which are not "serious" as they claim). This is easily explained by Amazon's need to report all cuts and bruises due to the targets on their backs, while others gladly omit them--especially say, unionized ones where the leaders would logically tell them to keep cuts and bruises silent to juice their numbers.
[0] The Strategic Organizing Center (SOC) is a democratic coalition of four labor unions: Service Employees International Union (SEIU), International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Communications Workers of America (CWA) and United Farmworkers of America (UFW). Together, SOC-affiliated unions represent more than 4 million workers.
If you want verification: "We’re developing new automated staffing schedules that use sophisticated algorithms to rotate employees among jobs that use different muscle-tendon groups to decrease repetitive motion and help protect employees from MSD risks.” https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xeba/amazons-new-algorithm...
In other words they are concerned that are pushing people to do their jobs faster than humanly possible but assumed they could make that pace sustainable by rotating jobs over the day rather than say reduce the pace to a sustainable level.
Arguably not the same industry (but devastatingly adjacent): have a look at FedEx warehouses. Recently as low as $13.xx/hr, same sort of grueling work, plus the privilege of not knowing whether you'll need to show up at 4:00 AM or 7:00 AM. You don't get to know that until the night before, when you call a phone number around 8 or 9 to listen to a recorded message that will tell you. (Even then, you might show up only to find tape over the time clocks with a note that they're going to be starting later, after all, with the expectation that you'll just hang out off the clock in the meantime and then start at the new designated time.¹) And you have no idea how long you'll be working, either (except that it won't be 8 hours). 5–6 hours is possible. ~3 hours is probable. So you'll need to work 6 or 7 days just for the chance that you might get close to 30 hours. Ridiculously high turnover, as expected.
1. Yes, really. This is begging for a DoL inquiry; "Package Handlers are always paid for TIME WORKED [...] In the future please meet with your manager before just leaving. Thank you." — says a FedEx Ground facility's Area Manager, "Crystal", in an email.
But all that says is "people don't want to work on amazon". It doesn't say why they don't want to work there. The parent post made a specific claim (ie. "the workload is however much worse"), which is consistent with worse working conditions, but not proof of it.
1. Low pay. As this thread pointed out Amazon actually pays above average for the warehouse industry. It doesn't make sense that their turnover is higher than other warehouse if people leave because the pay is too low.
2. Dislike of "big tech" and corporate capitalism more generally. Basically these are people who saw someone complain on twitter and quit. I doubt people that would quit of morals would take the job in the first place, this seems like a non-issue.
3. Unprepared for the workload that comes with warehouse work. All warehouse work is tough, if this is your first warehouse job you might not be ready for physical labor. This seems reasonable to me since Amazon advertises their warehouse jobs more than other warehouse companies.
4. Amazon's workload is higher than other warehouses. Given what we know about the workload on their white collar workers and the stories I've heard about the warehouse work this seems like the biggest contributor to their high turnover to me.
Interested in hearing what you think the cause of their turnover could be.
Fit able bodied workers willing and able to put in a full day of hard labor have more options and are therefore more expensive. Aka if you get laid off of a 25$/hour construction job you might temporarily work at Amazon while looking for work, but you’re not staying for years. Amazon workers may therefore be under paid for their capabilities independent of industry norms.
5. Double the workplace accident rate of the rest of the industry also plays a role. You don’t just lose workers directly as people also quit out of fear for their health.
6. It’s in part a seasonal job. Amazon doesn’t need or want a steady workforce and can play with their quotas to lay people off without paying for unemployment.
There are plenty of lower paid jobs for those only interested in being a chair filler.
But the pay is quite good for the required skillset.