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You wrote "But the good thing about an Amazon warehouse, is you're not standing next to a heat-treating oven, sweating your bag off."

Quoting from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2393303,00.asp :

> One worker, 34-year-old Elmer Goris, said that on hot days, he saw co-workers being brought out of the non-air conditioned facility in wheelchairs and on stretchers by paramedics. Temperatures inside the Lehigh Valley warehouse reached above 100 degrees on some hot days, according to The Morning Call.

> Goris said warehouse managers refused to open the facility's doors on hot days to let more air circulate through the space, citing theft prevention as the reason at meetings with employees. ...

> But brutal summer working conditions were not the only grievance with Amazon voiced by the workers at the Lehigh Valley warehouse.

> They say that Amazon and local temp agency Integrity Staffing Solutions took advantage of high unemployment in the area to churn through a steady stream of temporary employees who were promised a path to permanent work with benefits that rarely materialized.

You wrote: "You're not outside in the freezing cold. You're not standing around in a meat freezer hacking away at a side of beef with a giant knife"

Quoting from http://articles.mcall.com/2011-11-05/news/mc-allentown-amazo... , regarding the same warehouse:

> Multiple warehouse workers were treated at hospitals for exposure after being outside, without coats, in temperatures below freezing for prolonged periods, including one night for about two hours, according to OSHA records.

> Workers interviewed said Amazon forced them to remain huddled in the parking lot on frigid nights while many workers were wearing only shorts and T-shirts. After attendance was taken to make sure all employees evacuated, warehouse workers said they were not allowed to go to their cars to keep warm. Instead, they were instructed by warehouse managers to use one another's body heat and told that anyone caught going to their cars would be disciplined and could be terminated, workers said.

"Pretty cushy"?

30 years ago, factory jobs were on a fixed workweek with known job securities and benefits (and were often unionized too). The important part of this article is that it points out that all of these floor workers are temps, where each day they could be out of getting paid on a day-to-day basis: "if there was not any work, they would send us home early without pay. "

Those were skilled factory jobs. For low level factory jobs (like moving boxes) you had to wait in line each morning and the foreman would pick names. If you got work that day, great, if not, go wait in the next line or come back tomorrow.

Let's not glorify either side.

well then you are also responding to what I'm responding to; the comparison of the highly dangerous skilled factory job to the low level warehouse job is not an apt one. One is a career and the other is not.

Working warehouses was always a terrible job. I was in that industry 20 years ago, and while they didn't have computers to measure your every movement at that time, the rest is the same - minimum wage, no job security, no benefits, and as soon as the work was done you were sent home without pay.

By the way, union penetration in the US peaked at something like 30% and has been slipping ever since (to about 15% of private sector jobs today).

Is it worst job? Far from it. And 30 years ago it would have been considered pretty cushy.

Just for our information: did you work in an Amazon warehouse?

> Working in an Amazon warehouse is a pretty average blue-collar job these days.

Eek, I hope not. That doesn't bode well for blue-collar work in America. Working at an amazon warehouse will net you roughly $13/hr according to Glassdoor, which will put you roughly $10k above the poverty line.

Unfortunately, outside of skilled trades, blue-collar work in America is slowly disappearing and being replaced with jobs like this. I had a really rough time surviving on $13/hr in college (granted I wasn't working full time), raising a family on that seems damn near impossible.

Median household income in 2013 in the US was $51,939.

For 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year at $13, your salary would be ca. $25k. A household with two working adults at that kind of salary would fit pretty close to the median.

Yep! Not a cushy job by itself, by any means. Certainly requires two people working full time, all the time. This is in contrast to 30 years ago, where one working spouse was sufficient, though perhaps not comfortable.

This isn't even to mention the costs you're incurring by requiring two working spouses: now childcare becomes a recurring cost, maternity leave needs to be short (or non-existent in the case of paternity leave).

Doesn't bode well for blue-collar jobs if warehouse work is the average blue-collar job.

Compare this to what I would consider the remaining true "blue-collar" jobs - skilled trades. The median salary is roughly e.g. $52K for a plumber. That household could absorb the cost of only having one working spouse temporarily (or permanently) - the warehouse family really can't.