Bezos Says Amazon Workers Aren't Treated Like Robots, Unveils Robotic Plan To Keep Them Working (theverge.com) 70
In his final letter to shareholders as Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos said that the company has to "do a better job for our employees." But, as The Verge points out, the outlined strategy includes "a robotic scheme that will develop new staffing schedules using an algorithm." From the report: Bezos pushed back on the idea that, according to news reports, Amazon doesn't care for its employees. "In those reports, our employees are sometimes accused of being desperate souls and treated as robots. That's not accurate,â he wrote. To address concerns about working conditions, Bezos said the company will develop new 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." The technology will roll out throughout 2021, he said.
In addition to giving a nod to working conditions at Amazon, the letter is the first time Bezos has publicly addressed the failed union drive at its Bessemer, Alabama plant. "Does your Chair take comfort in the outcome of the recent union vote in Bessemer? No, he doesn't," Bezos wrote. "I think we need to do a better job for our employees. While the voting results were lopsided and our direct relationship with employees is strong, it's clear to me that we need a better vision for how we create value for employees -- a vision for their success."
In addition to giving a nod to working conditions at Amazon, the letter is the first time Bezos has publicly addressed the failed union drive at its Bessemer, Alabama plant. "Does your Chair take comfort in the outcome of the recent union vote in Bessemer? No, he doesn't," Bezos wrote. "I think we need to do a better job for our employees. While the voting results were lopsided and our direct relationship with employees is strong, it's clear to me that we need a better vision for how we create value for employees -- a vision for their success."
He's right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He's right (Score:5, Insightful)
If an employee files for worker's compensation after being injured on the job, the employer ultimately pays more, because their payments to worker's comp insurance go up to cover those costs. If you subsequently fire them due to injury, they now get unemployment (maybe disability), which again, comes out of the employer, albeit indirectly. Most states require unemployment insurance payments from employers. Fire too many people, and a company's rates go up. So no, you can't just injure and fire people en-masse, at least not without drastically affecting your bottom lines, which would sort of ruin the point of acting like a slave-driver to the point of injuring people.
I'm not necessarily defending Amazon here, but just trying to inject a little realism into the discussion. Believe it or not, most companies can't just churn through workers (via injury & termination) without paying at least some sort of price. I'm also aware that this doesn't make for nearly as good of a talking point compared to a one-liner that depicts Amazon as heartless monsters that can just do whatever they want to their chattel. But oh well...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He's right (Score:5, Informative)
I can find no evidence of Amazon warehouse workers being contractors after searching a bit. That being said, I did a bit of searching, and a fairly staggering number of warehouse workers are terminated for failing to meet production quotas.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/... [theverge.com]
So... I hate to admit it, but I seem to be rather wrong in regard to firing workers en masse. Amazon seems to do this nation-wide. Someone obviously ran the numbers and found it more profitable to just cull the bottom performing five to ten percent every year.
Apparently, the rules are somewhat different for small businesses.
Re: (Score:3)
I can find no evidence of Amazon warehouse workers being contractors after searching a bit.
Many of the drivers are contractors or work for contracting companies.
Someone obviously ran the numbers and found it more profitable to just cull the bottom performing five to ten percent every year.
That is not surprising. Many companies do this.
It's not that their contractors (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Someone obviously ran the numbers and found it more profitable to just cull the bottom performing five to ten percent every year."
Wasn't this policy at GE for years? Its not hard to find articles about it. If you were flagged as the bottom 10%, you needed to go.
Jack Welch: how he justified his famous ‘fire the bottom 10%” :
https://rossclennett.com/2020/... [rossclennett.com]
Re: (Score:2)
That's normal for unskilled jobs.
The amount of time and effort spent vetting employees is extremely low which means you end up with a lot more people working for you that are unproductive or unsuited for the job.
The solution would be to better vet employees but (IMO), these jobs are useful because it gives people who messed up in the past but are trying now to develop a resume and develop with a company.
Where I work, we have started hiring through temp agencies. The plus side for us is that we can release
Re: (Score:2)
Funny thing on this note, my union had an autistic man among its founders who took "You're fired before you hit the ground" a bit too literally and demanded a rule that you can only be fired while face-to-face with the boss in his office.
Re:He's right (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the time workers are not injured, they are just burned out. Amazon works them too hard, they find they are constantly tired and aching and they quit. No liability for Amazon as they "voluntarily" resigned.
Not if they deny the claim (Score:2)
These days it's all done via arbitration and the arbitrators are picked (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) by local businesses. And, well, they're none too keen no paying workman's comp claims (and yes, it does eventually come out of their pockets, if only as premium
Re: (Score:2)
I guess things work differently in small businesses. My mom and dad ran a light industrial manufacturing shop. Injuries were rare, but they did happen, and the business immediately felt the impact with raised insurance rates if it kept their worker home for a time. Likewise, when he had to let an employee go (sometimes for cause, sometimes for economic reasons), his unemployment insurance rates went up.
It's a bit frustrating to hear that the largest corporations, the once who can actually most afford pay
Re: (Score:2)
If you break a robot you have to pay to fix it. If you break an employee you fire them and hire somebody else.
That's only because robots are still expensive. Give it time, and they'll be disposable, too.
Re: He's right (Score:1)
Algorithmic manager (Score:2)
Corporate gobbledegook (Score:5, Insightful)
As others have pointed out, "creating a vision for our employees' success" isn't the same thing as "treating our employees well." It's gonna take a lot more than a new algorithm.
Re: (Score:2)
unions got good staffing schedules and not radmon (Score:2)
unions got good staffing schedules and not random ones that suck with BS like 2-3 hour days mixed in with 6-12 hour days.
Amazon Workers Aren't Treated Like Robots (Score:2)
We treat our robots very well, thank you very much.
Unlimited paid time off, catered meals, you name it. Robots identifying as non-binary can request their own toilet facilities. All they have to do is ask.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, for that we equip the robots with a cathoder (for collecting the small voltages) and an anoder (for the big ones).
The toilets are more about giving the robots a platform to express their individuality.
Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
sophisticated algorithms to rotate employees among jobs that use different muscle-tendon groups to decrease repetitive motion and help protect employees from MSD risks.
That has nothing to do with workers happiness and everything to do with reducing sick leaves and workers comp.
Re:Translation (Score:4, Interesting)
If Amazon manages to elevate itself out of the position of being regarded as the last option for the desperate unemployed, it's likely to see a number of benefits that might not be immediately tangible. I don't see that happening any time soon, though.
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
That has nothing to do with workers happiness
As long as an employer provides decent wages and benefits, a good working environment and reasonable chances for advancement, the pursuit of happiness is the workers' responsibility. Every individual has their own set of motivations. Employers can't be expected to sit down with each one and tailor the job to fit each person's whims.
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds like a free gym instructor tbh
Re: (Score:2)
That has nothing to do with workers happiness and everything to do with reducing sick leaves and workers comp.
Well, it is addressing problems with sick leave, worker's comp, and turnover by increasing employee happiness and health, so it isn't accurate to say it has nothing to do with worker happiness. If you are always just focusing on root cause of a decision nearly all corporate decisions will boil down to investor returns, but you would lose a lot of nuance there. It is a good thing and worthy of encouragement for companies to address these problems by helping employees instead of ignoring them. It is a good th
Of course not (Score:2)
Robots are treated better, they're expensive and don't reproduce...
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
3D printers are still a thing? Is it 2009 again?
Dissonance (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Dissonance (nonsense) (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a ridiculous expectation that just because a business owner is one of the richest on the planet, his/her company should automatically be paying all of its employees the highest wages in each of their respective fields.
Your paycheck, accepting a given job role, is governed by the combination of what the average pay is for similar work elsewhere in the geographical area and what value your work contributes to the company's success.
Pretty much without exception, the most wealthy people on the planet run t
re: pay rates (Score:2)
I don't quite agree with that. Yes, if you're a software developer and work at Amazon, you can expect to earn more doing similar work at Google or Facebook or probably Microsoft. But on the whole, the pay is still "competitive" vs what hundreds of smaller companies in the city you live in would pay for a software dev.
For their support roles, it's often a situation of having the opportunity at all, vs not having it. EG. When COVID began and most companies were laying off people left and right, Amazon started
Re: (Score:2)
Is it so complicated? (Score:4, Insightful)
Firstly, I do think the software is an interesting concept but I have a feeling it will be underbaked and utilized in a way not really in the employees best interest. Some "efficiency" types are going to get their mitts in it for sure.
But it's not like auto factories haven't existed for 100 years and still are as well as who knows how many other assembly line, repetitive style jobs in the country. Those places have figured out a decent balance for employees in many cases, just look at what they do. Costco does it, Toyota does it, no reason Amazon can't, or really won't.
I have the feeling most of it would be not willing to make slightly less growth and keeping those wages, while at $15, as close to $15 as they can.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I imagine Bezos’ private argument would be - “the heads of Costco and Toyota don’t have 1/100th of my wealth, so why would I want to follow their lead?”
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. When I read the summary I sounded no different than any other ergonomic changes to a workplace.
Re: (Score:2)
Whatever (Score:1)
I don't see the problem here. (Score:2)
Lies (Score:3, Informative)
Bezos pushed back on the idea that, according to news reports, Amazon doesn't care for its employees. "In those reports, our employees are sometimes accused of being desperate souls and treated as robots. That's not accurate," he wrote.
When Amazon warehouse workers skip bathroom breaks to keep their jobs [theverge.com] or work 14-hour days with no bathroom breaks [theguardian.com] (they have to pee in bottles [slashdot.org]), or you're trying to monitor [slashdot.org] every little thing your employee does [slashdot.org] (leading to unfair punishment [slashdot.org]), to me that shows you don't care for your employees.
In principle, there is nothing surprising here (Score:1)
Corporate America (Score:4, Insightful)
Cards (Score:2)
Manna (Score:1)
And who feeds Amazon? (Score:3)
As long as people choose to buy from Amazon they signal that the company's behaviour is ok.
Re: (Score:1)
RUR (Score:1)
Bezos should read and perhaps pay for a private performance of the play "RUR" or "Rossum's Universal Robots."
That's not accurate. A denial without any substance. "Treated like robots," well that's not accurate because they are not robots...more indentured servant or serf.
JoshK.
Humanity (Score:4, Funny)
"use sophisticated algorithms to rotate employees among jobs that use different muscle-tendon groups"
Well how could anyone accuse Amazon of not caring about it's workers after a heartwarming statement like that?
Re: (Score:1)
It is heart warming and beautiful, I wish I had the scale with my business to be able to collect and analyze that much data that would allow me to build such comprehensive algorithms to achieve similar goals based on pure health metrics. I love it!
Correct by design (Score:2, Insightful)
Employee: "You... (Score:1)
Employer: "No-no-no, I said *I* was a robot."
Theree (and a half) words! (Score:1)
Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
(That's the name for the system where the humans become the robots, working for a machine that controls it all.)
Their response is "we care about our robots" (Score:3)
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
It is exactly the mindset of someone who manages robots. The same reasoning could be (and most likely is) applied to CNC machines. Use a wear-leveling algorithm to distribute the tasks between machines in order to reduce downtime due to maintenance.
It is not bad, I mean not all employees have the privilege of being treated like valuable, well maintained robots. But the topic is "treating employees like robots" not "treating them well", and the answer is particularly ironic.
They're wage slaves, not robots (Score:2)
Until we can figure out how to get people to work for free, we'll be working on assembling an army of robots to replace workers who complain. Probably.
The robots (Score:2)
The robots get free medical care the minute they need it. Ok, they call it "maintenance."
Diapers for production line workers (Score:2)
Amazon doesn't report its warehouse injury rates (Score:1)
According to Amazon's own records, last year, it had more than 14,00 serious injuries [youtube.com]
People problems are not tech problems (Score:2)
I lost count of how many coders and engineers don't understand this incredibly simple concept. And don't even get me started on managers.
There's a simple solution. A 30 hour work week. Keep the pay and benefits the same. The productivity is about the same (workers are more focused and rested) and you can shut down for the extra six hours to save costs or you can add a whole shift.
Of course, this will never happen because America is mired in the idea that Friedman economics is the one true handed down by God
Re: (Score:1)
American Dream (Score:2)
Amazon Workers are denied American Dream;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]