>I applied for the job through the jobcentre. I’ve thought about quitting, but I can’t leave of my own accord. If I did, I’d be sanctioned by the jobcentre and lose my entitlement for benefits and support for six months. I don’t have much choice but to carry on working there. Unless I can find a new job, I’m locked into place.
Amazon is providing a huge service to offer jobs with such a low entry requirement. The alternative is not a better job — as he says, there isn’t one or he would leave and take it in a millisecond. The options are Amazon job and government benefits or no job and no benefits.
(I do think that the unemployment benefits system is shitty here in the UK, I certainly wouldn’t enjoy having to rely on it, but that’s a separate topic.)
Also as statutory benefits are based on full years you could end up at retirement age not getting a full pension - this is the main reason why well paid people also sign on to make sure they don't miss out when older.
You realize you could replace 'worker' with 'serf' and 'Amazon' with 'feudal lord' in that post and it would be a shining defence of feudalism?
The catch? He actually has to want to do it.
How is this like serfdom?
More importantly, the job likely won't be much better than what he has.
The point isn't so much that the job sucks and that he can find something else. For me the article says something about the very nature of many 21st century jobs at 'innovative' 21st century tech companies.
I mean, the pay ain't that bad, it's quite similar to median daily wages in the US for example. The issue is that he's working with robots, doesn't talk to people or even his parents, is unable to keep up a social life, sleeps during his off-time and is basically miserable.
Now what do you think happens when he leaves that job? Someone else will take his place. Maybe at a marginally higher rate, if enough people are reluctant to take the job. But inherently, that's not a job we should be having in one of the richest countries on the planet. There's no issue with menial labour, but we surely must be able to design our work/life balance better than for people to lose interaction with other human beings, losing passion for their hobbies, sleeping their time on this earth away when they're not working like a robot.
Ideally he would shuffle boxes the mandatory minimum work hours required to keep his government benefits and spend an additional 40 hours a work studying & training for something better paying.
Career advancement isn’t going to be handed to you on a fucking silver platter. This guy has a good life and works is fairly safe and low stress conditions, is paid fairly, and isn’t trying terribly hard to become better. What else was I supposed to take away from the article?
hmmm why does this sound familiar.
Otherwise, he'll end up spending those savings just living and looking for a job, and the government won't pay him any benefits because he quit of his own volition.
Now sure, he can learn a new trade in his free time, but the reality is that most people don't realize that's an option (they think they need to get a few years of college or something), can't learn anything useful, or they're too tired to do anything after a hard day at work.