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Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by dogma1138 on Saturday January 20, 2018 @01:33PM (#16194641)
Would this job be better if they were paid £22,000? £30,000? £45,000?

Regardless of the pay it would always be a shitty job because it’s hard manual labor. There are worse jobs for sure but there is virtually no plausible amount of money that would make this job a good job other than the premise that any job is better than no job.

And we are at fault here we want cheap stuff delivered ASAP even in the middle of the night.

Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by IkmoIkmo on Monday January 22, 2018 @10:31AM (#16205070)
I think it's important to recognise what it means if this was a 45k paying job. And I say job not in the sense of a 1-man employment contract, but job as in 'set of tasks that needs doing', with 45k as the budget.

What it means is that you could pay two people 22k, plus some overhead, to do this 'job' or 'set of tasks'. And you could let them alternate a day and evening schedule, such that they can interact with other human beings, their friends, family. And you could require each to be 10% less productive, such that they can have a normal break where they can interact with other human beings.

The takeaway from this article wasn't that the remuneration was poor. It's typical for a menial job and not any worse than what we ever had in the past. The takeaway was that all the other work conditions are designed in an inhuman (not inhumane, but inhuman) manner, working like a robot with robots. His complaints aren't a lack of money, that's evident from the fact he lives with his parents and barely does anything fun despite having the money. His complaints were a lack of human interaction, having a shitty rhythm, sleeping away his off-time, not seeing his friends, no longer talking to his parents, working with robots.

That can be fixed, if we budgeted even just 30k for this set of tasks. That doesn't mean he gets paid more per year.

Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by walshemj on Saturday January 20, 2018 @02:38PM (#16195004)
For the UK its not a bad wage looking locally to me its often 7.50 or 8 an hour. And Amazon may not be the bets employer they are far better than JD sports!

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/29/140-jd-spor...

When you have members of the conservative government making noises about the owner of JD sports not being a fit and proper person to run a public company you know there is some really bad shit happening

Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by danbruc on Saturday January 20, 2018 @01:42PM (#16194692)
[...] but there is virtually no plausible amount of money that would make this job a good job [...]

I think I would happily do that if it paid well enough so that I only had to work, say, three months or less a year.

Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by dogma1138 on Saturday January 20, 2018 @01:49PM (#16194728)
There are pretty hard seasonal jobs that can pay 50-60K for a season (3-4 months), e.g seasonal fishing.

Even in the UK you can find fishing jobs that pay £1500-2000 a week during peak season which means you can earn what Amazon pays in 2.5 months but it’s much harder than sorting items at a warehouse.

Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by walshemj on Saturday January 20, 2018 @05:14PM (#16195709)
Its almost the most dangerous job in the UK though
Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by dogma1138 on Saturday January 20, 2018 @05:59PM (#16195905)
Not in the top 10 (well the list only goes to 8 but number 8 is already only 1 deaths per year) in the UK.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/08/07/deadliest-job...

Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by walshemj on Saturday January 20, 2018 @06:28PM (#16196010)
Its the death rate % I was talking about.

According to the industry's trade body, Seafish, there are 126 deaths per 100,000 fishermen each year; "many times higher" than any other sector of UK industry

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-13947723

Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by dogma1138 on Saturday January 20, 2018 @06:45PM (#16196079)
I don't get where the BBC gets those numbers, unless there are only like 5000 fishermen in the UK which would somehow make the 126 deaths per 100,000 sound plausible.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/agriculture/pdf/ag-fatal-1617.pdf

Also please note the the vast majority of injuries and fatalities seems to be in farming rather than fishing those statistics are unified but the causes are broken down.

The individual deaths and causes are also listed http://www.hse.gov.uk/foi/fatalities/2016-17.htm I couldn't find one that related directly to fishing.

Don't get me wrong fishing is dangerous but I haven't seen anything that would indicate that it's one of the most dangerous jobs in the UK.

Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by somecontext on Saturday January 20, 2018 @07:15PM (#16196197)
I don't have a horse in this race, but fyi, I found some fishing-related deaths here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/marine-accident-i...
Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by dogma1138 on Saturday January 20, 2018 @07:22PM (#16196220)
Thanks for that source, not sure why HSE doesn't list those maybe because they are still under investigation.
Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by walshemj on Sunday January 21, 2018 @10:04AM (#16198281)
Its from the fishing industry its self as the BBC article says.
Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by dogma1138 on Monday January 22, 2018 @06:02AM (#16203450)
"fishing industry" doesn't mean much, all job related deaths are recorded by the HSE in the UK (this is equivalent to OSHA in the US), which is why I asked for the actual statistics.
Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by polskibus on Saturday January 20, 2018 @01:41PM (#16194683)
It would be better if they were paid more. They would be able to afford reskilling or work 1/5 less and reduce stress on their body.
Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by dogma1138 on Saturday January 20, 2018 @01:49PM (#16194732)
How much more? Retraining isn’t a factor of money especially in the UK it’s a factor of will and time.
Re:The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items... by polskibus on Saturday January 20, 2018 @03:05PM (#16195145)
Not if your are exhausted after work or if your working hours prevent you from attending courses, for example night shifts leaving you tired at the morning. Try doing warehouse job for a week, see how much willpower you will have left.

Also time is sometimes convertible to money, esp. if you have children. You don't have much time left if you have to work long hours, but if you can pay someone to do cleaning, etc.for you, then you are directly buying time.