It's because the alternatives are still worse. And now they'll lose those jobs and have to face those alternatives.

Of course those of us who perceive this as an injustice will complain. The complaint is not directed at Amazon only, it's at the injustice of systemic oppression of the working class.

In your view, what should Amazon do to not systemically oppress the working class?

If an employer has need for employees to perform a specific type of manual physical work --be it 'picking' for Amazon, or building houses, or working in agriculture, or whatever-- and they pay market rates, and adhere to health-and-safety laws... what other reasonable working conditions must be met?

For example, it's difficult to build houses without exposure to inclement weather.

Regular ambulance call-outs. Timed toilet breaks. Top floors at very high temperatures in summer. Workers doing heavy lifting complaining of back pain. Mandatory overtime of 60 hours a week. Performance targets calibrated for the young and healthy meaning pregnant women get fired for underperforming. Firing people for taking sick leave, even with a doctor's note. Wasting doctors' time by forcing employees to get doctors' notes for trivial ailments. Firing workers automatically without human intervention.

All of these would be unusual in a white-collar job; the biggest complaint I have at work is when the free bean-to-cup coffee machine breaks down and only instant coffee is on offer.

Aside from wages, it sounds like you agree with the sentiment of 'minimum working conditions', just perhaps disagree on the specifics of what that means.

And I see a major challenge (logical and practical) for employers whose business requires employees to perform tasks that others find unacceptable, or "inhumane", but which are legal according to H&S standards.

Others in this thread have already given a few examples and explanations of what is wrong with those jobs, as they are now. Much has also been written and reported about it. All in all, there's not much I feel the need to add to that.

Instead, I would like to point out that systemic oppression that is tightly entangled with economy is not a new thing that Amazon invented and that humanity is facing all of a sudden. A few examples would be child labor, sex tourism and drug cultivation. We all want to get rid of those, but history has shown that trying to do so in the most direct way possible only makes things worse. Nobody's arguing that we should stop trying, just that the solution is not as straightforward as most people imagine.

No, we don't all want to get rid of drug cultivation. We do all want to ensure that substance abuse doesn't affect our lives and our families. Of course, that's a vague sentiment and it's hard to get everyone to agree on the specifics of what it means. That didn't stop certain politicians from exploiting that and manipulating general opinion and passing laws and foreign policies that ended up creating a whole lot of suffering for a whole lot of people in different parts of the world.

As a result, there's a whole lot of systemic oppression involved in drug cultivation these days. Unlike child labor, it's not the drug cultivation itself that we should strive to get rid of, but that doesn't negate my original point, which is that just trying to solve the problem in the most direct way possible is going to make things worse.

If you think about it, the other two examples I gave can also be adapted to become something that isn't pernicious in and of itself. If you legalize prostitution and make it a safe profession that adults can choose, instead of resorting to out of necessity, then sex tourism isn't necessarily something you want to get rid of. Similarly, if my kid wants to mow neighborhood lawns to get some money or sell lemonade or babysit other kids, that's not the kind of child labor we're trying to get rid of.

Going back to the topic of drug cultivation, I would recommend reading "Lacrónica" by Martín Caparrós. In one of the chapters, he describes the situation in Bolivia in 1991. One of the many things that fascinated me in his account was the fact that, at that time, a farmer could get 100-150 bolivianos (local currency) for a hand-carried load of coca leaves or 1 boliviano for a hundred oranges. That meant that, to make the same amount of money for one load of coca, a farmer would have to sell 15,000 oranges and there's no way -- even if there's enough demand -- to carry 15,000 oranges in one trip.

I mention this because I think it's a fascinating insight into the systemic oppression I've been talking about. These farmers were not getting rich off their drug cultivation. On the contrary, they lived in quite precarious conditions and they had to cultivate coca leaves to be able to feed themselves and their families.

So yeah, maybe we don't all want get rid of all drug cultivation, but we definitely want to get rid of it in its present form.

Convert itself into a co-op:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative#Definition_...

Presumably they'll do pretty well since there won't be any big bad corporate overlords to steal the value of their labor.

The parent comment asked how Amazon could stop systematically oppressing their workers, not how workers could stop being the targets of systematic oppression. Amazon could accomplish this goal by distributing corporate ownership among the workers and giving them a democratic platform to make decisions about their workplace in an egalitarian way.

Or maybe have robots and then pay working class people to do nothing?

This is not rocket science...

But I'm interested how Amazon's working conditions are "inhumane"? I've read about 'picking' jobs which require lifting, bend, and walking for many miles per shift, but this doesn't seem more inhumane than many other jobs requiring manual labour? And I've read about complaints about the rate of workplace accidents (this was highlighted in the UK recently) but it's hard to tease out more details here.

> During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn't quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.

> An emergency room doctor in June called federal regulators to report an "unsafe environment" after he treated several Amazon warehouse workers for heat-related problems. The doctor's report was echoed by warehouse workers who also complained to regulators, including a security guard who reported seeing pregnant employees suffering in the heat.

However, to be specific, it does seem somewhat geography- and time-dependent - i.e. it's not so much a standard condition experienced when working for Amazon, and so perhaps not an example of Amazon's warehouse job conditions being consistently "inhumane".

It is, however, an interesting example that would support that Amazon perhaps cares too little for its workers, and/or is insufficiently responsive to changing conditions in safeguarding their well-being.

It however is [maybe] [some] company practice to push the boundaries as far as they can be pushed, as a cultural motive. Often pressure from the top down, not with explicit instruction, but implicit general direction that X needs to be done to meet Y requirement. "Shit rolls downhill" as the saying goes. Then it just happens that Joe on the end of the line doesn't get to take a washroom break for 8 hours, every day—and if Joe were to ask about it, Joe would be fired, and Joe [like most] can't afford to be fired.

I've seen it in other industries. It's not unique to Amazon. Amazon's notoriety comes from its size and ubiquity in North American life.

Amazon warehouses ARE oppressive.

And there's nothing superficially wrong with automating the picking and packing of boxes.

The problems come later, and it's not Amazon's "fault" but rather a much larger problem that eventually we'll all have to deal with: what happens when "enough" people get involuntarily shoved out of the workforce, with vanishingly remote prospects of securing other paying work?

Get the automation working and the jobs vanish. But I bet those tax breaks don’t. And I bet Amazon will fight tooth and nail against places deciding to revoke them.

Lots of folks are in favor of a "automation tax." I'm not sure how I feel.

Note I'm not arguing these points, but merely pointing them out.

I work at a manufacturing company. We are slowly chipping away at data entry, manual processes. It only improves efficiency now, but eventually we will need less people.

Which I am personally not advocating. I am unsure of how I feel about it.

The former will only result in crippling debt due to mismanagement of the funds.

The latter could (should?) be replaced with universal healthcare.

The rest of the budget is mostly defense spending and debt servicing.

Amazon has a long track record of aggressively reinvesting its profits.

Given that, I wish us economic policy was focused on allowing more Amazon’s to exist in more industries, and a social policy that focused on helping the folks that are acutely negatively impacted by competition.

[0]https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/10/31/heres-what-the-av...

[1]https://www.vox.com/2019/2/20/18231742/amazon-federal-taxes-...

Is the outcome such that the reducion in payroll will lead to increase in profits and then pressumably that profit will be taxed at a minimum of long term capital gains rate when returned to shareholders?

So maybe if you actually finished doing the math instead of stopping in the middle, you'd see that automation isn't the tax loss you're making it out to be.

I'm glad we have you for this time, will finish the math next time ;-)

I think it's really important the operators of the horse drawn coaches, put out of work by the train I get to work in the mornings, are properly compensated. How is that to be funded without an automation tax?

Once we automate everything the basic muscles of a human body can do without creative thought, that kind of comparable transition won't be possible and there will be 20-100 million Americans unemployed, hungry, and angry. You can have trite and dismissive mis-comparisons about the 1800s, or you can take it seriously and suggest some way society won't collapse in the ensuing riots.

That would include you suggesting what new class of jobs are on the near horizon which can absorb hundreds of millions of low-skill human workers, without needing them to be smarter, but also can't be done by machines.

And yes, the solution to jobs that humans don't want is to eliminate those jobs with automation. Working in a warehouse packing boxes doesn't suck because it's Amazon and they are a big bad employer -- it sucks because it's working in a warehouse packing boxes.

We don't need to "ascertain it's[sic] socioeconomic impact" before we pursue the elimination of such things.

Also, a pretty large contigent of the left argues for automation.

I am so sick of politicization of everything.

The problem, as always, is capitalism. Amazon wouldn't be where it is today without its massive workforce, including its army of factory workers. None of the people losing their jobs will benefit from this increase in productivity, though. Those gains will go only to the people at the top. Meanwhile, there will be more competition for the low-level jobs that still exist, creating downward pressure on wages.

Only if there is enough competition.

So other economic systems aren't interested in efficiency gains and exponential growth?