Re:Amazon warehouses are ‘cult-like’ sweatshops run by robot...
by krapp on Sunday December 01, 2019 @08:05PM
(#21679069)
They skimp on toilets too. They tend to skimp on anything they can legally get away with - "frugality" is a company mantra, after all.
And you're right, they could afford to be more flexible with employee time and productivity might rise, but that's just not their culture. Their culture is that employees are responsible for meeting expectations, no excuses. If they want productivity to rise, they just raise quotas and crack down on time off task. They complain about the cost of the pain medication employees use from the dispensary. They abuse trialware because they don't want to pay for the licenses. That's just who they are.
This is a company that will assign you to indefinite six day, twelve hour weeks if business needs call for it, but will complain if you're a minute late from break. It's possible that bad press or not wanting to be the Democrats' straw villain in 2020 might cause policies to drift in a more progressive direction, though.
>It's easy to pick on Amazon but your run of the mill warehouse job is always worse and pays half as much
That's true. To be fair, the base wage is extremely competitive in most markets for entry level work, and the health insurance is really good, and most people aren't peeing in bottles and the like. But even then, "it's not literally the worst possible job" is kind of damning with faint praise.
And you're right, they could afford to be more flexible with employee time and productivity might rise, but that's just not their culture. Their culture is that employees are responsible for meeting expectations, no excuses. If they want productivity to rise, they just raise quotas and crack down on time off task. They complain about the cost of the pain medication employees use from the dispensary. They abuse trialware because they don't want to pay for the licenses. That's just who they are.
This is a company that will assign you to indefinite six day, twelve hour weeks if business needs call for it, but will complain if you're a minute late from break. It's possible that bad press or not wanting to be the Democrats' straw villain in 2020 might cause policies to drift in a more progressive direction, though.
>It's easy to pick on Amazon but your run of the mill warehouse job is always worse and pays half as much
That's true. To be fair, the base wage is extremely competitive in most markets for entry level work, and the health insurance is really good, and most people aren't peeing in bottles and the like. But even then, "it's not literally the worst possible job" is kind of damning with faint praise.