- cross-posted to:
- latestagecapitalism@lemmygrad.ml
- cross-posted to:
- latestagecapitalism@lemmygrad.ml
Last year, only a third of Amazon’s new hires stayed with the company for more than 90 days before quitting, being fired, or getting laid off
The report, which is based off internal research papers, slide decks, and spreadsheets from Amazon, claims that workers are twice as likely to leave by choice, rather than because they were laid off or fired. It also says that the issue is widespread throughout the company, not just with warehouse workers; from entry level roles all the way up to vice presidents, the lowest attrition rate for one of the company’s 10 tiers of employees was almost 70 percent, with the highest reaching a staggering 81.3 percent.
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As an older person, I have been in a constant state of disbelief that my peers and elders can't make the connection between capitalism and this corporate behavior towards us for all my adult life. Like 8 billion dollars couldn't be paid out instead for extra staff and better work conditions.
Like somehow this is the result of some funny coincidence that all these rich business owners just have poor character. Like somewhere there's someone at the top of capitalist business that's a sweet, kind and fair person...but they've just never seen them.
Meanwhile they learn that there were laws put in place to prevent child labor, like it was some oopsie that was casually rectified and not the principle driving force of capitalism.
It has always staggered my common sense that Americans can deny that this is Capitalism. That's it. That's what it is. How many times do you have to see it right in front of your face at work or the store or anywhere. There it is.
Meanwhile they learn that there were laws put in place to prevent child labor, like it was some oopsie that was casually rectified and not the principle driving force of capitalism.
People learn about that and the eight hour workday and breaks and osha but they are never taught that these things came about because union workers were literally fighting, with guns, to the death, to make it all happen
Exactly, and who are they fighting? It's a mystery I guess. :soviet-hmm:
I think of billionaires more as "Utilitarian Demons" than Rocko's basilisks. The basilisk is vengeful and wants everyone opposed to it to suffer and die. Bezos and his group simply don't care if the poor live or die, unless it directly affects their wealth, making them less terrifying but more insidious - a banal evil.
So amazon is absolutley going to start using prison labour in the next few years right? When can we expect bezos to start a private prison/amazon warehouse?
Let me look at this through a lib lens:
Soon, Amazon will partner with the government to help rehabilitate inmates through on-the-job training programs
This is absolutely coming. I remember last year seeing some ghoul CEO of a background check company espousing hiring formerly incarcerated folks as a means to “address the hiring crisis”. Which of course, between the lines, means “untapped labor pool that can further depress wages”.
Why wait until they’re formerly incarcerated? :porky-happy:
Amazon’s new warehouse employee training exec used to manage private prisons https://www.popsci.com/technology/amazons-exec-private-prisons/
How am I not surprised my ghoulish takes are already part of bezos' plans
that might be more difficult for them as they are a shipping company and prisons tend to be in the middle of nowhere
there are real logistical issues involved with that
I honestly though this is their hiring philosophy keep rotating ppl in and out. That way no one needs a raise, or benefits.
Wouldn't you eventually just burn through your entire labor pool? Like how long would that even be sustainable?
I think at the very least they've burned though their "goodwill" so to speak, at least anecdotally amongst people in warehousing in my area. I've worked in warehouses for a while, Amazon opened a warehouse close to where I live a few years ago. The opinion pretty quickly went from "Can't wait till Amazon opens up here so we can finally get paid" to "It's good you just gotta keep your pace up" to "FUCK AMAZON AND FUCK BEZOS FOREVER"
Wouldn’t you eventually just burn through your entire labor pool? Like how long would that even be sustainable?
Yes, this is already becoming an issue for them. There's leaked company documents discussing it
They use some algorithmic tracking that makes working there completely unsustainable. Anybody that stays there for too long is probably addicted to painkillers - A BeLabored podcast episode talked about how an employee couldn't use tylenol because she developed a tolerance.
I've worked in construction for years and Amazon was the first job where I felt obligated to bring some kind of painkiller with me. They even dispense packs of them in the employee supplies vending machines.
They even dispense packs of them in the employee supplies vending machines
what the fuck
Like you scan your ID badge and can get certain items periodically, such as work gloves or tylenol. You were only able to get one two pill pack a day, gloves were around 3 days, I collected them and had several dozen fresh pairs by the time I quit.
concrats for stealing from work.
That whole system sounds incredibly dystopic though
I actually smuggled out a decent amount of stuff, including some RAM sticks that retail for like $150 when they had the metal detectors shut off and weren't searching people's bags on their way out of the building.
also cant organize if turnover is a couple months max for most people
It is the philosophy, I was at a warehouse for about a year and there were I believe two people left who started around the same time as me, if I had to guess 10% stay past 6 months, 5% past a year. Unless you live in a low cost of living area where other businesses are paying federal minimum wage there's not much keeping anyone there. They try dangling a carrot saying you could make assistant manager within a year but they're much more likely to hire people with 4 year degrees than promote from within, all of the assistant managers had been there for a few years minimum waiting for a management position to open up, which start at like 21/hr.
yeah but people who worked for them often don't want to go back. It's warehouse work they aren't the only game in town
eventually Amazon managers run out of people willing to put up with them
In FY 2021, the turnover rate — excluding TNT Express employees and U.S.-based FedEx Supply Chain employees — was 23% for full-time workers and 183% for part-time workers, primarily package handlers.
United Parcel Service Inc. UPS disclosed Tuesday that its workforce was reduced by about 9,000 employees in 2021,
I'm guessing it's a similar turnover rate to fedex for ups..
Simply put, during the past two years of covid, the workload and workflow increased to absurd levels that the corporate infrastructure wasn't prepared to handle, with most if not all the companies doing little to nothing to prepare for the influx of online orders. So quite literally everyone that's involved in the process of moving shit from point A to B have been overworked and drastically underpaid in relation to the output that's been expected of them.
I've even heard that the courier companies have even been forced to force their office workers and managerial staff do deliveries too in order to keep the system profitable. I've heard they've also been burning out cargo plane pilots and desperately need more flight crews. I've also heard that delivery and cargo drivers have been hitting their max driving hours consistently to the point that I've heard that they're also getting burned out or are suffering stress/exhaustion injuries to thr point of causing vehicular accidents on their routes.
Wait till the Amazon draft starts up
Edit:
It goes down like this:
Big recession and the job loss the feds want happens.
People apply for benefits but there becomes even stricter job search requirements, meaning you have to take any job offered if you want to eat.
Amazon swoops in
This happens in Parable of the Sower. Eventually people are required to accept a job for room and board, and no cash payment.
It's one of my favorite books. I think it's the perfect parable for the need to move beyond the affinity group as an organizational form. On the one hand it's about the evolution of a movement after a catastrophic defeat, on the other hand it's the deeply human story of a grieving mother and the bitter child of a prodigy, on the third hand it's a rip-roaring action-adventure where half the conflicts end in tense gun battles and the other half end in emotional dialogue. Very few authors make characters as rich and believable as Butler conjures in a few pages to serve some allegorical point.
The level of sexual violence is excessive but its not gratuitous or exploitative in the same way as so many awful male writers; there's no perverse sadism or sexual satisfaction for the writer or the reader. I have difficulty with depictions of violence in media, and especially with characters who are so emotionally real to me as the ones in Talents so definitely recommend not reading it if you are not in the right headspace for that.
(Abstract Spoilers) Finally, while so much of the conflict and organizational struggles is realistic and instructive in the first book and the first half of the second, I do not find the model of change to be very believable. In the end, there is so no grand conflict with the state. Despite all the repression acorn faced, Lauren's movement is allowed to gradually outgrow patriarchal capitalism and never enters into a grand confrontation. Ultimately, this is not as important as all of the other themes and it would be entitled to wish the book to redo '10 Days that Shook the World' in the third act so this is a minor complaint.
Read the book! Read the book! Read the book!
Really good breakdown of a lot of my thoughts as well! I've really enjoyed everything I've read of Butler's. I had a little difficulty with Talents the first time I read it since coming off of Sower I was anticipating/expecting a grand conflict that didn't really arise, and it took additional reads to appreciate more of the other themes.
I sometimes find myself a little frustrated with some modern SF that is marketed as being very diverse, when it tries to represent older SF as lacking any perspectives beyond the male, white, hetero norm that (to be fair) many of the dominant authors represented. But like... what about Butler, Tiptree, Delany, Le Guin, Tepper, etc etc etc? These are some of the best SF writers ever! But I guess it's not the marketing departments job to tell people to go find a used copy of an out of print novel that's probably better than the book they're trying to sell...
Well, they can either make conditions nicer or lobby the government to discipline the labor force by making the lives of the working class more precarious. Who's to say what management will choose.
bezos just has to grease the right palms and hand some legislation over to the right ghouls making Amazon a national security infrastructure, then they can make it illegal for workers to strike and possibly call quitting wildcat striking and prosecute people for it
this has the ring of something completely absurd but the more I think about it the more it seems likely in the next decade
call quitting wildcat striking and prosecute people for it
Ngl gonna need you to step away from the lathe here
"look, I'm as liberal as they come buuuuuut people just don't want to work anymore!"
We've seen the carnival of bootlickers when Bezos hints that a new facility might be built somewhere. My God, the back-breaking bending over of local and state politicians for a whiff of that sweet graft was a dictionary worthy display of obsequiousness.
It's the percentage of workers that leave per year. If you've got 100 employees in january and only 30 of those people are left in december, that's 70% attrition.
A lot of them get replaced so the workforce isn't necessarily shrinking, but a number that high means people hate it there and aren't sticking around for long.
