Amazon's New Algorithm Will Set Workers' Schedules According to Muscle Use

[Nevilledog]

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Jason Koebler
@jason_koebler
algorithms will assess how much Amazon workers’ “muscle-tendon groups” are being used and will change their schedules accordingly https://vice.com/en/article/z3xeba/amazons-new-algorithm-will-set-workers-schedules-according-to-muscle-use… :—-)

Amazon’s New Algorithm Will Set Workers’ Schedules According to Muscle Use
In Jeff Bezos' last letter to shareholders as Amazon CEO, he laid out a plan to increase safety by algorithmically managing workers' bodies.
vice.com
4:01 PM · Apr 15, 2021

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xeba/amazons-new-algorithm-will-set-workers-schedules-according-to-muscle-use

The pace and intensity of work in Amazon’s warehouses is notorious, and injuries are disturbingly common. In his last letter to shareholders as CEO, posted on Thursday, founder and incoming executive chairman Jeff Bezos offered a solution that seems to stretch the definition of micromanagement: algorithmically shuffling workers around the warehouse based on which isolated muscle-tendon groups they’re repetitively grinding.

"Despite what we've accomplished, it's clear to me that we need a better vision for our employees' success,” Bezos wrote. “We have always wanted to be Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company. We won't change that. But I am committing us to an addition. We are going to be Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work."

Bezos claims that he doesn’t take “comfort” in the recent defeat of a union drive in a Bessemer, Alabama warehouse, adding, “We need to do a better job for our employees.”

To that end, Bezos claims Amazon will be pursuing a host of initiatives centered around improving safety conditions at its warehouses. One program seems to capitalize on Amazon's surveillance dragnet inside warehouses that already targets workers, now being used to minimize the grueling repetitive motions that lead to a significant amount of injuries, specifically musculoskeletal disorders, or MSD.

Furthermore, Bezos claims that this micro-level algorithmic management of worker’s bodies will be “central” to the company’s strategy going forward.

*snip*

[enough]

1. Just pay well and benefits. NT

[IcyPeas]

2. This has to be The Onion, right?

[Nevilledog]

3. Nope.

[MerryHolidays]

4. I thought so too nt

[Aristus]

6. No. Henry Ford did something similar.

He hired men to watch the workers on his assembly lines to note "unnecessary and wasted movements".

These guys took their jobs a little too seriously. One watcher recorded that a worker made an improbable 70,000 wasted movements in the course of a single shift.

[Celerity]

12. Scientific Management Theory and the Ford Motor Company (Taylorism)

https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Saylor.orgs-Scientific-Management-Theory-and-the-Ford-Motor-Company.pdf

[brush]

5. Hmmm? For some reason I don't like the sound of that.

Too slippery-slopey to me. What's next? Instead of monitoring actual human muscle groups, why not sub in mechanical robot muscle that doesn't get tired?

Scary.

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-trp-001&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=trp&p=video+of+military+robot+dogs+being+developed&type=Y61_F1_148993_102720#id=5&vid=244c586491857df872be6acd038f3659&action=view

[dalton99a]

7. NEXT: Amazon announces system to monitor and adjust worker hydration level

for maximum usage and efficiency

[FakeNoose]

11. If they drink less water, they need fewer bathroom breaks

[Nevilledog]

9. No.

[crickets]

10. Oh, good grief. This does not sound like an improvement at all. nt

[Celerity]

13. in before the inevitable 'Luddite!' smears of anyone dissenting in any way to this