AMAZON WAREHOUSE JOBS PUSH WORKERS TO PHYSICAL LIMIT, The Seattle Times, April 11, 2012

[appalachiablue]

"AMAZON WAREHOUSE JOBS PUSH WORKERS TO PHYSICAL LIMIT"

The Seattle Times

April 11, 2012

By Hal Bernton and Susan Kelleher

Campbellsville, KY-

On an average day, 51 year old Connie Milby covered more than 10 miles in her tennis shoes, walking and climbing up and down three flights of stairs to retrieve tools, toys and a vast array of other merchandise for Amazon.com shoppers.

She filled online orders for more than a decade, working through summer heat and winter chill inside the company's south-central KY warehouse.

One constant was the pace that Milby tried to keep to avoid write ups from her supervisor that could put her $12.50-per-hour job at risk.

"At my age around here, there are not many other opportunities to make what we make" Milby said before beginning her 6:30 a.m. shift last October. "As long as my body holds up, I will keep working. But the way it feels I don't know how long that will be."

Read more: ~ Harsh working conditions, high pace, high temperatures, injuries and no unions ~
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon-warehouse-jobs-push-workers-to-physical-limit/
_______

Nov. 30, 2014. AMAZON KIVAS-MEET THE ROBOTS MAKING AMAZON EVEN FASTER. CNET NEWS

[NaturalHigh]

1. That's what I heard from a guy who worked in one.

I remember it was a Saturday when he and his girlfriend were both off (a rarity). They were both exhausted and just kind of crashing on the couch.

[appalachiablue]

4. Exhausted for sure, a real workout for the very fit. The temps in the warehouses, aka

'fulfillment centers' can be very cold or extremely hot. Note the article states how injuries are treated fast to keep from being recorded by the feds.

A couple years ago, a young woman who worked for a while at an Amazon warehouse west of the Mississippi reported her experience on 'Democracy Now!', Amy Goodman's news program. It was not a very good atmosphere and she was sharp, healthy and not long out of college.

The walking amounted to miles a day; workers were timed and tracked for speed and efficiency by supervisors; few breaks; temperatures beyond uncomfortable; workers weren't paid for waiting in long lines to be checked/scanned (?) coming to work and leaving work she said.

[marym625]

2. K&R!

This sucks!

[appalachiablue]

11. It appears pretty bad from the Seattle article, one from Mother Jones & the NPR *RADIO

discussion by former A. employees in Skip's post- that is really worth listening to for a real sense of what the warehouses are like, esp. from a young healthy woman who was a "Picker", the position for the fittest and youngest.

Makes you think twice about ordering online to fulfill Bezos' libertarian Amazon Dream, sans worker rights, unions, even OSHA regulations- ambulances ready to handle workers collapsing from extreme heat because they won't use air conditioning at warehouses. Go USA !?

[marym625]

25. I have never once ordered from them

I wish I had so I could boycott. Best I can do is spread the word.

Which I am doing

Thanks for the further information!

[appalachiablue]

26. I never order either except for a few films & documentaries that can't be bought or

rented anywhere else now, in the physical world. Did you read the full article in 'The Nation' posted here, what the young woman went through at the Amazon Warehouse- the boot camp like abuse and warnings Before she even started the job. Unbelievable.

Billionaire Bezos' brand of libertarian worker brutality disturbs me, is becoming common in the US and more the standard than not now, due to a very loose labor market, fewer real jobs, automation, the dysfunctional political system, rule by elites and contempt for the non Investor Class- blehhh!

[marym625]

31. yes

And it's disgusting. It's common place and horrible

People who are anti union are just stupid

[NYC_SKP]

3. They're on timers all day long, point a to b with a countdown clock. And dildos....

Dildos and iPad accessories are big apparently.

...Thing that looks like a landline phone handset that plugs into your iPad so you can pretend that rather than talking via iPad you are talking on a phone. And dildos. Really, a staggering number of dildos. At breaks, some of my coworkers complain that they have to handle so many dildos. But it's one of the few joys of my day.

"Third Party Logistics" centers, here's a good Mother Jones article:

If the primary message of one-half of our practical training is Be Careful, the takeaway of the other half is Move As Fast As Humanly Possible. Or superhumanly possible. I have been hired as a picker, which means my job is to find, scan, place in a plastic tote, and send away via conveyor whatever item within the multiple stories of this several-hundred-thousand-square-foot warehouse my scanner tells me to. We are broken into groups and taught how to read the scanner to find the object among some practice shelves. Then we immediately move on to practicing doing it faster, racing each other to fill the orders our scanners dictate, then racing each other to put all the items back.

"Hurry up," a trainer encourages me when he sees me pulling ahead of the others, "and you can put the other items back!" I roll my eyes that my reward for doing a good job is that I get to do more work, but he's got my number: I am exactly the kind of freak this sort of motivation appeals to. I win, and set myself on my prize of the bonus errand.

That afternoon, we are turned loose in the warehouse, scanners in hand. And that's when I realize that for whatever relative youth and regular exercise and overachievement complexes I have brought to this job, I will never be able to keep up with the goals I've been given.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor

Anyway, excellent description year of what it's like to work at an Amazon Fulfillment Center.

From the NPR show, "radiolab" episode "brown box": http://www.radiolab.org/story/brown-box/

[Quackers]

6. How big are we talking?

Lol

[NYC_SKP]

8. "Jolly Good Dong Giant" is impressive.

http://www.amazon.com/Jolly-Good-Giant-Dong-Red/dp/B007I6ZWFM/ref=sr_1_6?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1432268413&sr=1-6

[Quackers]

16. ....

[appalachiablue]

7. Great info. thanks. 'Mother Jones' article & *all should listen to the 20 min. NPR *RADIO

SEGMENT discussion by former Amazon warehouse employees to get the real picture- fulfillment centers the size of 17 football fields, working people like draft horses; docked for bathroom breaks; 29 min. lunch breaks and not a minute more; fired for missing a day of work even if you have a baby or a doctors note.

Temperatures so hot people start to collapse so ambulances are kept outside; be careful not to have an accident that would be 'reported'; workers monitored every second while running, searching to collect stuff from batteries to paper towels. And the career of a lifetime, "Picker". Great commentary, well worth hearing. Some wonder how much different it is than prison Hard to believe but true. Might make you think twice about ordering online to enable the Amazon Dream.

[appalachiablue]

5. Hopefully Amazon isn't yet a Geo. Orwell type 'Animal Farm' (1945) dystopian workplace

"ANIMAL FARM" the book by George Orwell, 1945

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm

[imnew]

9. Sounds like the job I had one time with UPS

It will beat up your body but at least I was making a much better hourly rate

[appalachiablue]

14. Glad you had better pay & made it through a similar UPS job, I can believe it. Unreal! USA-

Neoliberal and libertarian corporate private sector ethic, great for execs. & stock shareholder profits, but very little for drone workers who have fewer and fewer work alternatives anymore in many places. The Amazon Dream.

[imnew]

17. Yeah

I can't even imagine being in your 50's and doing this type of fast paced work .
I was young when I did it but that article just makes me feel sad .

It doesn't have to be like this in those places .

[romanic]

10. Those conditions are insane.

And people wonder why we NEED unions; to prevent these kind of "jobs" from getting away with this shit.

[Skittles]

13. all they care about is profit

and Amazon fans don't care as long as their crap is cheap

[appalachiablue]

15. +10. So true- 'it's good for the workers!' & the reality is out of sight & out of mind to

consumer worshippers of Bezos' libertarian Amazon Dream.

[imnew]

18. +1

[appalachiablue]

20. Insane and inhuman true. And so very global. Unions not necessary, no govt. or

regulations either, just leave matters in the hands of free market neolib and libertarian geniuses who know best.

[Art_from_Ark]

12. Do they have Phillip Glass music playing in the background?

[appalachiablue]

19. Probably! Watch & Listen to this Video.

[Dont call me Shirley]

28. Oh that movie made me sick...

[MaggieD]

21. Sounds like one of the jobs I put myself thru college on...

30 years ago.

[appalachiablue]

22. SEE HOW YOUR ONLINE SHOPPING ORDER REALLY WORKS

Meet "BETTY BOT" and other BOTS, the Army of Robots who work in massive "Human Exclusion" Zone Warehouses finding and fulfilling up to 30,000 orders a day. No humans in sight.

[bhikkhu]

23. I'm 50 and walk about 8 miles a day at work

as a mechanic - we have a very large lot and its often hard to locate vehicles. I wouldn't say its insane or inhuman, and I've had harder jobs. But it is hard work, and it does wear a person down. I'm feeling it a bit more at my age than I did in my thirties, but I've always been pretty fit. I have the satisfaction that I do good work, and my employer knows it.

I imagine the hard part at Amazon is the nature of the work, where the orders never stop coming and they can never be filled fast enough, and its not a job that leads to anything better, or anything really except paying the bills (as long as your knees hold out). Hard work, and unrewarding for sure, but that's the sort of basic work our economy used to be filled with before technology replaced most farming and manufacturing jobs.

[DonCoquixote]

24. and these people

want to move to Florida, gee, I wonder why. Can it be that Rick the Prick Scott has offered them a virtual corporate bordello of union less, exploitable labor?

[Dont call me Shirley]

27. The spice grinder I just purchased today, not from Amazon!

[appalachiablue]

29. Good for you, bravo! It CAN be done- STARVE THE AMAZON BEAST! or at least until

billionaire Bezos stops abusing workers with harsh conditions and treatment, increases pay and benefits, supports college like Starbucks and others, etc.

[Dont call me Shirley]

30. Thank you, appalachiablue.

The first link on my search was amazon. I dreaded ordering it from them. I read the reviews and was even less impressed. After many more hours of research, I found a better grinder on another site, priced similarly. I only hope they are a decent employer.

[marym625]

32. You should cross post in the labor group

What should be the Omaha Steve's Labor Group but skinner is ignoring me and the vote