Why is this allowed?

Amazon workers working 55-hour weeks and so exhausted by targets they 'fall asleep standing up'

Ambulance crews called after workers collapse at work

archive.fo/1UvTn

Other urls found in this thread:

epi.org/publication/the-zombie-robot-argument-lurches-on-there-is-no-evidence-that-automation-leads-to-joblessness-or-inequality/
reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-activity/chinas-economy-cools-as-government-curbs-hit-factories-property-and-retailers-idUSKBN1DE06A
wired.com/2017/08/robots-will-not-take-your-job/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Whatever happened to muh automation?

A convenient meme to explain why the US economy was in the shitter for so long. Now the economy has hit a point where the unemployment rate is formally at least at its lowest point in decades it should be clear that the people who ran around screaming “muh automation” were simply simpletons who didn’t understand Marx and who had read to many thinkpieces from bourgeois magazines and too much sci-fi.

Too expensive, and engineering robots that can worker faster and more coordinated than humans is way harder than layman idiots think it is. I will never pass an opportunity to say this.

AUTOMATION IS A FUCKING MEME

That neck needs a rope

Capitalism has made him a living virgin/chad meme.

what's the point of having 100 billion? you'll never be able to spend it all.

You totally could though. You could blow all of it building infrastructure in poor parts of the world.

But he won't do that. At most he'd "invest" it in "job creation" and suck more resources out of already poor places.

ETERNAL NEETism

Here's someone who would benefit from acid shower.

It actually has a lot to do with automation. As the share of constant capital (plants, machines, etc) involved in the process of valorization increases and that of variable capital (wages) decreases as a result, so does the rate of profit. Which is why they keep trying to squeeze as much surplus-value as they can from the workforce, harder than ever, to try and compensate.

Automation does gradually destroy the necessity for human labor. The thing is, while the need for labor is disappearing technologically — great news! — it isn't socially — a damning curse. Capitalism being predicated upon abstract labor even though at some point it will barely even need any of it is one of this mode of production's core contradictions.

Which is why we keep being overworked to death in a world of abundance at tasks that are often useless or even counter-productive — because capitalism doesn't need use value (of which we could have more than enough with minimal work considering the productive capacities we have at our disposal) but exchange value solely designed to turn money into more money.

I told you about generalized commodity production and wage labor, dawg.

The entire world can't become industrialized though for sustainability reasons. Maybe they can catch up to a post-scarcity society, if we ever get to it. . . .


If work becomes automated, we would have to adjust, if not revolutionize to the change. Leftyism in the end-of-toil world? I hope so, but the people holding power now aren't going to give it up without a fight.

Overtime?

hahaha

You could easily spend that all

but what does it look like without beaners coming over to work for pennies on the hour because its better then living in mexico?

… How the fuck can this happen? Does your boss just waltz in and snatch your wallet?

fucking read you dumdum
the theft in blue is wage theft the other theft isnt

I don't know

Got any source on that?

It's based on wikipedia

Wikipedia isn't a source.

No, but their refrences are.

Virgin upstart vs Chad billionaire

...

I’m of the opinion it would be critical to seize amazon in the future. They have an excellent distribution system, great logistics algorithms. Their infrastructure must be maintained so we can hijack it.
But in the meantime, are these workers unionized or is this another Walmart case?

They most likely aren't unionized, the kinds of workers who work these jobs usually have no idea about unions.

These kinds of continues production jobs have a culture where you feel like hardship and unpleasant working conditions are the norm and just part of the job. When you combine this with the fact that most of the workers couldn't find a better job if they try you get an environment where workers feel obliged to work through any non debilitating injury .

The vast majority of the warehouses are now automated. The reason it's so miserable for the remaining people is that none of it was designed with people in mind. The goal is to replace them ASAP.

THIS


We need aggressive unions that actively salt these kinds of places with covert organizers. I'm sure there's more than enough dissatisfaction for even the smallest organized campaign to make the place go up like a tinderbox.


Stop repeating the meme:
epi.org/publication/the-zombie-robot-argument-lurches-on-there-is-no-evidence-that-automation-leads-to-joblessness-or-inequality/

>epi.org/publication/the-zombie-robot-argument-lurches-on-there-is-no-evidence-that-automation-leads-to-joblessness-or-inequality/
Machine learning is inherently different from all past forms of automation.

I don’t think you’re really comprehending my point, Marx said that technology eliminated much pointless toil in his time—that’s true. But, I was specifically talking about the people here who thought that automation was essentially the end of the working class, that it would destroy so many jobs that it wasn’t even worth fighting for jobs for everyone “we need FALC or UBI NOW dammit!”

It wasn’t true, because capitalism can always create more jobs, more work and just because it’s not particularly well-paid or enjoyable doesn’t mean it’s not important from the point of view of the capitalist. But the same enthusiasts for automation just handwaived this fact away by saying they were simply “bullshit jobs” as if the capitalists simply invented jobs to employ people instead of looking out for their bottom-line!

Even American manufacturing and other blue-collar productive sectors have seen growth in their overall workforce since the recession has lifted. And the US has really taken no protective measures to help its industry, despite Trump. On the other hand manufacturing is very much a dynamic force outside US borders employing more and more people every year.

That's not a point you can argue, as long as any humans whatsoever are needed anywhere in the loop, only a Turing Test-winning chatbot can successfully argue that point.

The Industrial Revolution hit partial post-scarcity barely a generation after the beginning, 90% of labor since then has been driven purely by increasing demand.

The article is crap. What about the 590 people that lost jobs in a chinese factory because of automation? www.wnd.com/2017/02/chinese-factory-replaces-90-of-human-workers-with-robots/

Where do they go now? How about all those jobs lost at Pizza Hut, McDonalds, wherever? These people aren't suddenly going to find jobs as engineers or whatever, and will be left to die. This is one of the biggest problems civilization currently has, and it's a crime to deny it.

No matter how far you hide
No matter where you go
There's no escape
From the revenge
Of Desolation Row

Not everyone has automated?

It's an ongoing process

humans won't be needed for shelf stocking, burger flipping, or any other manual repetitive task. they also won't be needed for many bureaucratic jobs.
Look, you faggot: when the USSR was established, they literally cut the average yearly labor hours IN HALF by taking advantage of automation of the era. People went from 14 hour days with no vacation to an 8 hour day with a month of vacation guaranteed. We must use modern automation tech to get the 30 or 20 hour workweek.

DUDE THINK OF THE JOBS! WE'RE JOB CREATORS, SUCK OUR DICK! NOBODY'S ALLOWED TO HAVE MONEY UNLESS THEY HAVE A WAGE

this timeline is beautiful. Let's burn it down now.

I think a perfect slogan for a new revolution would be something like

What about the fact that the Chinese job market is still packed tight even as China's economy AND INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT shrink?
reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-activity/chinas-economy-cools-as-government-curbs-hit-factories-property-and-retailers-idUSKBN1DE06A
Your ridiculous technocratic transhuman fantasy ain't gonna happen until we fully unlock the mysteries of the human mind:
wired.com/2017/08/robots-will-not-take-your-job/


Just like every other time this happened in the centuries since the Industrial Revolution.
Now you've got it. We CAN'T TECHNOLOGY OUR WAY OUT of consumerism, because consumer demand is infinite. The only way we'll ever work less, is if we consciously decide that more leisure time is more important than more stuff.

I used to work 12 hours per day, 5 days work and then 5 days rest. And often it wasn't really 12, since I had to come early or leave later. And it was all night shifts in a warehouse.
So I'd work 60-65 hours in the course of 5 days, and I was perfectly fine physically. This amount of work isn't too much. It can't make you sick by pure volume.
I wish they get better conditions, better hours, better pay, or perhaps better jobs. But trying to appeal to emotion saying that this volume of work isn't humane is just wrong.

lol the problem with automation as you have rightly pointed out is not unemployment, but instead the destruction of profit.

us capital is facing a crisis of profit

you are talking about working less than 40hrs/wk on average. this is 8-10hrs a day every day with no days off.

The last time a massive automation push happened, it was the horses that paid the price.

i.e.: The previous productivity-multiplier of choice among human laborers.

I'm calling bullshit, I've worked in several factories and warehouses and even quit my factory logistics job last week (because I have the luxury of doing so) precisely because my body couldn't handle the strain of working 6 to 5 (overtime to 6 often) pushing carts around constantly 5 days a week for £8.40 an hour. I still feel worn out and chewed out like a piece of old sinew and I woke up in the afternoon today because I was so spent.

Anyway this is rule I find amongst my (usually Eastern European) colleagues at these shitty types of businesses, that at least it pays the bills even if your body is constantly aching and you're constantly drained, it's better than being unemployed.

Oh and I've had an injury last year working at a bakery, and all I got was a month of sick pay (£90 per week and had to claim dole for rent and council tax), even in my main job (I work as a bin man outside of winter), we had 2 people off in the space of 2 months due to injuries.

I really struggle to believe you don't feel like a beaten work horse when you're doing close to 60 hours a week.

Bezos gets the bullet

Have to agree with this user, I've worked straight twelves before, and it's punishing, physically, mentally, and socially.
Especially if you're doing it regularly.
The best schedule I had (being purely subjective, of course) working twelves was a 2-3-2.
Two days on, three days off, two days on.
But it still wore me out after a while.

Yeah no shit it wasn't taxing you were working 30 hours over two weeks. Someone post that image of that lady getting tons of help from her rich family and claiming "anyone can pay off loans" or whatever. Lmao.

t. person who has never been inside an Amazon warehouse.
They even have tours for the public, you know. Amazon could easily cut the workforce by 80 % if only they didn't have so many different products and extreme fluctuations in demand. In reality, what you do there constantly changes, and they can't tell you at the beginning of the week or even two days in advance whether there is going to be over-time work available or not, and they may beg you to go home earlier. So, when you look at a random task a meat-machine AKA human does, it seems to be something that can be easily replaced by a machine, and indeed that is the case. The problem is that the work doesn't have the continuity. Not only do you get asked to do different things on different days, you can get asked to do three or four different things during a day. You can imagine a corresponding place filled up with machines doing these things much better than any human could, but this is only true for a particular moment, from one hour to the next you would have to move the machines around and around, and you would need another gigantic warehouse storing the different machines specialized in this or that task; and you would need yet another warehouse for the extra capacity of machines needed only around Christmas season instead of just hiring temp workers.

The brains at Amazon did the math and they don't expect these changes to happen remotely as fast as the breathtaking pace that journos assume who write about the technology of logistics without knowing shit about it. That said, it is true that in terms of orders processed Amazon grows faster than in terms of people employed, though it is still growing in terms of people employed (and of course reducing more people in traditional brick-and-mortar retail stores than creating jobs). The problem with that sort of hysterical writing like your post is that spreading this super-automation meme creates the impression that Amazon workers have low job security, a falsehood that dampens their will to organize and strike. Their jobs, if they aren't temp, are very secure for the next decade, and Amazon is looking for getting more workers next year and even more the year after that.

In a more rational society people wouldn't impulse-buy so much shit, they would be more forward-thinking and be okay with, say, waiting a week longer for getting something, a higher percentage of what they order would be subscriptions to stuff regularly and repeatedly delivered, and Christmas would be more of a family thing than a buy-crap thing; and in such a society the equivalent of Amazon would be much more automated without any miracle in technology necessary for that.

either your math is off or you don't understand what he's actually saying. he's hypothetically working anywhere between 80 to 130+ hours in any given 14 day period. thing is, he's given 5 days to recuperate after 5 days of work, one needs to take into account that he doesn't have a conventional nine to five roster. I haven't worked that roster or that job like the user in question so I can't say much for certain, but I had a friend do fly in fly out work and he seems to think the 1 week on 1 week off rosters are far preferred.

the average per month would be less than 40hr/wk. I worked many 14-16hr days at restaurants and it was exhausting. When I would be scheduled to work three doubles in a row, almost 50 hours over the weekend, it would kill me physically and emotionally. One more day and I would be falling asleep at work.

Another thing to keep in mind is how many americans, myself included, have injuries or chronic diseases. I'm pretty sure in the UK it is no different but I'm not familiar enough to speak definitely, but here in the US amazon puts their distribution centers near the poorest communities and is the most bottom tier job that will hire the most wretched.

my math is wrong, it is just above 40hrs/week/month by about 7hrs.

55 hour weeks. WEW
It's like a Chinese sweatshop. How do they do it?

They know they're about to see a check that will get them out of a scrape with poverty. This type of labor is full of hyper exploitation, they bring in people with addictions to feed and mountains of debt to pay off.

according to november job numbers, average hours worked is 35ish

I'm

I can confirm this except that I live in the most expensive region in the UK outside of London and yes most of the people working these kind of jobs including our local Amazon warehouse are desperate EU immigrants, not so many 3rd world ones and old people who can't find anything else. There are seldom many English people working here except in management and the odd youngster happy to be getting paid.

Most Poles I've met are disappointed with England and are going back home even the ones making £10 an hour. The Romanians and Greeks seem content.

But yeah I've had 2 injuries, 1 permanent but not life changing yet (I have a delicate knee now, it hurts if I so much as mildly tap it but it's only a mild inconvenience for now) and I had to take a month off last year due to repetitive strain in my forearm tendon.

There's always someone off work or on probation for taking time off for physical injuries, it's disgusting that a physical injury caused at work can put you on your employer's shitlist.

At least in the US many of these places don't hire people directly, instead they use temp agencies to bring in workers. Most of the time it takes a minimum of 3 to 6 months before they'll even consider letting you on as a regular employee. Of course during that whole time a good chunk of your pay is siphoned off to the tumor that is your temp agency and you can be fired at any time for no reason. I wouldn't put it past most of these places to cut anyone that showed an inclination to unionize.

Let's not forget that Amazon has branched out into web-hosting and cloud computing. You'd be surprised to hear the vast number of websites that Amazon hosts.

Everyone has given better answer, so let me sum up: Porky will always prefer the higher profit of margin. If overexploiting workers is cheaper than automatizing, then overexploitation it is. Hell, that's the cornerstone of global trade now.

(you) here, I completely agree with your post user. I am curious as to how you worked out the average though, cause all I did was look at three consecutive weeks and figure somewhere inbetween that would be roughly what he was doing.