Inside Amazon's Warehouses

[lpetrich]

Inside Amazon's Employment Machine - The New York Times

When the coronavirus shut down New York last spring, many residents came to rely on a colossal building they had never heard of: JFK8, Amazon’s only fulfillment center in America’s largest city.

What happened inside shows how Jeff Bezos created the workplace of the future and pulled off the impossible during the pandemic — but also reveals what’s standing in the way of his promise to do better by his employees.

The Amazon That Customers Don’t See

Each year, hundreds of thousands of workers churn through a vast mechanism that hires and monitors, disciplines and fires. Amid the pandemic, the already strained system lurched.

...
In contrast to its precise, sophisticated processing of packages, Amazon’s model for managing people — heavily reliant on metrics, apps and chatbots — was uneven and strained even before the coronavirus arrived, with employees often having to act as their own caseworkers, interviews and records show. Amid the pandemic, Amazon’s system burned through workers, resulted in inadvertent firings and stalled benefits, and impeded communication, casting a shadow over a business success story for the ages.

Amazon took steps unprecedented at the company to offer leniency, but then at times contradicted or ended them. Workers like Mr. Castillo at JFK8 were told to take as much unpaid time off as they needed, then hit with mandatory overtime. When Amazon offered employees flexible personal leaves, the system handling them jammed, issuing a blizzard of job-abandonment notices to workers and sending staff scrambling to save them, according to human resources and warehouse employees.

This seems like Taylorism taken to a grotesque extreme. Taylorism?

The  Scientific management work of  Frederick Winslow Taylor  Frank Bunker Gilbreth  Lillian Moller Gilbreth including  Time and motion study

With that extremely detailed monitoring of employees, Amazon's management ought to have addressed the question of how to give their employees plenty of rest during the day.

 

[lpetrich]

The company touted breathtaking job-creation numbers: From July to October 2020 alone, it scooped up 350,000 new workers, more than the population of St. Louis. Many recruits — hired through a computer screening, with little conversation or vetting — lasted just days or weeks.

Even before the pandemic, previously unreported data shows, Amazon lost about 3 percent of its hourly associates each week, meaning the turnover among its work force was roughly 150 percent a year. That rate, almost double that of the retail and logistics industries, has made some executives worry about running out of workers across America.

...
David Niekerk, a former Amazon vice president who built the warehouse human resources operations, said that some problems stemmed from ideas the company had developed when it was much smaller. Mr. Bezos did not want an entrenched work force, calling it “a march to mediocrity,” Mr. Niekerk recalled, and saw low-skilled jobs as relatively short-term. As Amazon rapidly grew, Mr. Niekerk said, its policies were harder to implement with fairness and care. “It is just a numbers game in many ways,” he said. “The culture gets lost.”

Seems like Amazon has a deliberate policy of churn, to hire lots of workers and then after some weeks to give them impossible workloads to make them quit.

This is not very sustainable, since Amazon may end up running out of possible employees who are not burned out of working for that company.

Then about delays that Amazon suffered in April 2020. Workers were not showing up for work.

To lure them back, Amazon offered a temporary $2-an-hour raise, double pay for overtime and, for the first time, unlimited unpaid time off. Executives thought that workers should be able to stay home without fear of being fired, and that with greater flexibility, some might still come in for part of a shift, according to two people familiar with the decision. (Like some other senior leaders in this article, they spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.)

Across the country, almost a third of Amazon’s 500,000 workers were staying home. Some new hires abandoned jobs before they even began, according to former recruiters. JFK8 “was like a ghost town,” recalled Arthur Turner, a worker who remained.

About one worker,

After dropping out of community college, he worked in a string of warehouses, joined Amazon and was now a “picker” at JFK8, pulling products off robotic shelves. He often produced top numbers on the software that tracked productivity, and had been selected to train others and help open a warehouse in Illinois.

He also felt let down, believing that Amazon’s towering success didn’t accrue to workers like him. Employees felt managed largely by app, algorithm and strict but poorly explained rules, he said. When he met Ms. Weishalla at a 2019 session for workers to share feedback, he said, he requested more human interaction from management and told her he aspired to a job like hers. But he saw no changes. “If we go beyond the requirements, there’s no reward,” he said in an interview.

 

[lpetrich]

That worker applied for a promotion in early 2020, and he was one of 382 candidates. That was deliberate.

Amazon intentionally limited upward mobility for hourly workers, said Mr. Niekerk, the former H.R. vice president who retired in 2016 after nearly 17 years at the company. Dave Clark, then head of operations, had shot down his proposal around 2014 to create more leadership roles for hourly employees, similar to noncommissioned officers in the military, he recalled.

Instead, Mr. Clark, who is now chief executive of Amazon’s consumer business, wanted to double down on hiring “wicked smart” frontline managers straight out of college, Mr. Niekerk said.

Making a sort of class system.

By comparison, more than 75% of WalMart's managers had started out as hourly employees. At JFK8, only 220 out of some 5,000 employees got promoted, half WalMart's rate.

Amazon’s founder didn’t want hourly workers to stick around for long, viewing “a large, disgruntled” work force as a threat, Mr. Niekerk recalled. Company data showed that most employees became less eager over time, he said, and Mr. Bezos believed that people were inherently lazy. “What he would say is that our nature as humans is to expend as little energy as possible to get what we want or need.” That conviction was embedded throughout the business, from the ease of instant ordering to the pervasive use of data to get the most out of employees.

So guaranteed wage increases stopped after three years, and Amazon provided incentives for low-skilled employees to leave. Every year, Mr. Palmer saw signs go up offering associates thousands of dollars to resign, and as he entered JFK8 each morning, he passed a classroom for free courses to train them in other fields.

Deliberate churn. As I'd posted earlier, it is not a very sustainable strategy for a big business.

About some warehouse workers,

Nearly all the workers in the group were Black, like Mr. Palmer and Mr. Smalls, or Latino. So were more than 60 percent of associates at JFK8, according to internal Amazon records from 2019. Management, the documents show, was more than 70 percent white or Asian. Black associates at JFK8 were almost 50 percent more likely to be fired — whether for productivity, misconduct, or not showing up for work — than their white peers, the records show. (Amazon said it could not confirm the data without knowing more specifics about its source.)

Between the constant monitoring, the assumption that many workers are slackers, and the lack of advancement opportunity, “a lot of minority workers just felt like we were being used,” Mr. Palmer said later.

“We’re the heart and soul of that building,” he wrote in the chat. “Nothing gets done without us.”

 

[Rhea]

I heard that article on the radio. Using people up and taking the fruit of their effort. Not very honorable. I do everything I can to avoid Amazon.

 

[lpetrich]

After a long discussion of Amazon's troubles last year,

Two measurements dominated most hourly employees’ shifts. Rate gauged how fast they worked, a constantly fluctuating number displayed at their station. Time off task, or T.O.T., tracked every moment they strayed from their assignment — whether trekking to the bathroom, troubleshooting broken machinery or talking to a co-worker. The company pioneered new ways to calculate both metrics in the mid-2000s, when a smaller, scrappier Amazon set out to revolutionize warehouses.

Mr. Niekerk, the former H.R. chief for operations, said the emphasis on productivity tracking, alluring in a company as analytical as Amazon, was debated from the start. He had been skeptical, arguing that “a productivity metric is always a frightening thing,” conveying “One slip-up and I will fall behind.’”

“I lost that battle,” he said. Eventually, he said, promises of firmer, faster delivery created “a multiplying effect on the demand for higher productivity.”

Then about Amazon's hiring practices.

“No résumé, no job experience required,” he said. “I’ve never heard of a job like that.” He and the other newcomers had been hired after only a quick online screening. Internally, some describe the company’s automated employment process as “lights-out hiring,” with algorithms making decisions, and limited sense on Amazon’s part of whom it is bringing in.

Mr. Niekerk said Mr. Bezos drove the push to remove humans from the hiring process, saying Amazon’s need for workers would be so great, the applications had to be “a check-the-box screen.” Mr. Bezos also saw automated assessments as a consistent, unbiased way to find motivated workers, Mr. Niekerk said.

Weird.

 

[none]

Meh, needs someone like me to run the place. LoL.
Then you'd be happy lmao.

 

[Eldarion Lathria]

I talked to somebody who works for Amazon. He said: They pay better than they used to. Their benefits are better than they used to be. They still treat you like a cheap machine and work you to death.

Eldarion Lathria

 

[lpetrich]

With the high churn, multiple current and former Amazon executives fear there simply will not be enough workers. In the more remote towns where Amazon based its early U.S. operations, it burned through local labor pools and needed to bus people in.

“Six to seven people who apply equals one person showing up and actually doing work,” Mr. Stroup explained. If Amazon is churning through its entire work force once or twice a year, he said, “You need to have eight, nine, 10 million people apply each year.” That’s about 5 percent of the entire American work force.

Then Amazon's defeat of the unionization drive in Bessemer AL. "Amazon waged a ground war, warning — through posted signs, texts and mandatory meetings — that union negotiations could risk the good jobs and benefits workers already had."

But at the same time, the Alabama rout was leading to an unexpected moment of recognition by the company. The complaints heard in Bessemer were echoed by workers at multiple warehouses across the country. A new, labor-friendly president was in the White House. The virus had magnified fundamental questions about Amazon’s relationship with its employees, and the reopening economy presented workers with other options — a potential problem for a business whose growth ambitions are larger than ever.

In the final months of Jeff Bezos’ tenure as chief executive, his high-turnover model looked riskier, and the concerns about how Amazon treated the workers who powered its rise were tarnishing his legacy.

His personal wealth went from $110B to $190B, he ordered the building of a superyacht for himself, and he recently planned to take a short trip into outer space atop one of his company's rockets. He has a rocket company, Blue Origin, a company that was recently in the news for wanting a $10B bailout.

Amazon soon rolled out more raises. Starting wages at JFK8 went up 50 cents, to $18.25. The company announced safety initiatives and diversity plans, including a goal to “retain employees at statistically similar rates across all demographics” — an implicit admission that the numbers had been uneven across races. Ms. Weishalla’s successors on Staten Island were holding weekly “talent review” meetings to ensure that Black and Latino workers, among others, were finding advancement opportunities.

 

[none]

Labor ready, manpower, express personnel, etc, etc.
Fucking labor brokers. And your highlighting Amazon? Why?
1099, a thousand ways to what lower minimum wage? And your going on about Amazon??
Eldorado litho just gave you good news.

 

[TV and credit cards]

They are running out of human capital. If something isn’t done and soon, Amazon AI may decide humans are a threat to Amazon.
I think the obvious solution is to make a three year tour of employment at Amazon a condition of Prime membership. More humans must be harvested.

 

[ideologyhunter]

<removed by writer for inaccuracy>

 

[untermensche]

Like most capitalist enterprises all the power exists at the top and the organization is a strict dictatorship.

Those at the top work to limit what those at the bottom get so they can get more.

And they have all the power so it is like taking candy from a baby.

What helps these workers is their jobs cannot be sent overseas.

They have to organize and unionize so the workers have a little power too.

 

[Gospel]

They are running out of human capital. If something isn’t done and soon, Amazon AI may decide humans are a threat to Amazon.
I think the obvious solution is to make a three year tour of employment at Amazon a condition of Prime membership. More humans must be harvested.

Don't give them any ideas. Next thing you know it'll be Uberzon where the consumer is the worker. Every house becomes a Uberzon warehouse network; consumers deliver to each other.

 

[Elixir]

They are running out of human capital. If something isn’t done and soon, Amazon AI may decide humans are a threat to Amazon.
I think the obvious solution is to make a three year tour of employment at Amazon a condition of Prime membership. More humans must be harvested.

Maybe they can hire some of those "human beings" to whom Lion is so heroically trying to sacrifice women's bodies.

 

[laughing dog]

One of my brothers works in an Amazon warehouse. His experience is much different than those in the reports. He says he is treated well and he really likes working there. He has better benefits and earns more while working less than he did in his previous job (which he held for over 30 years and then was unceremoniously told they did not his position anymore one week after our father died during the beginning of the pandemic).

 

[none]

One of my brothers works in an Amazon warehouse. His experience is much different than those in the reports. He says he is treated well and he really likes working there. He has better benefits and earns more while working less than he did in his previous job (which he held for over 30 years and then was unceremoniously told they did not his position anymore one week after our father died during the beginning of the pandemic).

He's an "agent"

 

[laughing dog]

One of my brothers works in an Amazon warehouse. His experience is much different than those in the reports. He says he is treated well and he really likes working there. He has better benefits and earns more while working less than he did in his previous job (which he held for over 30 years and then was unceremoniously told they did not his position anymore one week after our father died during the beginning of the pandemic).

He's an "agent"

I don't think so. From what I can tell, first, they compensate him better than in his last job. And, apparently they treat him with more respect than his previous employer.

Second, his "work-life" balance expectations are old-school: he does what his employer asks when he is asked with no questions or complaints. Makes me conclude that he simply is willing to put up with stuff that younger employees are not. I do know that he does wonder what many of his co-workers are complaining about.

 

[Ford]

One of the guys I work with was a delivery driver for Amazon. I told him about the Tweet I saw when Bezos announced he was going into space. ("Finally, he'll know what it's like to pee in a bottle.")

My co-worker laughed uproariously. He said that everything you've heard about the way Amazon treats their drivers is true. He would do 300 deliveries a day.

 

[southernhybrid]

One of the guys I work with was a delivery driver for Amazon. I told him about the Tweet I saw when Bezos announced he was going into space. ("Finally, he'll know what it's like to pee in a bottle.")

My co-worker laughed uproariously. He said that everything you've heard about the way Amazon treats their drivers is true. He would do 300 deliveries a day.

I think I'd be skeptical that your coworker did 300 deliveries a day. If he worked a 10 hour day, that would be 30 deliveries in an hour, or a delivery every two minutes. Unless they were all in the same building, I don't think that's possible. In fact, even if they were in the same building, I doubt that would be possible.

I'm not saying that working for Amazon is easy or that Amazon doesn't treat their workers very harshly. That may well be true. I'm just saying that it seems as if some of these workers may be exaggerating their claims. I do agree that Amazon needs to raise the rates they pay and stop demanding such a heavy workload.

Sadly, heavy, unrealistic expectations from employers is often the norm these days. Mandatory overtime, few or no benefits etc. are cruel and very common. And, these companies wonder why it's so hard to find willing employees.

On the other hand, the company where my husband worked as an engineer before he retired had a very loyal staff, some who stayed for more than 30 years. They had excellent benefits, decent pay and a lot of camaraderie among the workers and management. That's the way to keep workers content. My husband's salary was lower than it had been in his previous job. It's not always about pay. It's about working conditions and job satisfaction. Some of my favorite jobs as a nurse were also some that paid me the least. The working conditions made up for it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

One of the guys I work with was a delivery driver for Amazon. I told him about the Tweet I saw when Bezos announced he was going into space. ("Finally, he'll know what it's like to pee in a bottle.")

My co-worker laughed uproariously. He said that everything you've heard about the way Amazon treats their drivers is true. He would do 300 deliveries a day.

I think I'd be skeptical that your coworker did 300 deliveries a day. If he worked a 10 hour day, that would be 30 deliveries in an hour, or a delivery every two minutes. Unless they were all in the same building, I don't think that's possible. In fact, even if they were in the same building, I doubt that would be possible.

I could see it as possible--many time I've seen UPS wheeling a dolly with a bunch of boxes into one business. Each box is a delivery.