Recent submissions

Comment · 5 years ago
Comment · 5 years ago
Maybe they just added it, but there's also a "Prefer entering email instead?" link below, which I appreciated
Comment · 5 years ago
A britishism I've never come across—does anybody know what "sandwiches with paste" are?
Comment · 5 years ago
Not a lawyer but I think this would be constitutional in the same way that international sanctions are constitutional. The regulation of interstate and foreign commerce is an enumerated power given to congress and usually interpreted pretty broadly.
Comment · 5 years ago
Yeah I 100% buy this. Just commenting on the fact that this tends to get conflated as a regular experience in warehouses, which ime it isn't.
Comment · 5 years ago
I can comment on this as a current Amazon worker!

I think people pissing in bottles probably does happen in Amazon's vast network, but as a very, very rare exception. It makes for good public propaganda, but it's not the issue most salient to warehouse workers.

There's a constant grind that Amazon puts on your body and brain. The work is monotonous. Your joints slowly break down from RSI. You get aches that you learn to compensate for or ignore. You learn to manage the pressure of the little screen at your work station that shows you the rate you've been packing at over the past ten minutes. You learn to manage the pressure of your co-workers at the next step in the process, who have their own little screens, and need you to work faster so they can work faster.

The pay is better than most shit jobs, the benefits are good, the work rules are clear and the managers largely aren't abusive. The trade-off you make is that the physical and psychological demand is intense. There's a reason that the average Amazon FC worker lasts six months—I reckon Amazon's done the math and decided that high turnover is worth the extra productivity they can squeeze out of workers while they're there.

In that sense, it's a bit of a shame that reporters and politicians focus so much on pee in bottles, because working at Amazon is still pretty ghoulish without it. I'm rooting for the workers at Bessemer. It will be very hard to build up the union density needed to really have negotiating leverage over Amazon, but you have to start somewhere!

Comment · 6 years ago
Yeah--compare an alternate phrasing here, like "I watch and give a lot of presentations at work."
Comment · 6 years ago
Comment · 6 years ago
Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
Comment · 6 years ago
Iirc only people who would be eligible for the presidency can be elected as VP, which would disqualify Obama. This is the same reason Bernie couldn't have chosen AOC as his running mate
Comment · 6 years ago
Another thing I haven't seen mentioned here is that bosses will often try to slow down, stymie, or break up organizing drives by dragging out legal arguments at the labor board. This means arguing that the bargaining unit should be broken up, that certain employees are actually supervisors and shouldn't be included, that certain supervisors actually aren't and therefore _should_ be included in the vote, that the proposed bargaining unit is too small and should include more employees, etc. Typically you'll need a lawyer to navigate this process, lawyers are very expensive, and national/international unions have money.

Organizing a union is also fairly hard, and staff of established unions are more likely to have the skill set to teach you how to have convincing conversations with your co-workers, make sure they stick together, keep everybody from freaking out when the boss starts threatening to fire people, etc. It's also good to have them around to provide financial/legal support if the boss follows through on those threats.

Comment · 6 years ago
There _is_ a slightly looser coupling than an HR department, but the judges are still appointed and confirmed by politicians with pretty clear material interests. It's not so much a case of being "paid to rule the right way" as being chosen _because_ of an inclination to rule the right way
Comment · 6 years ago
I think it actually is nurses physically moving the device around the room—the photo looks like it's just on casters, not motorized wheels.
Comment · 7 years ago

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