[token_throwaway]

This job sounds shitty but have you ever spoken to someone in a domestic role? A postal employee? A trucker? A janitor at your office building? Kitchen staff at a restaurant who do not even have time to take a piss without dropping the ball, let alone timed pee breaks? Lots of jobs are hard. Extremely hard. And often, jobs that are very very hard pay hardly anything. There is a two-way transaction happening here, though - you pick a job that you are qualified for, and you work at it in exchange for money. And if it's not worth the money to you, you find a different job that you're qualified for. As long as people are willing to do this job for this amount of money, it will probably not get better unfortunately. And as companies get bigger, they always morally regress to the mean. Instead of going after companies (playing whack-a-mole), I think empowering people to learn employable skills is a better investment.

Also I'm going to remember the fuss about Amazon when their warehouses are 100% robotic, and everyone is mad that it's not creating enough jobs.

[colechristensen]

This kind of logic lets you justify any behavior as long as there's a market involved somehow.

You're trying to give free agency to people who are very likely choosing between the only job they can find and starvation. That's not a free market, it's wage slavery. Low end employers can do anything they want as long as the alternative for enough of their candidates is starvation.

[vorpalhex]

Should we go back to the days of mandated government work programs? What is your actual recommendation here?

At some point we have to accept that people should be able to make free choices, and will typically make sub-optimal choices. We can increase the burden on employers but then that means less overall jobs - which then leads to that starvation outcome you mention.

[colechristensen]

My only recommendation is to not base your moral code on market forces. Not everything the market allows is good.

And maybe think a little about the people involved in the products you consume.

[vorpalhex]

So we should stop shopping at Amazon so their workforce is laid off?

Or we should force Amazon to raise their prices which affects low income consumers the most?

[colechristensen]

I'm not judging conclusions but the logic used to arrive at them.

[white-flame]

Regardless of the market, there's very little actual functional value exchanged in simply following rote labor processes that don't inherently require skilled decision making or craftsmanship. The value tends to come from the design of the labor process itself; the rest is fungible.

Obviously we don't want the societal cost of unhealthy labor exploitation, but it is an incredibly difficult minefield to create mandates which imbalance individual value exchanges. One long tail of this is the loss of labor markets (physical labor as well as mental labor) in favor of automation even at the limited levels of AI we're currently at. Offshoring is another.

[colechristensen]

It is not difficult to avoid abusing power imbalances in your favor, nor is it difficult to set fair wages and labor practices.

It is also, apparently, not difficult to devalue people in a lesser position by reasoning that market forces have moral authority.

A society based on individuals devaluing everyone below them in the hierarchy has consequences.

[white-flame]

> It is not difficult to avoid abusing power imbalances in your favor,

I think that's being naively idealistic, looking at everything both currently and throughout history. The Stanford Prison Experiment has a lot to say about this, too.

> nor is it difficult to set fair wages and labor practices.

Theoretically, yes. But one issue with the USA in particular is its sheer size and variety. A fair wage in New York City and a fair wage in Podunk are not the same thing. Nor are manual labor practices equivalent across varying climates and population densities. The federal level of governance is wildly disconnected from the populace in both distance and levels of hierarchy. They deal with passing laws most of which arise from local issues that 99% of people (and even lawmakers) don't have a connection to, yet end up affecting everybody. Even at the state level, Californians and New Yorkers are still burdened by laws that tend to originate from the high density centers that might not make any sense outside there.

It's relatively easy to look at a single instance of a job and consider what's fair practice and fair pay in that specific environment, but to do so as a legally enforceable blanket policy is not.

> moral authority ... individuals devaluing everyone ...

There isn't a "devaluation" happening; there's little real value exchanged in the actual work to begin with. This has nothing to do with any notion of "moral authority", which themselves manifest in externalities added to work environments for societal benefit. But the ratio of expense between those externalities and the work itself can get overwhelming for low-end labor, hence automation and offshoring.

[colechristensen]

I really have no idea what you're talking about besides disagreeing in order to disagree.

[white-flame]

If you don't know what I'm saying, then that's a pretty prejudiced assumption on your part to instantly jump to effectively an accusation of trolling. This is a complex issue where "it's bad for no reason and should be easy to fix!" doesn't suffice.

[CamelCaseName]

If the government were to offer PTO for employees below a certain income threshold to learn new work-related skills, would that help lift people out of these situations?

Or would such a system be 1. too invasive and 2. abused, either by companies or the employees.

[colechristensen]

That's a weird way to do it, and would tend to subsidize employers for questionable benefits. Tax incentives for employer tuition reimbursement makes more sense.

Instead there should be programs to pay people minimum wage + tuition to attend community college for in-demand-career related degrees.

[krapp]

>Instead there should be programs to pay people minimum wage + tuition to attend community college for in-demand-career related degrees.

Amazon has a program like that. Unfortunately, it's only for AAS, and they only pay partial tuition.

What Amazon doesn't seem to have is a program to help people grow within Amazon, beyond FC work. There are tons of in-house resources, video tutorials, etc for training that employees simply can never access because they don't have the time.

[TheHegemon]

> Tax incentives for employer tuition reimbursement makes more sense.

Just when you thought tuition costs couldn't go any higher...

[CamelCaseName]

Perhaps large employers could negotiate better rates?

Sounds like a great way to increase offer acceptance rates too.

[zemo]

this is extremely, extremely tone-deaf.

> As long as people are willing to do this job for this amount of money, it will probably not get better unfortunately.

child labor didn't stop because parents stopped being willing to sentence their kids to labor, it stopped because of laws. The free market does nothing to guarantee that working conditions are livable or humane. Any suggestion to the contrary is at best naive, at worst malicious.

> I think empowering people to learn employable skills is a better investment.

That's nice, but where does a single parent working wage labor have the time to learn new skills? Who is paying a livable wage for people to learn new skills?

[innagadadavida]

> child labor didn't stop because parents stopped being willing to sentence their kids to labor...

No it did not, it just moved overseas. It is hard to beat the free market -- it just finds the most economical way to get things done, it does not care about human plight.

[srean]

A law without a budget to support enforcement does not do much. It again comes down to economics - the balance of risks vs returns. This is of course obvious. What provokes me to mention the obvious is the count of politicians/governments who grandstand on issues, pass laws but do not back it with a budget. These are mostly PR exercises.

[token_throwaway]

Unfortunately people are really bad at assessing scale, so they forget that there are always going to be people who "have to" do this kind of job. Always. The goal should be to give people the choices to not end up this way. It is extremely harsh. But life is harsh. We should do what we can as a people to push equality of opportunity, but if we look for equality of outcome, we're just burying our heads in the sand re: the harshness of the world.

[zemo]

> It is extremely harsh. But life is harsh.

Oh please. We don't live in the forest, we don't scrape the dirt for nuts and berries, we live in modern industrialized societies with extreme concentrations of wealth. Life is not innately harsh due to uncontrollable circumstance; modern life is harsh because of the greed of corporations like Amazon and the indifference of comments like yours. In a modern industrialized society, there is no legitimate reason for laborers to work torturous 60 hour weeks. Scores of countries have banned these sorts of working conditions but we turn a blind eye to it because at the end of the day the software industry is utterly indifferent to the harm that it is doing to the rest of the population. We've seen labor riots and civil unrest going back hundreds of years to protest these sorts of labor conditions. These aren't random, unavoidable forces of nature: these are the cruel practices of an industry that treats humans like nothing more than numbers to be optimized.

[token_throwaway]

Please, find an example of a better system in a stronger economy.

[zemo]

why? You're not going to be convinced no matter what I say, because the challenged as posed is a pure trick. Both "better system" and "strong economy" are multivariant. So long as I say "in [place] that has laws mandating [some labor condition], they have [some value higher] in [some dimension]", and you will say "but in [some other dimension] they are [worse]". No matter what case is presented, you will refute it by any means that suit your argument to keep your own already-held conclusion that the profits of the few justify the subjugation of the many. So I could click around to various labor laws and economics statistics and say things like "Denmark's Working Environment Act dictates a standard work week of 37 hours and more than 48 hours a week and they have a higher GDP per capita and their national debt is 39% of GDP compared to the uk's 89% of gdp and they report higher levels of happiness" and you might say something like "yes but their taxes are higher and their life expectancy is shorter and also open-faced sandwiches are bad". There's no one metric to define "better system" or "stronger economy", so the challenge as posed has no merit. So long as you are looking to justify the stance you already have to yourself, you will.

Really, I cannot convince you of this point based on evidence alone. I can only tell you this: I am literally disgusted by your stance and I would never want to work with you or for you, and I think that society as a whole will start to see the software industry as a force of evil, moreso and moreso with each passing day, so long as your stance is the norm.

[mriguy]

You are right about the laws influencing child labor, however they are not a sufficient condition. There also needs to be a corresponding increase in returns to child education over and above returns from labor in order for child labor to vanish. For example: India has very strong laws, however child labor still exists.

[fredgrott]

not really..come on either you want to take a risk and make something and sell it to get higher income or take no risk and go for that low paying warehouse job. Tell us all what risk did any one take in getting a warehouse job?

Gee life is hard...really?

[zemo]

> you want to take a risk and make something and sell it to get higher income

no, almost nobody does that. People who work in an Amazon warehouse have no option to take a risk to make something, they are selling their labor because it is the only way to feed themselves. Almost nobody has the ability to "take a risk and make something". Your comment shows a complete ignorance of how the vast majority of people experience the world. The vast, vast majority of people in the world do not control the means of production or have the ability to do so, they sell their labor because they have no other choice.

This attitude, that everyone being exploited is doing so because they made a choice is endemic to our industry and it is the literally reason that our industry is increasingly seen negatively by those outside of our industry. People who work in Amazon warehouses did not one day decide or not decide to take a risk: the vast majority of them are working any job they can get to avoid going hungry.

If you make something and sell it, you are in control of the means of production; you are not selling your labor, you are selling a product. People who work in an Amazon warehouse are not selling a product, they are selling their labor. The vast, vast majority of people on Earth sell their labor.

you are defending inhumane working conditions. You are defending subjugation in the name of business interest.

This attitude and people like you make me sick of the software industry. I am disgusted by how common the attitude of utter indifference is in our industry.

[watwut]

If there is risk involved, then there are quite a few people guaranteed to lost - and worst off then those warehouse workers. Otherwise it would not be risk, right? Are you even sure that expected payoff is worth it in agreggate? (E.g. if we don't end up with much worst overall economic situation if people would follow your advice)

You talk about "taking risk" is if it would be solution to social problems. It is not.

[simion314]

Same logic could be applied 200 years ago, work 7 days a week, 12 or more hours a day , if you don't like it go and die.

[kajecounterhack]

> As long as people are willing to do this job for this amount of money, it will probably not get better unfortunately.

There is an inherent falsehood to this statement: it reads as if there is no alternative to a laissez faire market. Regulation serves to prevent exactly these situations. Universal limits to how many hours you can force someone to work; regulated standards to how much rest you need to give your workers; rules for how much you must pay them.

Unfortunately regulation has failed to do these things. Pieces like this are helpful to remind us of this and to push our governments to do better.

I don't think if you ask anyone that they like that their products are all made, packed, and shipped using wage slavery. Don't you want a world where we all have a little less thanks to efficiency losses but know that everyone is being treated with a minimum level of decency?

[johnvanommen]

A friend of mine was sick of her job and planning to quit. She's a journalist with a college degree. Her plan was to get a job at Starbucks until she could figure out what to do next.

As I see it, this is the LAST thing you should do in a situation like that. Though it's counterintuitive, service jobs can be very difficult to attain, because almost anyone is qualified to do it. IE, she thought that working at Starbucks would be easy. I'd argue the opposite: it's hard, because so many people are competing for low-end jobs.

My recommendation to her was to figure out how to do something where the demand is high and the supply is low.

My first job paid $3.35/hr, and some of the hardest jobs I've ever had paid minimum wage.

[strgrd]

> Open HN comment section on an article about labor conditions

> Top comment, find a better job

> Every time

[johnvanommen]

Guilty as charged lol

[Asooka]

It's not about being willing, people literally have no choice. It's either starve and be homeless or work this really shitty job. We should regulate the industry so our economy doesn't have to run on brutal human misery. If that means Amazon can't deliver your package in 8 hours, but rather in 2 days, then so be it. Human life comes before profits.

[gwright]

From a public policy standpoint, I'd rather provide some assistance to people working part-time or for low wages than to provide 100% assistance to someone who is entirely unemployed.

Unfortunately many attempts to regulate the workplace result in fewer jobs and thus more people who need 100% support. One example of this is the effort to raise the minimum wage which, not surprising at all, has resulted in more incentive to eliminate or automate low-end jobs. Advocates for a $15 minimum in the fast food industry, for example, should be prepared for a net reduction in jobs in that industry as automation is rolled out or business models are modified to adjust to the higher labor costs.

I'm not saying that all labor regulations are bad but I am saying that the second-order effects of many regulations can make the overall labor situation worse.

[beejiu]

The evidence does not support your view (at least in the UK). http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/CP217.pdf Even if it did, there are other policies like Basic Income that solve some of these problems in a sensible way.

[DanBC]

The warehouse shown is in UK, which has a national minimum wage and EU working times directive and other labour protection law.

Amazon needs to be careful, because the combination of this and tax avoidance could cause them trouble.