[floatingatoll]

The one golden rule at Amazon is to externalize all costs that are paid by use of a human being’s labor and time.

Regulations don’t stand a chance of moving quickly enough to keep up with Amazon’s innovation budget. The only way to counter that is worker unions, which can make specific and timely demands that Amazon treat workers more humanely.

If workers unionize, Amazon has to stop externalizing the cost of labor.

[kcplate]

Five years ago my daughter worked for Amazon in a fulfillment center for a few weeks. From her experience I developed a theory—Amazon expects a steady stream of new hires, figuring most will leave within a month. The job is low skill enough that that a new hire can hit a baseline throughput expectation (the stated goal is of course higher) within a day or two. Aggressive management demands probably pushes that baseline up pretty much until a few days before the eventual burnout.

The ones that stay long term are those people willing to overlook a shit job, aggressive output measuring, and draconian management. Those folks generally aren’t beating the union drum within the org as loud as the transient 30 day folks. Unions have trouble finding purchase because organizers are fighting that turnover and the folks motivated to unionize don’t have the patience to get there.