Amazon Workers in Europe Stage 'We Are Not Robots' Protests on One of Its Busiest Shopping Days (techcrunch.com) 225
Some of Amazon's workers in Europe are protesting against what they call unfair work conditions, in a move meant to disrupt operations on Black Friday. From a report: They've timed the latest protest for Black Friday, one of the busiest annual shopping days online as retailers slash prices and heavily promote deals to try to spark a seasonal buying rush. In the UK, the GMB Union says it's expecting "hundreds" to attend protests timed for early morning and afternoon at Amazon warehouses in Rugeley, Milton Keynes, Warrington, Peterborough and Swansea. At the time of writing the union had not provided details of turnout so far.
Protests are also reported to be taking place in Spain, France and Italy today. Although, when asked about strikes at its facilities in these countries, Amazon claimed: "Our European Fulfilment Network is fully operational and we continue to focus on delivering for our customers. Any reports to the contrary are simply wrong." The demonstrations look intended to not only apply pressure on Amazon to accept collective bargaining but encourage users of its website to think about the wider costs involved in packing and despatching the discounted products they're trying to grab. In a statement on Wednesday announcing the Black Friday protest, Tim Roache, the GMB's general secretary, said: "The conditions our members at Amazon are working under are frankly inhuman. They are breaking bones, being knocked unconscious and being taken away in ambulances. We're standing up and saying enough is enough, these are people making Amazon its money. People with kids, homes, bills to pay -- they're not robots."
Protests are also reported to be taking place in Spain, France and Italy today. Although, when asked about strikes at its facilities in these countries, Amazon claimed: "Our European Fulfilment Network is fully operational and we continue to focus on delivering for our customers. Any reports to the contrary are simply wrong." The demonstrations look intended to not only apply pressure on Amazon to accept collective bargaining but encourage users of its website to think about the wider costs involved in packing and despatching the discounted products they're trying to grab. In a statement on Wednesday announcing the Black Friday protest, Tim Roache, the GMB's general secretary, said: "The conditions our members at Amazon are working under are frankly inhuman. They are breaking bones, being knocked unconscious and being taken away in ambulances. We're standing up and saying enough is enough, these are people making Amazon its money. People with kids, homes, bills to pay -- they're not robots."
Sounds like a great way to get... (Score:2)
...Black-Friday Listed.
See what I did there? Ha!
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You mean what I do with stores that participate in that bullshit?
Great name for the list, by the way, gotta copy that.
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And little benefit. These things take time to resolve, Amazon is not going to jump in mud day and make promises. So customers wait an additional day and management makes a note to address concerns in a statement.
Reminder, this hurts Amazon in no real way. Computers are still taking orders and processing payments. They may not lose any sales. You have to be prepared to strike for a meaningful time to force action.
Customers may not notice, as these days are heavy package traffic, a delay of 1 or 2 days may se
Seems like a great argument for (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my 2 cents
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installing more robots.
What happens when the robots' AI advances to the point where the robots do similar things?
Re:Seems like a great argument for (Score:4, Funny)
Sci fi authors quit writing and become news anchors. Only every story ends with "and we warned you about this but noooo you went ahead and did it anyway."
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You should read better authors.
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Re:Seems like a great argument for (Score:4, Funny)
So that's what happened to the kids!
I'd been thinking it's been awfully quiet around here lately.
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Robots are quite expensive
Robots are expensive to design and program. Once that is done, the marginal cost of manufacturing them is not expensive.
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Well... The only reason that humans are cheap and dispensable is that the productions costs are externalized. Companies don't have to worry about them at all for the first 18-26 years. According to Nerdwallet, that's a cost savings of $260K-$745K per-unit, depending on the desired capabilities. And even after the Human Resources are acquired, they still attend to the bulk of their own maintenance and energy requirements.
Take that externalization away though; and force companies to pay the true per-unit
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Have you ever wondered why there is more social unrest and more mass shootings?
The social unrest such as strikes and protests tend to happen where workers are already treated well. Amazon workers in Europe get more vacation, parental leave, etc., yet that is where these protests are happening, not in America.
Mass shootings are caused by mental illness, and have no connection to a lack of worker rights. Also, mass shootings are not more frequent than in the past.
There were daily mass shootings in the past? (Score:3)
Re:Seems like a great argument for (Score:4, Interesting)
Mass shootings are caused by mental illness
plus guns. Mental illness plus guns.
What you said is about as true as saying that ice is caused by water. No, there is another necessary condition that has to happen in the same place.
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- Fix (or at least TALK about it, TRY) mental illness issue, healthy population - no more killings.
- Ban guns - people use pressure cookers, pipe bombs, etc.
Reality is, you just don't like guns because that's something people on the right like. You just want to see them fucked up, you don't really about kids dying, gang members shooting each other, etc. If you did, you would be trying to fix the real issue at hand, not this "ban guns" nonsense.
Dislcaimer:
Meh, that's going to happen anyway (Score:2)
Sounds like an excellent reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
... to give your employer more incentive to replace you even faster now.
Fucking hell people...
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Employers always have a reason to cut costs, be it labor or otherwise. They're not running charities - they're running organizations where each member hopes to obtain a profit.
Years ago (like in the late 90s/early 2000s), Verizon (as one example) engaged in mass pre-emptive, prophylactic layoffs, despite being profitable. There's always an incentive to reduce labor costs.
No one is going to try and improve the workers' lot, other than the workers. No one is going to look out for the executives' interests,
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Yes, people are expensive as fuck. They also complain a lot and are "never paid enough".
The problem is that we're still stuck in a world where people have to work 9-5 just to live, despite us having the resources and technologies to not have to do that.
We can solve it, we're just choosing not to, collectively.
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Re:Sounds like an excellent reason... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like an excellent reason.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Aww, that's cute and completely shows a lack of understanding of how the world works.
So the US cuts its defense budget by 90%. That means no more money to maintain any form of nuclear deterrent. So that would mean
that all of our Minuteman missiles are closed down, our Ohio class subs are scrapped, and our B52s are sent to the boneyard.
But wait, China and Russia didn't follow suit with us. They now have zero reasons to fear the US retaliation for anything.
Want to invade Taiwan? Go for it. Want to attack Japa
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You don't fucking know, you're just talking out of your ass.
It doesn't cost 700 billion dollars to defend America. It costs 700 billion a year to occupy multiple countries, prop up terrorist states like Israel and Saudi Arabia, and overpay for exotic weapons we only need because we need to stay one step ahead of last year's model, which we've sold to anyone with money.
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Again you show how little you understand. What is last year's model? The F-35? It first flew in 2006 and is just now getting to numbers where it could pick up the slack from shortages in other air frame types. Or maybe you mean the F22? It was canceled after only procuring 195 of the estimated 600 we needed. Those were built from 1996 to 2010. Certainly not last year's model. Or maybe you mean the B52 that have been flying for over 60 years. Oh wait, how about the sub force? Nope can't be them since they ha
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Instead we have this insanely expensive nuclear deterrent that we are unwilling to actually deploy along with the even more expensive expanse of conventional forces.
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Has there been a threat big enough yet to justify using nuclear weapons?
No, but we used two of them anyway, because we had them and we wanted to see what they would do.
It's the same reason the authors of the 2a feared a standing military. Just look at what we do with it...
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Calls to slash military spending made sense in the 1950s and 1960s [dailysignal.com]. But currently it's just slightly above the world average. If you account for Japan and NATO (whom we're obligated to defend by treaty), it's pretty much at the world average.
BTW, the biggest budget items are Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid [aaas.org]. They're the programs whose growth is bu [mercatus.org]
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You could cut the military's budget by 90% to get that, or you could cut the social and welfare programs by 20% and get the same result.
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I believe the Army calls them POGs (Person other than a grunt)
As soon as they make it past basic training they don't do another "military" thing again in their time in other than wear the uniform and fall out for PT once in a while.
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Re:Sounds like an excellent reason... (Score:4, Insightful)
Step one: implement a truer free market by reducing barriers to employees switching jobs
1a) untether health insurance from the employer by granting universal coverage, with the current premiums going to fund national healthcare instead of for-profit companies increasing the cost of coverage
1b) increase social welfare so employees working for abusive employers feel comfortable quitting, and not fearful for starving their families
Step two: Encourage business to return to passing on profits to the employees who make the profits happen
2a) Increase taxes on corporate profits
2b) Cap executive salaries and bonuses based on a multiplier of the lowest 10% of employee salaries
2c) Tie minimum wage to employee productivity so that gains are shared by the employees that generate that productivity
Step three: Create an environment where people can get a better job
3a) Eliminate for profit higher education providers who cannot show comparable results to a state backed university
3b) Provide curriculum to all students based on science and fact, and not religion
3c) Require school board members to have degrees in education and years of actual teaching, along with an equal representation of fields e.g. if comp sci is offered, the school board must have a member in that field
I'll stop there for now.
Re:Sounds like an excellent reason... (Score:4, Informative)
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Oh you little trollity troll-troll.
He's not asking for education. He's asking for conditions to get education.
The europeans put a fucking camera on a moving asteroid and they didn't have to pay $300,000 in college for it.
You're privatizing your space agency to a charismatic billionaire.
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LOL it's the fucking government's work to provide those conditions.
AND you have to pay 300k to get that education. You can't put a rocket in space, or do brain surgery, learning at the community college. This isn't about "I make $$$ more than you because I bust my ass every day laying shingles". By that measure, women that whine about low salaries in education should become prostitutes or strippers, they make a ton of cash! Vocation matters. It's not about making $$$. It's about making $$$ AND ENJOY DOING I
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Beat me to it.
Cheers mate.
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We tried this, it doesn't work.
Step one: People start having to wait months for medical treatment because there aren't enough nurses, the economy starts to tank as the supply of labour dries up and natives still aren't taking those low pay jobs because they don't want to live like students at 40.
Step two: People are forced to use food banks or live on the street due to welfare cuts, creating extra costs to deal with the fallout (policing, mental health problems etc.) The next generation gets fucked too beca
Re: Sounds like an excellent reason... (Score:2)
Step 4 is the only rational step. The other three is just stupid libertarian retarded retro-dream.
Grow up already. Thats not how things go in post industrial society.
Go back to xix century, libertarian pest
Interesting subtext... (Score:2)
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With the origin of the assembly line in the early 20th century humans became robots in the eyes of the owners.
Just my 2 cents
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In its fulfillment centers, Amazon needs its people to act like robots-- it is the job.
The worker safety complaints have cropped up before though-- I find this odd. While the Kiva bots don't seem to have integral protection, they should either not be in the same places as people, or be locked out of a zone if people are present. If the warehouses don't have Kivas, then maybe the traditional accidents would be occurring...
Yes, you are. (Score:3)
If everybody did that, then Mama Amazon might have to pay people a reasonable amount, treat them like humans, and maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't be so goddamned big.
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It's funny really.
People will get a job there because they have to. Then they hate it but, since people generally hate change, they try to shove change down the employer's throat.
We want our hands held but kick up a fuss when things don't go our way.
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You're nothing more than an alarmist.
Warehouse size versus employees (Score:5, Interesting)
It's interesting that they compare the Amazon warehouse square footage to a nearby Tesco grocery warehouse - by the area of the building.
How many people work in each, and how many hours per day do people work there? How healthy were those employees when they started work? Amazon is pretty well-known for hiring just about anyone, including people with known health problems. Does the grocery store warehouse even hire pregnant women at all for production jobs?
Amazon warehouses are often 24/7 environments, while most grocery warehouses close for several hours per day (or reduce staff drastically overnight). That's probably also an issue.
How busy is the Tesco warehouse? Do they have a few hundred thousand different items to pick, wrap, and ship to thousands of different addresses per day, like the Amazon location, or are they like a normal grocery distribution center that sends out a few dozen trucks during a normal work day? The packaging difference alone probably doubles or triples the Amazon workforce right off the bat.
And last... it looks like the Amazon site calls an ambulance for just about anything. Does Tesco do the same, or do they just stand around and stall until they're forced to, hoping the employee will decide to wander over to the hospital after work?
Why does Europe have Black Friday? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why does Europe have Black Friday? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The UK started having Black Friday a few years ago, mainly because people were getting exposed to the hype from America and retailers thought they could cash in. But then there were riots in shops and they decided not to do it again.
Thing about UK shops is that they have pretty much permanent sales. There might be the odd week there they don't, but it's literally days away from the next mid-season sale or other random event. So British people tend to view things like Black Friday and January Sales with susp
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The UK started having Black Friday a few years ago... then there were riots in shops and they decided not to do it again.
They should have just measured the stiffness of their upper lips and saved themselves the whole fiasco.
If you don't excited over getting shoppers to riot, why the fuck would want to copy Black Friday? They should at least have assigned an intern to check the internet for video first.
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if you miss one sale, the next is a few weeks away at most. It's no wonder UK retail is dying.
UK retail is dying because the UK is made up of developed nations, and retail is dying in all of those. As it turns out, most retail is just stupid. Most of the time they don't have what you really want, and they don't have it for what you want to pay for it. The only things that should even be in retail stores any more are things you need right now, thus most retail stores should just go away. And they are.
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Amazon is uniquely vulnerable to strikes (Score:3)
That will go well... (Score:4, Insightful)
First, let me say that everybody deserves to be treated well and have a good life. The question is how that can be achieved. The classical ideal of getting everybody a job they can live on is not going to cut it anymore.
The reality of the situation at Amazon (and other places) is that humans are a temporary solution, because they are indeed not robots. They will be replaced by robots as soon as that is cost-effective, a state not far in the future for most of them. Hence the tag-line they use may be about the worst they could have chosen. Don't get me wrong, they have a legitimate issue here, but they are barking up the wrong tree.
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This is Europe, work conditions, wages, benefits and unemployment is guaranteed by the government. They're protesting because robots are taking over their jobs.
If you don't want to work at Amazon, you can go on unemployment pretty much indefinitely in Europe. Europe, due to these anti-capitalist movements by destroying innovation and guaranteeing a minimum income is now facing record unemployment rates (8% across the EU and 10-20% in countries like France, Italy and Spain).
We all know from history that once
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You really do not know how things work here. Sure, work conditions are not quite as vicious as in the US, but they are nowhere as cushy as you describe.
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I am from "here"
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Only the unemployment can be guaranteed by the government.
The others you still have to convince somebody to want to give you.
When it comes to getting jobs from American companies, you might want to focus on working so much harder than Americans that you warrant the extra pay, easy conditions, and benefits.
Simply mandating that you receive those things as part of a job makes it less desirable to employ you. If there is a robot that can do the job, it is an easy choice. Welcome to your future.
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First, let me say that everybody deserves to be treated well and have a good life.
Even the deplorables? I don't understand. Please explain. Those people are The Other, we need to shit on them every day. Wear your "Sarah Palin is a cunt" shirt whenever possible, it shows how tolerant you are of women.
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Naa, even politicians deserve to be treated as human. I know it is very difficult to do so, but it is the right thing to do.
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I don't think "with them or against them" is rational. I certainly do not stand with anybody that makes me chose...
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"If you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."
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I agree. I hope, however, that this action on their part will start a serious dialogue in our societies about the issue of robotization and the related issue of massive and chronic joblessness. A serious discussion about policy changes that are compatible with western liberal society, is overdue. I am sorry that every time universal basic income is mentioned on Slashdot. most post that completely misunderstand it are the ones upvoted, but this, too, will have to change. People have to stop being ignorant an
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An UBI you can live reasonably (not near starving) on is an absolute minimal emergency measure. It is by far not enough to solve the upcoming crisis.
The voting and comments here indicate that people are stupid and do not see that yes, _their_ society need stability and people that can buy things as well. It also illustrates a pretty severe secondary problem: A lot of people think that their value as people derives from the jobs they are doing and most of the meaning in their lives comes from these jobs. Yes
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I find nothing at all to object in what you wrote. I am certain you could see this yourself already.
An UBI you can live reasonably (not near starving) on is an absolute minimal emergency measure. It is by far not enough to solve the upcoming crisis.
If we, as a liberal (classical liberal) western society can't even openly talk about UBI, then we are deeply in trouble. The moment of reckoning is approaching much faster than I anticipated, and we'll arrive at a crossroads - either an Orwellian dystopia, a world-wide civil war, or an explosive maturation of societies. Rationally, I don't see any other possibility, and I don't see this crossroads moment com
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Indeed. I do agree on your options as well. The last one unfortunately seems to be the least likely one. Might be in 10 years, might be in 30 years, but will certainly come pretty soon.
thus hastening Amazon's robot deployment plan (Score:2)
Nice work, fellas
No Kerblam man reference? (Score:2)
Good point (Score:2)
they're not robots
Hmm, good point.
Smithers, order some more robots!
Frame of reference folks (Score:2)
"We are not robots" (Score:3)
Workers:"We are not robots!"
Amazon Management:"But you can be replaced by them."
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Not sure why they don't use black ink year around.
Something about leverage. Maybe the color red has more friction?
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In Europe Black Friday is not a thing, despite desperate attempts to pretend it is by US companies.
Regardless, it seems like the employees are agitating for being replaced by robots.Going for the sabot approach it looks like
Google new York longshoreman history. Perhaps the European Union should set up it's own Amazon type company. Except it seems like banning and taxing things created in the free world is more to their liking.
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They would refuse to pay the high prices.
They need to ban it to show how powerful they are, then unban it to show how much they love freedom.
Their voters won't notice.
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Their voters won't notice.
That is pretty much spot on.
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Company automates. Use of robots starts being taxed to hell and back, at an appropriate rate to alleviate the social costs of such. Or maybe, just maybe, regulations are passed to shut this company out of the EU market...
So once Amazon is shut out of the EU market, who exactly is punished? Tax it and the costs will be paid by the EU citizens. A cost benefit analysis that shows it is unprofitable, it hardly matters - I suppose in some world, that means you win.
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Amazon is punished. Access to businesses and goods made and distributed at the expense of working human beings is NOT a human right.
Nope sure isn't. You would think that the Good people of Europe would simply not buy from them, since Europe appears to not want them.
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Care to comment on what happens when people are on strike about bad working conditions with a company that is going the robotic route?
The same thing that happens if they don't strike, the company replaces its workers with robots as quick as possible.
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Care to comment on what happens when people are on strike about bad working conditions with a company that is going the robotic route?
The same thing that happens if they don't strike, the company replaces its workers with robots as quick as possible.
Right. Somewhere in the bowels of this thread, I noted how the New York City Dockworkers successfully kept automation away from the Docks there. They won.
The result - New docks were built in places like New Jersey. Other than cruis ship pickup and discharge, there is pretty much nothing left. Time moves on.
One way or the other, those warehouse jobs are going to go away - probably faster if the employees whine too much about it.
Now I'm no European citizen, and maybe they think differently, but if Am
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Now I'm no European citizen, and maybe they think differently, but if Amazon working conditions were way out of line - I'd do my best to get a job elsewhere. Seems the logical approach when the job is going away, either way.
I agree, the problem is if you are just average, like most people, and don't have a trade, finding another, better, job can be tough, and it sounds like its just going to get tougher.
Things seem to be getting worse all over, unless you're really good at what you do. Businesses are in a race to the bottom, the idea of companies respecting workers seems to have gone away, along with the idea of sharing some of the profits.
The future doesn't look too bright, my parents did better then me, even without any educ
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Things seem to be getting worse all over, unless you're really good at what you do. Businesses are in a race to the bottom, the idea of companies respecting workers seems to have gone away, along with the idea of sharing some of the profits. The future doesn't look too bright, my parents did better then me, even without any education and my son is likely to do worst then me, even with more education.
This is the upcoming employment crisis, which is closely related to the issue at hand.
Reduced to basics, the automation is coming, like it or not
But the disruption will be incredible, and not just the obvious one of people on the lower end of the food chain becoming unemployable.
Automation will work it's way up the food chain, creating more unemployables in it's wake.
And the profits will soar..... hold on. Who's going to buy the cheaply created stuff? Every job eliminated is one less consumer. Ya
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Other than cruis ship pickup and discharge,
Me flunk English? That's unpossible! [slashdot.org]
#YouFuckingHypocrite
BeeHowled, teh Rayer sspewellin; nazzsti!
My sympathies on the state of your life, that you find a purpose in scanning posts for someone who makes a typo. Carry on, soljuh.
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Yeah, good try at attempting to spin this as you not being a hypocrite. F++ for failure.
You still have my sympathy, poor fella. Now get out there and be a human spell checker.
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Bad choice of words, anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know the safety record of Amazon vs comparable companies. That would be interesting to find out.
What I DO know is that "we are not robots" is kind of a dumb thing for the union boss to say to a company considering replacing workers with robots. The union is basically saying "you'd be better off replacing us with robots". Bad choice of words.
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the problem with this is that your average american thinks you're being serious.