AMAZON on BBC1 Undercover

Zelazny

Sinhanada wrote: »

That's an interesting spin on things and one I'd not previously heard. However, without looking at their books I cannot take your word at face value either.

Information I used was from here, but there are a few other sources available, such as the Telegraph and the NY Times.

For some reason there is a big outcry that Amazon is not paying taxes on it's profits, without anyone actually looking to see if there is a profit - the general message seems to be "big business bad" - and the BBC1 documentary is keen to back that up.

(interestingly, a similar rationale applies to Starbucks - even if the £5m or so that they paid their overseas suppliers was taken out of the equation they still made a loss in the UK)

RichardD1970

dktreesea wrote: »

If people are getting blisters on their feet, then the targets set by Amazon are both unachievable and threatening/impacting on the health of their workers. They need to lower the targets a bit, and treat their low paid staff like human beings, not human substitutes for robots. If they wanted a robot workforce, which may well be more efficient, then they should have invested in one. Human beings aren't designed to work like robots.

What's more, work is what a lot of people spend a good deal of their working hours doing. It should be fun, not drudgery.

As for thinking outside the box, those people working for Amazon couldprobably think of quite a few things that could improve their own day and maybe even Amazon's bottom line. I wonder if they are encouraged to speak out? i doubt it.

Lots of people get blisters when they wearing new shoes, that's life. My daughter has just had some new school shoes and we know to buy some blister plasters for the first week or so until they are broke in.

Who says work should be fun :rotfl:. It is manual/unskilled warehouse work, I bet 90% of people don't find their actual job "fun".

I would bet that Amazon do run some sort of suggestion scheme or a C.I.P. program of some kind, every factory I have ever worked in has to one extent or another.

Sorry but a few posters are coming across as people who have never seen the inside of a factory/warehouse and have no idea of the reality of working class, unskilled jobs and what is required from such jobs.

From my perspective of 26 years in manufacturing at various levels across companies of all different sizes, from small local companies to large multi-billion pound, multi-national companies, the jobs at Amazon are, whilst not the best in terms of pay (but not the worst) are no worse than the majority of this type of work.

googler

Zelazny wrote: »

Amazon pays very little corporation tax because it basically doesn't make any money - all of it's revenue is plowed into further growth.

For example, in 2012 their net sales were $61bn (globally) and they made a net loss of $39m

Hence, no corporation tax was due. They're not tax dodging - in fact they probably pay more in payroll taxes than 99.9% of other businesses, but they pay no corporation tax because they currently make no profit.

... and the source of these figures is ... what?

Zelazny

googler wrote: »

... and the source of these figures is ... what?

see my post two posts above yours...

Sinhanada

RichardD1970 wrote: »

Every company has a sickness policy that is triggered by excessive time off due to sickness and no one is automatically entitled to sick pay (only SSP if the correct conditions are met).

I think, and from personal experience, that the points system at Amazon is quite reasonable, 3 instances of sickness or 6 lates in a 3 month period is quite high for most able bodied people. Any employer would be concerned with that level of absenteeism.

As for the PIR (passive infra-red sensor ) lighting, the images shown in the TV program were filmed with a very small, hidden, fixed aperture camera which had no ability to alter it's exposure. The corridors would not have appeared half so dark to the human eye which is capable of adjusting to different light conditions.

Things break and can take time to be fixed.

Nowhere was it mentioned that the "worker" reported the lack of lighting or, if they did, what the response was. Now why would you think that may have been, when the program was actively looking for things to complain about?

I do agree with sickness policies, but from what I understood, that was counted in line with late attendance - that in itself in my view is wrong. It is classing sickness with discipline which is something that should not occur. Yes three periods of absence through sickness in a 3 month period is very high, but take for example an accident on the road in front of you - it's closed so you are ten minutes late - followed by a bad bout of flu and then followed by missing your picking targets. You're dismissed. For one period of absence?

Secondly, thank you for your correction on PIR I will remember!:cool: And yes, the small hidden camera wouldn't have shown the differing light, but there is still an issue there which needs looking at urgently!

getmore4less

I think the one thing that was missed is amazon must be getting something right or they would have no workers.


For this kind of zero skilled monkey/robot job you just runs the stats.

Need a 100 pickers in a warehouse.
set a productivity measure say a combination of pick/distance

set a goal start with a guess.

Employ 100 people

Get them picking for a period say a week

Rank them by productivity score

Reset the goal to the best picker + 10%

Remind all and especialy those below the median they need to get better

repeat(but only reset higher)

Every now and then weed out the bottom 10% or fewer if they are within 80% of the best picker.

over time you improve the productivity of the group.


there will be a natrual upper limit that the best pickers can do and over time the stats will tell you what are realist goal ranges for 90% of the workforce.

Amazon rely on the individual acting alone and not as part of a group, the individuals get pulled along by the herd and try to improve leaving the weak behind.

Now the workforce can get round this by acting as a proper group,
set some goal and never go over it everyone has to cooperate.


In the real world the herd get eaten by the preditors so there is a real incentive to go faster.

In the Amazon world they can't sack everyone(so they have an incentive to set different goals).


How easy will it be to get group of unskilled monkey/robots to organize?

dktreesea

getmore4less wrote: »

I think the one thing that was missed is amazon must be getting something right or they would have no workers.


For this kind of zero skilled monkey/robot job you just runs the stats.

Need a 100 pickers in a warehouse.
set a productivity measure say a combination of pick/distance

set a goal start with a guess.

Employ 100 people

Get them picking for a period say a week

Rank them by productivity score

Reset the goal to the best picker + 10%

Remind all and especialy those below the median they need to get better

repeat(but only reset higher)

Every now and then weed out the bottom 10% or fewer if they are within 80% of the best picker.

over time you improve the productivity of the group.


there will be a natrual upper limit that the best pickers can do and over time the stats will tell you what are realist goal ranges for 90% of the workforce.

Amazon rely on the individual acting alone and not as part of a group, the individuals get pulled along by the herd and try to improve leaving the weak behind.

Now the workforce can get round this by acting as a proper group,
set some goal and never go over it everyone has to cooperate.


In the real world the herd get eaten by the preditors so there is a real incentive to go faster.

In the Amazon world they can't sack everyone(so they have an incentive to set different goals).


How easy will it be to get group of unskilled monkey/robots to organize?

Amazon have workers because there is so little work around.

Rate busters can be a dangerous kind of person to encourage to thrive in an organisation, because they undermine the morale and performance of the rest of the workers. You get management thinking if Mr x can do it, so should all the rest. But Mr X is probably a type A individual, driven by competition to work at insanely productive levels.

Yes, Amazon want people to work as loners, not interacting with anyone but the clock minder/rate monitor on their shifts. But is this a natural way for human beings to work? And why is it that Amazon have the second highest employee turnover of all the Fortune 500 companies? It costs money to recruit new people. You have to train them, not to mention put them through whatever interview/hiring process you have going. Not just the HR side, but the admin part of setting them up on the payroll, arranging a uniform, if that is part of the job, showing them how to use the equipment.

With such a high employee turnover, maybe Amazon are doing something wrong rather than right?

RichardD1970

dktreesea wrote: »

And why is it that Amazon have the second highest employee turnover of all the Fortune 500 companies? It costs money to recruit new people. You have to train them, not to mention put them through whatever interview/hiring process you have going. Not just the HR side, but the admin part of setting them up on the payroll, arranging a uniform, if that is part of the job, showing them how to use the equipment.

With such a high employee turnover, maybe Amazon are doing something wrong rather than right?

Is the high employee turn over on direct employed staff, or agency staff, which will have a very high turn over due to the overall size of the organisation and the intensely seasonal nature of the demand for the companies services?

What company was number one? And how much higher is theirs and Amazons staff turn over compared to the others? Tables and statistics like this are easy to quote but how true a picture does it really represent?

Someone has to be highest and someone has to be lowest, but if the difference between the high and low is a fraction of a % then that is, in effect meaningless.

bap98189

googler wrote: »

... and the source of these figures is ... what?

You can find the information on any finance website.

Google Finance is one of many.

getmore4less

RichardD1970 wrote: »

Is the high employee turn over on direct employed staff, or agency staff, which will have a very high turn over due to the overall size of the organisation and the intensely seasonal nature of the demand for the companies services?

What company was number one? And how much higher is theirs and Amazons staff turn over compared to the others? Tables and statistics like this are easy to quote but how true a picture does it really represent?

Someone has to be highest and someone has to be lowest, but if the difference between the high and low is a fraction of a % then that is, in effect meaningless.

I also suspect that amazon use the seasonal temps staff situation to find the better people for the full time positions.

For jobs where the potential employee pool is large and the is variable demand have a largish temp pool that you can fill the perm vacancies from as people leave(for whatever reason).