Ugh, Mother Jones has a dispiriting piece about warehouse workers for online retailers. Reporter went undercover.
It's like everything unions ever fought for just completely got plowed under by temporary staffing, and outsourcing shipping. Hard to believe there isn't more OSHA requirements to prevent people from getting massive static electricity shocks all day when they're moving books for your Amazon order.
In the books sector, in the cold, in the winter dryness, made worse by the fans and all the paper, I jet across the floor in my rubber-soled Adidas, pant legs whooshing against each other, 30 seconds according to my scanner to take 35 steps to get to the right section and row and bin and level and reach for Diary of a Wimpy Kid and "FUCK!" A hot spark shoots between my hand and the metal shelving. It's not the light static-electric prick I would terrorize my sister with when we got bored in carpeted department stores, but a solid shock, striking enough to make my body learn to fear it. I start inadvertently hesitating every time I approach my target. One of my coworkers races up to a shelving unit and leans in with the top of his body first; his head touches the metal, and the shock knocks him back. "Be careful of your head," he says to me. In the first two hours of my day, I pick 300 items. The majority of them zap me painfully.
"Please tell me you have suggestions for dealing with the static electricity," I say to a person in charge when the morning break comes. This conversation is going to cost me a couple of my precious few minutes to eat/drink/pee, but I've started to get paranoid that maybe it's not good for my body to exchange an electric charge with metal several hundred times in one day.
"Oh, are you workin' in books?"
"Yeah."
"No. Sorry." She means this. I feel bad for the supervisors who are trying their damnedest to help us succeed and not be miserable. "They've done everything they can"—"they" are not aware, it would appear, that anti-static coating and matting exist—"to ground things up there but there's nothing you can do."
That sounds like a challenge.
Warm? Yes, at the times not featuring ice cubes. Healthy? Possibly partially recommended against by your Chief Surgeon person.
I would say it is another reason to avoid Amazon, except I gather B&N outsources to the same or similar warehouses. I guess it is one hell of a reason to buy through your local independent bookstore if you have one. Or use the library. (My publisher is as thrilled at people getting on a waiting list at their local library as at direct sales, because it increases library orders, which is the core of their business.)
Kat, I'm sorry Grace couldn't get the cannula out today. She's an amazingly strong little girl, isn't she? And Noah is a great big brother.
Burrell, sorry about kitty-Burrell.
Hec, I read that Mother Jones piece yesterday and was so appalled I almost cancelled my Amazon account. But it wouldn't help anyone if I did. That list included almost every online retailer I use regularly, and if I stopped shopping at all of them it still wouldn't help anyone. Something needs to be done to make the working conditions acceptable in those places, but damn, what? Anyone who fights it is up against like three huge industries. And the people working there need those jobs desperately.
Ultimately we need regulations, a more union friendly environment, and more jobs available so they have to improve conditions in order to keep workers. So yeah, in spite of my crack about independent bookstores and libraries, there is no "personal virtue" solution. Not that going via indy bookstores and using libraries hurts when practical.
Sorry to hear about Grace, kat.
Hard to believe there isn't more OSHA requirements to prevent people from getting massive static electricity shocks all day when they're moving books for your Amazon order.
Static electricity isn't dangerous unless there are flammable gases or fine powder in the work space. Workers can wear static dissipative work shoes to disperse shock, and it sounds like she'd feel better in general with a decent set of work shoes. The only way I know of to reduce static electricity on that scale is adding humidity.
I suspect that warehouse would be considerably more efficient with a more ergonomic design and better management, though.
I suspect that warehouse would be considerably more efficient with a more ergonomic design and better management, though.
That's the thing though - with a limitless pool of cheap labor they don't have to do any of that shit. They can fire somebody on the spot and have a new body in there immediately. There's absolutely no reason (economically) to make the design more ergonomic or better for the workers.
There's absolutely no reason (economically) to make the design more ergonomic or better for the workers.
Which is why unions suffer during economic downturns, even though when times are bad is when workers benefit most from union activism. Think how bad things would be right now if we didn't have minimum wage, the eight-hour day, mandatory breaks, and so forth.
I would hope that the article might get some attention from the state labor practices board, though.
