Amazon Union Drive Appears To Fail In Alabama

TPM Article Topics
#21

I wouldn’t know why they couldn’t figure that out.

In the 90s, I was taking a certificate program in Inventory and Logistics. One of our field trips was to a warehouse that was, at the time, owned by Richardson-Vicks (life science stuff). They had one of the first (at that time) state of the art ASRS (automatic storage and retrieval system). There wasn’t one person in the building whose job was to pick product.

What I’m referring to is some 30 years ago.

If their robotic system isn’t able to pick product using coordinates, then they got rooked on the multi-million dollar system, because I’ve since worked on several projects where no one is picking product anymore.

This could be a concession to let warehouses come into poor towns - let us come here and we’ll employ you. If they fully automate the storage and retrieval system, employment is less and maybe the warehouse doesn’t get the same concessions.

1 Like
#22

Job insecurity is a big stress factor at Amazon. They can fire you for anything. And I mean anything.

2 Likes
#23

The momentous unionization effort at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama appears to have failed as of Friday after the tally showed the “no” votes took up more than half the ballots.

When this article was posted in was known it was going down to a massive loss nowhere near half and half split.

#24

My understanding was that robots had a hard time adjusting to the pace and the different shapes of the items. The human brain is still faster in that regard.
I haven’t looked it up or searched for it, but I wonder what the staffing levels are with robots vs when it was all human?

#25

It’s more that their, meaning Amazon’s product stack, is of infinite size and shape. I’ve worked with machine vision and robotics, it is extremely complicated when your inventory changes by the second, is not the same shape or weight, depending upon supplier for the same SKU. Repeat endlessly.

2 Likes
#26

Not impossible, sure, but easier if every item that’s picked measures and weighs the same.

#27

Robots are not as cheap as one would think. They need maintenance and repair. I’ve read that in many cases workers can be cheaper in the long run. But not if they are union.,

2 Likes
#28

Same argument could be made for hiring US workers vs. Mexican workers. In the days of the maquiladora (this going back into the early 90s with NAFTA), I worked (before consulting) with a German-owned company that manufactured a specific type of auto part. They had a plant outside Philadelphia, where I worked, and another in North Carolina. Philadelphia was UAW; NC was not unionized. Before I got there, there was a huge strike in Philly that really crippled the company and got them in trouble with the government (long story there).

The company made a strategic decision to take advantage of NAFTA to open a plant in Mexico. I was responsible for getting German components through US Customs and moving them to the new plant. In addition to the inventory, an entire product line of machines was moved from the Philadelphia plant to the new plant in Mexico. So Mexico had the same machines and the same components.

Inside of one year - TWELVE MONTHS - the Mexican team out-performed the US team that used to manufacture the product line in terms of quality of product exponentially, achieving quality rates never seen in the US.

I eventually left the company to go into consulting. The building I worked in is now closed, vacant because of Superfund issues, and those workers in Philly were all let go. Not even offered to transfer to North Carolina.

The problem isn’t just Southern workers. It’s US workers and the perceptions that we are not a trained workforce anymore and that unions just cause trouble. Right to work States make a whole lot of gains.

2 Likes
#29

I’m not sure about the training. But my perception is much of the US work force has become lazy and entitled. It is rare to see anyone take pride in their work or do something, just because it needed being done and not expecting compensation.

#30

I’ll be the first to admit that unions shit in their own nest back in the 70s and 80s. Teamsters were bad at a lot of things. At a cold storage unit, freezer workers could only work in the freezer. If the loading dock needed sweeping, the boss could not ask them to do it. They could only work in the freezer. No freezer orders to pick? Then they did nothing while the boss swept the loading dock floor.

2 Likes
#31

This only works if the union effort goes nation wide. It’s easy to intimidate poor red states. Think big.

1 Like
#32

With our focus on everyone needing to go to college, rather than to get their hands dirty, I think it is a lot about training. We aren’t pushing reading and critical thinking in the schools and mom and dad sure aren’t teaching it. What with the de-valuation of education across the country, it’s a safe bet that many kids are graduating without any skills to take a job.

I see this at Target. Most of the workforce is college and high school students. They whinge about the parts of the job they don’t want to do, to the absolute amazement of those of us that are a little more seasoned. It’s been truly disturbing to see the entitlement and lack of effort most of these kids demonstrate. And we are in a fairly well to do area, so it cannot be blamed entirely on demographics.

ETA: another story: When I was on the 3M project (where I met dear hubby), they had me tour one of their plants that made scotch tape - their signature product. Every machine was a computer, requiring one or more people to operate that computer. One needs to be fairly educated to be able to do that, capable of critical thinking and responding to problems quickly.

You’re not gonna do that with a 14 year old high school dropout. You just aren’t. And staffing requirements are far lower, as the machine is doing all the work and only needs to be monitored - no calling in sick or needing a break or a meal. Just periodic maintenance which, for the most part, can be scheduled.

1 Like
#33

Back in the day when I get called in for consulting when a particular asset was at SDLM (Standard Depot Level Maintenance) I’d actually have to stop or postpone actions because a certain amount of man hours and time were required to be used and documented whether it took a fraction of that time or not. Hours paid accordingly. If you did more or got ahead of schedule, you could be disciplined.

1 Like
#34

That’s what I am talking about. Lazy entitled. Training won’t fix that is what I was getting at. For sure we need more vocational training in schools. As far a operating a computer??? You’re pushing buttons, the complexity behind all that is hiding from the button pusher. I’m the one hiding all that confusion behind the scenes so that when you press button ‘A’, action ‘B’ happens reliably.

#35

Then we need to talk to you at Target, because our new software is riddled with bugs where when one presses A, B may or may not happen and, whether it does or it doesn’t, it may or may not lock up the register/terminal to the point where the entire sale needs to be re-entered on another register, where it processes just fine.

As an applications consultant, the POS software is a disaster but the issues the programs have are random so probably weren’t caught in pre-rollout testing or can’t be duplicated readily or easily or at all in a test system.

Baffles me and I’ve been doing this for 25 years.

1 Like
#36

Pay poor wages and you get poor workers, regardless of the demographics/area.

Ms. Ruffini’s most startling finding was that higher minimum wages reduced mortality significantly among nursing home residents. Her research suggests that if every county increased its minimum wage by 10 percent, there could be 15,000 fewer deaths in nursing homes each year, or about a 3 percent reduction.

How did pay increases translate into better patient health and longer lives? It appears that with better pay, jobs in nursing homes became more attractive, so employee turnover decreased. Patients benefited from more continuity in their care.

In addition, the better paid employees may have simply worked harder, perhaps because they cared more about holding onto their jobs. Economists say they have been paid an “efficiency wage”: Employees become more productive when their wages are higher.

The higher wage may also have attracted more skilled or industrious people to the job, but this seems to account for at most a small portion of the improvements in patient health.

If Target upped their entry level wage to $15 per hour and their average well into the $20 per hour range, I think you’d find many of these workers to be very productive. Businesses have apparently forgotten that one of the easiest ways to demoralize your workers is to pay them poorly.

7 Likes
#37

Target here pays $ 15/hr for entry level. It’s one of the reasons I chose to work here. They are more than competitive for the area. This ain’t Walmart. I have other colleagues that have been there for 10 years or more.

3 Likes
#38

So you can’t admit Amazon had fuck all to do with this town’s issues, cause they gotta be the Bad Guys in the Morality Tale.

#39

Score: Workers - 1, Unions - 0. Good to see that the Alabama workers are smarter than the average Democrat politician. Sad!

#40

Here’s some data with a little something for both of us:

image
image1170×697 104 KB

You may not catch my drift but that’s OK.

1 Like
Comments are now Members-Only
Join the discussion Free options available