{"id":33453,"date":"2013-12-23T20:30:11","date_gmt":"2013-12-23T20:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/emergentfutures-robots-cant-end-amazons-labor-2\/"},"modified":"2018-12-06T13:09:25","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T20:09:25","slug":"emergentfutures-robots-cant-end-amazons-labor-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/emergentfutures-robots-cant-end-amazons-labor-2\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-33453 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/emergentfutures-robots-cant-end-amazons-labor-2\/attachment\/33454\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_my54g9ztiv1qz5ttno1_1280-1-100x100.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/emergentfutures.tumblr.com\/post\/70818485585\/robots-cant-end-amazons-labor-woes-because-they\" class=\"tumblr_blog\">emergentfutures<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h1><strong>Robots Can\u2019t End Amazon\u2019s Labor Woes Because They Don\u2019t Have Hands<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>The holidays should be a celebratory season for Amazon, the world\u2019s largest online retailer. Instead, the company is facing conflict and tragedy over the work done inside its distribution centers, the massive warehouses where the logistics of holiday package delivery are executed with machine-like precision.<\/p>\n<p>About 30 equipment techs at an Amazon warehouse in Delaware are on the verge of unionizing, a first for the company in the U.S., according to a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/articles\/2013-12-17\/amazon-may-get-its-first-labor-union-in-the-u-dot-s\">report<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0<em>Bloomberg Businessweek<\/em>. Earlier this month, at an Amazon-owned facility in New Jersey, a temp employed by a staffing firm\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/allthingsd.com\/20131217\/worker-killed-at-one-of-amazons-new-jersey-warehouses\/\">was fatally crushed<\/a>. And just this week in Germany, more than 1,000 warehouse workers\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mobile.reuters.com\/article\/technologyNews\/idUSBRE9BF0M220131216\">walked off the job<\/a>\u00a0to protest wages and working conditions. \u201cThe workers are treated more as robots than humans,\u201d German labor organizer Markus Hoffmann-Achenbach told\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Although that was clearly meant as an indictment of Amazon, it\u2019s an accurate description of work inside a warehouse. This is particularly true in retail, where merchandise makes money when in motion and costs money when at rest. Amazon in particular makes big promises about how quickly it can deliver orders, but for any company with inventory, greater efficiency in getting stuff out the door means greater profit potential. To that end, the goal in warehouse work is to get humans to behave as much like robots as possible.<\/p>\n<p>Full Story: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/business\/2013\/12\/amazon-warehouse-labor-disputes\/?mbid=social16015464\">Wired<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>emergentfutures: Robots Can\u2019t End Amazon\u2019s Labor Woes Because They Don\u2019t Have Hands The holidays should be a celebratory season for Amazon, the world\u2019s largest online retailer. Instead, the company is facing conflict and tragedy over the work done inside its distribution centers, the massive warehouses where the logistics of holiday package delivery are executed with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[1539],"class_list":["post-33453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","tag-emergent-digital-practices","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-8Hz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33455,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33453\/revisions\/33455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}