Is Wex App Ever Going to Work Again
W e were initially anxious about the introduction of robots into our workforce because of the potential disappearance of manual labor jobs. Robots would take over factories, nosotros were told, they'd drive our cars and trucks, and they would do all of the cleaning that janitorial and domestic workers are currently hired to do. But information technology turns out machine-pilots drive cars nigh also as my cat when he'south drunk, and the way my friend'south Roomba always gets lost under the kitchen table, spinning uselessly, unable to detect his style out, suggests we'll still demand people with brooms for a while now.
Instead, the robots are here non to replace this lower tier of underpaid and undervalued piece of work. They are hither to smugly sit down in the middle, monitoring and surveilling united states of america, hiring and firing u.s.a.. Amazon has recently replaced its middle direction and human being resources workers with bogus intelligence to determine when a worker has outlived their usefulness and needs to be allow go. At that place is no homo to appeal to, no negotiating with a bot. This is the virtually boring possible Terminator sequel, where the robots aren't hither to murder or enslave you but rather to text y'all snidely that yous won't need to come into work tomorrow or, for that matter, always over again.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Flex drivers, who are Amazon contract workers and not granted the protections reserved for full-time employees, are existence hired and fired via an app. A software program monitors each worker to determine whether they are working quickly enough, whether they are driving safely plenty, and whether they are efficiently meeting their delivery quotas. That this program is rife with errors and punishes workers for things that are non their fault, from traffic problems to incorrect delivery directions, does not seem to business concern Amazon. Workers have often complained virtually the unfair monitoring and lack of human oversight, just Amazon has maintained its system.
It's not even difficult to effigy out why. Jeff Bezos, who keeps promising united states of america he is going to leave Earth and become to infinite simply here he nevertheless is, seems to believe all workers are inherently lazy. And wait, it's always very helpful when our billionaire overlords simply say the evil thing out loud then nosotros don't accept to speculate. The human who designed Amazon'due south warehouses has pretty much said that Amazon's systems are set to promote high employee turnover, because longer-term workers are more comfortable and less desperate to please.
The desperation is cardinal. When human being beings are uncertain about why things are happening to them, or feel a general loss of control over the outcomes of their own actions (considering, say, they are doing their task to the best of their ability but are suddenly, mysteriously, fired), it causes anxiety and desperation. Information technology makes superstitious pigeons out of all of the states, flapping our wings wildly in the hopes we tin recreate the weather condition that once got united states rewarded.
This system works for Amazon because the United states maintains a large population of insecure and underpaid workers. (And by insecure, I don't mean the same insecurity that drives our billionaires to compensate for a sadness deep down inside with extravagant wealth. I mean a lack of stability in finances and housing.) Bezos and others like him seem to recall at that place is an endless supply of people available to be churned through their organisation and spat out when convenient. And, until recently, they were not wrong.
The terrible working weather condition of Amazon commitment drivers has made headlines for years, only Amazon has not struggled to make full those jobs – even as commitment vans are targets of theft and annexation, and commitment drivers are harassed and followed by residents through neighborhoods. In an open up letter to Jeff Bezos last year, Abe Collier wrote about his experience working every bit an Amazon commitment driver and the pressures put upon him during a piece of work day: intentionally dehydrating himself because of the lack of bathrooms, unrealistic expectations for speed of deliveries, hostility from passersby, concrete strain. But Collier also wanted to make information technology clear that he was grateful for the opportunity to be mistreated in this way. He wasn't eligible for unemployment benefits, and, he wrote, "Due to the pandemic, I was desperate for whatever income." That gratitude was too behind the contempo failure to unionize at an Amazon warehouse. Many workers spoke of existence grateful for the work, as bad pay is better than no pay.
But thanks to the contempo extension of unemployment benefits due to the pandemic, fewer workers are feeling the desperation that allows Amazon to care for its workers so cavalierly, as if they were disposable objects. Many employers who have overworked and underpaid workers are finding themselves without a staff to corruption, as people decide to prioritize their families or their wellness or only not beingness yelled at for $eight an hour over the "dignity of work".
While politicians pout about the possibility of having to raise the minimum wage to $xv, a level that would take sustained a decent life 10 years ago maybe, it'southward likely these unemployment benefits will exist allowed to expire and the safety net will exist removed once again. Amazon isn't going to change on its own unless forced to, and that means giving people the power – and the money – to say no to their own exploitation.
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Jessa Crispin is a Guardian United states columnist
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/05/amazon-worker-fired-app-dystopia
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