this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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A union said Amazon had "been treating their workers like robots for years".

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[–] alienanimals@lemmy.world 77 points 1 year ago

It's a good thing that shitty jobs are being automated.

However, we also need UBI (funded by corporations using automation).

[–] TryingToEscapeTarkov@lemmy.world 70 points 1 year ago (2 children)

These jobs need to be automated. No human should be packing and sorting boxes at the capacity that Amazon ships them.

[–] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately amazon didn't figure that out until they realized they were running out or people to exploit.

[–] just_change_it@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I disagree. They used what they had and were certainly researching continual improvement all along. They've had automation wherever they could implement it all over.

The challenge is finding the right human teams to design the automation that will be successful. Engineers with a background in practical robotic automation are not exactly common.

Every major company is in a race to reduce wage cost to 0 and maximize growth and p/e. For amazon their growth and revenue numbers kept growing despite offering above market for unskilled labor, albiet for horrible jobs. They'll continue to try and eliminate as many FTEs as they can until all they employ are people who manage, deploy, maintain, design and implement automatic systems.

[–] sudoshakes@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago

This guy gets it

[–] Steve 9 points 1 year ago

The job could be fine if they had twice the people. Then they wouldn't need to be over worked so much.

[–] SCB@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What's really interesting here is that the company that makes the Digit robots, Agility Robotics, uses them in their own factories. Just a really brilliant proof-of-concept.

Automation is always a good thing and we should encourage it as much as possible.

https://agilityrobotics.com/news/2023/opening-robofab-worlds-first-factory-for-humanoid-robotsnbsp

[–] gmtom@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

This will free up tons of staff for promotion to customers

[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 7 points 1 year ago

Robot maintenance workers need to unionise. Now.

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] totallynotarobot@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

GUT GESAGT, MITMENSCH

[–] Norgur@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Amazon Management Zoom Meeting:
"Im pretty impressed with your progress on the robots, George, yet we can't deploy them until you managed to make them piss into bottles. We have to respect company tradition here!"

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Time for a robot union?

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 1 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Amazon is trialling humanoid robots in its US warehouses, in the latest sign of the tech giant automating more of its operations.

It said it was testing a new robot called Digit, which has arms and legs and can move, grasp and handle items in a similar fashion to a human.

We've already seen hundreds of jobs disappear to it in fulfilment centres," said Stuart Richards, an organiser at UK trade union GMB.

As the announcement was made, Amazon said its robotics systems had in fact helped create "hundred of thousands of new jobs" within its operations.

Amazon Robotics' chief technologist, Tye Brady, told reporters at a media briefing in Seattle that people were "irreplaceable", and disputed the suggestion that the company could have fully-automated warehouses in the future.

Scott Dresser of Amazon Robotics told the BBC this allowed it to "deal with steps and stairs or places in our facility where we need to move up and down".


The original article contains 479 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] Hoohoo@fedia.io -1 points 1 year ago

I've never been a customer, and I never will.