this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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That's already a serious problem for Amazon, as reported in 2022.
https://archive.ph/Z9a9D
The fear - 3 years ago - was that the incredibly high turnover rate in its warehouses as they processed eager starving candidates into broken, bitter, exhausted hulks to kick out the loading bay would soon deplete the available labour pool in areas around its warehouses. They would simply have no one willing to work for them even if it meant starving.
2024 has come and gone, and aside from being a simpler pre-Trump2 time, Amazon didn't run out of staff. But a near miss is maybe just a delayed eventuality, and their labour practices haven't improved in a noticeable way if at all.
So the memo and its dire warning still hold.
I know a call centre that contracts its people out had to leave my area because it underestimated how connected people here are and quickly ran out of willing slaves. The building is a parking lot now.
This is a real threat.
It’s also why Bucc-ee’s pays like $25/hour for retail work. The working conditions are so grueling that the only way to retain workers (and avoid running out of available workers in the area) is to pay them decently.
Wife got hired there. Once I heard about conditions, I told her to fuck them off. If nothing else, she would eventually get fired over being late as there's no way to drive that far and 100% be on time.
I'll never spend a dime there again.
Weren't they looking into roboticizing their warehouses so they would only need truck loaders/unloaders and packers? Or did that fizzle out?
If they still have that option, then they still have a lot of runway to burn out potential workers before they run out, unfortunately.