gunDriller
22nd November 2012, 02:28 PM
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor
Dang !
The pseudo-progressives at Mother Jones have produced a genuinely interesting article, about the writer's experience working at a warehouse that does 'order fulfillment' for the larger online stores.
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave - My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine.
"Soon, we move on to practical training. Like all workplaces with automated and heavy machinery, this one contains plenty of ways to get hurt, and they are enumerated. There are transition points in the warehouse floor where the footing is uneven, and people trip and sprain ankles. Give forklifts that are raised up several stories to access products a wide berth: "If a pallet falls on you, you won't be working with us anymore." Watch your fingers around the conveyor belts that run waist-high throughout the entire facility. People lose fingers. Or parts of fingers. And about once a year, they tell us, someone in an Amalgamated warehouse gets caught by the hair, and when a conveyor belt catches you by the hair, it doesn't just take your hair with it. It rips out a piece of scalp as well."
Well, you expect safety issues in an industrial situation.
What makes it unsafe is the extremely hurried pace workers are forced to work in.
"Everyone in here is hustling. At the announcement to take one of our two 15-minute breaks, we hustle even harder. We pickers close out the totes we're currently filling and send them away on the conveyor belt, then make our way as fast as we can with the rest of the masses across the long haul of concrete between wherever we are and the break room, but not before passing through metal detectors, for which there is a line—we're required to be screened on our way out, though not on our way in; apparently the concern is that we're sneaking Xbox 360s up under our shirts, not bringing in weapons. If we don't set off the metal detector and have to be taken aside and searched, we can run into the break room and try to find a seat among the rows and rows and long-ass rows of tables. We lose more time if we want to pee—and I do want to pee, and when amid the panic about the time constraints it occurs to me that I don't have my period I toss a fist victoriously into the air—between the actual peeing and the waiting in line to pee in the nearest one of the two bathrooms, which has eight stalls in the ladies' and I'm not sure how many in the men's and serves thousands of people a day. Once I pare this process down as much as possible, by stringing a necktie through my belt loops because I can't find a metal-less replacement for my belt at the local Walmart—and if my underwear or butt-crack slips out, I've been warned, I can get penalized—and by leaving my car keys in the break room after a manager helps me find an admittedly "still risky" hiding place for them because we have no lockers and "things get stolen out of here all the time," I get myself up to seven minutes' worth of break time to inhale as many high-fat and -protein snacks as I can. People who work at Amalgamated are always working this fast. Right now, because it's almost Black Friday, there are just more of us doing it."
It makes me feel lucky to have entered the professional workforce in the 1980's. In high-tech workers still had to be super-diligent, with good attention to detail. But at least then things were still made in America.
And with Obama-care coming, and "health"-care providers gouging employers & employees alike, anybody who has an entrepreneurial instinct to actually make stuff in America better have a good plan for controlling health care costs (only hire Amish workers ?)
In the mean-time, the shipping boxes get packed in America.
I wonder how many of the workers are Jewish ? That "Amalgamated" warehouse sounds like the Talmud write large. The goyim workers are pushed to the breaking point all day every day. The Jewish managers sit in their offices insulated by several layers of management.
Dang !
The pseudo-progressives at Mother Jones have produced a genuinely interesting article, about the writer's experience working at a warehouse that does 'order fulfillment' for the larger online stores.
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave - My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine.
"Soon, we move on to practical training. Like all workplaces with automated and heavy machinery, this one contains plenty of ways to get hurt, and they are enumerated. There are transition points in the warehouse floor where the footing is uneven, and people trip and sprain ankles. Give forklifts that are raised up several stories to access products a wide berth: "If a pallet falls on you, you won't be working with us anymore." Watch your fingers around the conveyor belts that run waist-high throughout the entire facility. People lose fingers. Or parts of fingers. And about once a year, they tell us, someone in an Amalgamated warehouse gets caught by the hair, and when a conveyor belt catches you by the hair, it doesn't just take your hair with it. It rips out a piece of scalp as well."
Well, you expect safety issues in an industrial situation.
What makes it unsafe is the extremely hurried pace workers are forced to work in.
"Everyone in here is hustling. At the announcement to take one of our two 15-minute breaks, we hustle even harder. We pickers close out the totes we're currently filling and send them away on the conveyor belt, then make our way as fast as we can with the rest of the masses across the long haul of concrete between wherever we are and the break room, but not before passing through metal detectors, for which there is a line—we're required to be screened on our way out, though not on our way in; apparently the concern is that we're sneaking Xbox 360s up under our shirts, not bringing in weapons. If we don't set off the metal detector and have to be taken aside and searched, we can run into the break room and try to find a seat among the rows and rows and long-ass rows of tables. We lose more time if we want to pee—and I do want to pee, and when amid the panic about the time constraints it occurs to me that I don't have my period I toss a fist victoriously into the air—between the actual peeing and the waiting in line to pee in the nearest one of the two bathrooms, which has eight stalls in the ladies' and I'm not sure how many in the men's and serves thousands of people a day. Once I pare this process down as much as possible, by stringing a necktie through my belt loops because I can't find a metal-less replacement for my belt at the local Walmart—and if my underwear or butt-crack slips out, I've been warned, I can get penalized—and by leaving my car keys in the break room after a manager helps me find an admittedly "still risky" hiding place for them because we have no lockers and "things get stolen out of here all the time," I get myself up to seven minutes' worth of break time to inhale as many high-fat and -protein snacks as I can. People who work at Amalgamated are always working this fast. Right now, because it's almost Black Friday, there are just more of us doing it."
It makes me feel lucky to have entered the professional workforce in the 1980's. In high-tech workers still had to be super-diligent, with good attention to detail. But at least then things were still made in America.
And with Obama-care coming, and "health"-care providers gouging employers & employees alike, anybody who has an entrepreneurial instinct to actually make stuff in America better have a good plan for controlling health care costs (only hire Amish workers ?)
In the mean-time, the shipping boxes get packed in America.
I wonder how many of the workers are Jewish ? That "Amalgamated" warehouse sounds like the Talmud write large. The goyim workers are pushed to the breaking point all day every day. The Jewish managers sit in their offices insulated by several layers of management.