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Burnout by Design? Warehouse and Shipping Workers Pay Hidden Costs of the Holiday Season
Aug
What does Christmas mean? For many, it means feasting, family and napping while watching cricket.
But for e-commerce giants like Amazon, Christmas is the most profitable time of the year. During the 2020 holiday season, Amazon processed more than A$6.6 billion in sales.
And for the warehouse and shipping workers who actually get those purchases to their destination, the run up to Christmas means long hours and more responsibility, often in hard conditions and with little job security.
In our research project entitled “automated uncertainty“We are seeking to learn more about worker experiences to understand whether conditions in Australian e-commerce warehouses are comparable to those documented overseas.
Pre-Christmas fever
This year almost four out of five households in Australia They are expected to buy their Christmas gifts online.
The craze really starts with the artificially created “shopping holiday” Black Friday, which follows American Thanksgiving but has become a global event. A single day wasn’t enough, so now we also have Cyber Monday, focused explicitly on consumer spending on e-commerce platforms.
E-commerce and Christmas have become so closely intertwined that Dave Clark, a senior director at Amazon, calls his company’s warehouses “Santa’s Workshop”.
Read more: Amazon Employee Black Friday: The Human Cost of Consumer Convenience
It’s hiring and firing time
We want to understand how factors such as seasonal shopping events and the promise of warehouse automation are shaping the working conditions of the growing number of logistics workers employed in e-commerce.
In Australia, Amazon has made extensive utilize of temporary workers employed through recruitment agenciesAmazon Australia alone will mobilise over 1,000 seasonal workers in the period preceding the Christmas rush.
Worship/AAP
This momentary workforce often experiences some of the most intense working conditions. In addition to job insecurity, many workers reportedly you are required to work at an accelerated pace for incredibly long hourswith the added expectation that they will be available to order throughout the shopping season.
Read more: 3 ways ‘algorithmic management’ makes work more stressful and less rewarding
Burnout?
Conventional thinking in employee management assumes that benefits come from retaining employees who improve their skills and build loyalty to their employers.
But in the United States, Amazon is turning over workers at an alarming rate. Annual employee turnover of 150%, almost twice the industry average, has reportedly left some executives worried about “employees are running out”.
The urgency of seasonal purchases means Amazon can push its employees to their limits, forcing them to work long hours and perform physically demanding tasks at a breakneck pace.
Managers don’t necessarily have to fire employees when the rush ends – instead, tests AND Reporting suggests that employees leave work voluntarily because their bodies simply cannot handle the strain anymore.
IN last articleCanadian researcher and workers’ rights advocate Mostafa Henaway describes his experiences working in an Amazon fulfillment center:
Amazon doesn’t push people out the door. It lets the work do it for itself.
Screenshot via Reddit / suspici0uspackage
These conclusions are supported by reports on working conditions at Amazon in various countries where the company operates, such as: Great Britain AND Italy.
Regardless of intentions, the rapid firing of workers is a consequence of the way jobs and working conditions are designed.
Amazon employees in the US report the app they utilize to manage their schedule even has a handy “voluntarily resign” button to make the process more convenient and automated.
Internal documents apparently show that Amazon executives “closely track” and set goals for a metric called the “unrepentant attrition rate,” which is the percentage of employees the company is cheerful to see leave each year. That applies to Amazon employees, not momentary workers, but it could suggest that employee turnover is a deliberate management strategy.
In addition to synchronizing labor needs with seasonal demands, rapid employee turnover makes organizing and unionization less likely. In the context Amazon workers’ ongoing fight to form a unionEmployees with shorter employment periods are less likely to join a trade union and fight for better working conditions.
We asked Amazon Australia if “burnout by design” was a deliberate strategy, and COO Craig Fuller said:
These claims are unfounded. We pride ourselves on providing a sheltered, enjoyable and supportive work environment for our fulfilment centre team members year-round. As with all retailers, the holiday season is our busiest time of year and we work strenuous to ensure everyone working in our buildings is supported and has a positive experience.
This year we have recruited around 1,000 additional seasonal workers across Australia to support our existing workforce over the festive period. While they are hired to work over the festive period, these seasonal opportunities can also provide a pathway to employment and a longer career with Amazon and we have many examples of seasonal workers choosing to stay and build their careers with Amazon Australia.
We continue to attach great importance to the well-being and safety of our team.
Dean Lewins / AAP
Will automation fix this?
Online retailers are investing heavily in automation.
Amazon plans to complete a fresh A$500 million warehouse in western Sydney by Christmas. It will be the largest in Australiaequipped with swarms of robots transporting goods over an area of approximately 200,000 square meters.
Increasing automation and reporting upcoming massive job losses can make employees feel threatened by the risk of being made obsolete by technology.
Read more: Coles and Woolworths move to robotic warehouses and on-demand work as home deliveries surge
But this highly robotic workplace will still have plenty of human workers. There are many things that even the most advanced warehouse robots still aren’t good at, or that humans can do more cheaply.
Automation in the workplace is probably not about replacing workers, but rather forcing them to keep up with the pace of machines and algorithms. Increased speed takes its toll: Amazon’s US warehouses reportedly have injury rate 80% higher than industry standard.
Christmas is here to stay
We can expect corporations to expand the shopping holidays even further, following the lead of Amazon, which boosted its revenues in mid-year with a June “Prime Day.” The grueling and uncertain working conditions of seasonal work are likely to extend into the rest of the year.
We fear that convenient online shopping is linked to burnout, exhaustion, and job insecurity. This situation could become lasting without improved workers’ rights and tighter corporate regulation.
