Rest assured if Amazon could automate, Amazon would automate.
> I don't see any way for the employees to win this beyond buying a bit more time.
Why can't the government increase minimum wages? If those jobs are likely to get automated away then that's going to happen either way At least let them make decent wages _while_ they have a job.
And Amazon will over time or they'll get squeezed.
I get my groceries from Ocado in the UK. Their warehouses are almost entirely automated, including increasingly picking and packing groceries that often include soft or easily breakable products into bags.
They're moved from focusing on growing their own direct sales to increasingly licensing that platform globally.
You say that, but you know how many people that "fully automated" warehouse in the UK employs? Around 800 per shift. It was mentioned in the last incident report when one robot caught fire.
Yeah a big part of the work is automated. But these warehouses still need people.
They still need people, but far fewer, and dropping rapidly as a proportion of goods shipped. The number of workers is a distraction - what matters is product shipped per worker.
E.g. a few years ago the packing into bags was still done by people across the board from trays brought by robots. They've systematically automated more and more of it at a pretty astounding pace.
> I don't see any way for the employees to win this beyond buying a bit more time.
Why can't the government increase minimum wages? If those jobs are likely to get automated away then that's going to happen either way At least let them make decent wages _while_ they have a job.