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| Photo: Amazon |
The advice Mac received before she started was to "leave your pride and your personal life at the door", not what you expect from a job moving things up from shelves to the conveyor belt.
The environment is intense. Workers are not allowed to miss any shifts in the first week, otherwise they're fired. One guy had to miss a day because his wife gave birth - there was no exception and he had to apply with the temp agency again.
After the first week, lateness and absence lead to penalty points (e.g. 1 minute late = 0.5 points, 1 day absence = 1.5 points). One you get 6 points you're out the door.
The time to perform each job is tracked and compared against a target that does not allow for error or rest. The packers work 10-hour shifts and are expected to walk up to 20km per shift. They have two 15-minute breaks and a half-hour lunch break ("Lunch is 29 minutes and 59 seconds—we've been reminded of this: "Lunch is not 30 minutes and 1 second"—that's a penalty-point-earning offense").
Pay is minimal (less than $US12 per hour) and because they're temp jobs there is no job security even if you work at the same place for years. Injury is a regular occurrence. The reward for meeting your target is new, tougher targets.
One line in the article stuck in my mind:
We cannot move at a "comfortable pace," because if we are comfortable, we will never make our numbers, and customers are not willing to wait.Are we, as customers, that demanding? I think not. It all comes down to money. Using lowly paid, easily replaceable labour to work at a frantic pace reduce the etailer's costs, so they can offer us lower prices/make more money.
This reminds me of factory life during the Industrial Revolution. And that makes me sad.
You can read McClelland's full article here.