DuPont Amazon warehouse ultimately bad for workers, great for business

Something in DuPont, of all places, is happening that should considerably freak you out, especially if you’re a low-skilled, low-wage worker or have a low-wage worker in your family.

On the surface, the news from The News Tribune today is fantastic!

They write:

Before Ella LaBarrete took a seasonal job at Amazon.com’s new DuPont Fulfillment Center last September, she worked in a yogurt shop in Puyallup. Now she’s advanced to become one of the 500 or so permanent employees at one of the South Sound’s newest major employers.

She graduated from serving yogurt to picking merchandise from shelves at the million-square-foot, highly automated warehouse in DuPont.

I’m not sure there’s a huge jump in skills from serving yogurt to picking merchandise from shelves in a highly automated warehouse, but good for her. The work seems permanent and I assume the pay is better.

This fulfillment center is unlike many others in that it’s leveraging their technological advancements to be more efficient in the work they’re doing. And they’re doing that by utilizing machines. As the Tribune reports

The $100 million dollar center is a showcase for Amazon’s robotic technology.

Instead of having to roam the vast warehouse searching for items, LaBarrette stays at her station where robots deliver metal shelving units to her.

When those four-shelf units arrive carried by wheeled robotic units that fit beneath the lowest shelf and raise the shelving unit off the floor, she picks the order from the shelf. A computer screen shows her the exact merchandise to pull from the unit and on what shelf it is located.

The robots, following wires embedded in the floor of the warehouse, then return the shelf to an open space in the vast two-story storage area.

So while this is less work for Ella and the other Amazonians working in DuPont and, in the future, Kent, this is ultimately bad for not just them, but for all the workers these robots replace.

The second Amazon technology figures out how to replace Ella, they’ll likely replace her. This is a company that prides itself on their frugality, which is necessary because they keep expanding and have razor thin revenues as a result.

The second they can replace her, I think they will and this is indicative of how the entire labor market is becoming. And it’s been happening for years. In fact, you’ve likely experienced and contributed to it.

When you go to the Safeway or QFC, if you’ve ever used the self check out lanes – the U-SCAN lanes – you’re partly responsible for six people losing their jobs.

Now, don’t feel guilty: I use the self check out lanes because it’s better for me as a customer. But those six check out lanes used to be manned by six people, plus a couple rotating baggers. The technology replaced humans. Anytime you order directly online – whether it be toilet paper on Amazon.com or a pizza from Pizza Hut – you’re engaging in commerce that no longer requires a human. Meaning, the human job is gone.

Now, no one is out there – certainly not me – saying it’s bad for companies to go down this path, but I am saying that you ought to be well aware of this at a time when you have union labor activists asking for more money for jobs that are ultimately meaningless to the bottom line and that can be replaced by a robot, right now in many cases.

These activists aren’t focusing on becoming better workers, such as learning more skills and leveraging those skills for a better job that can’t be replaced by a computer. They’re simply asking for more money, and many of them complain that their employer asks them to do more than just work the checkout stand or bus a table or stock a shelf.

They just want more money and not more skills and if I were them, I’d do what I did my entire career which is not be singularly focused on a paycheck but on a toolbox: a toolbox full of skills that you can use to get a better job.

When I started as a call screener in radio, you think I wanted to do that at minimum wage my entire life? No. I learned how to become a producer and when an opening came up, I jumped for it and with it came a raise and the ability to learn even more skills!

Talk radio barely takes calls now. I’d be out of a job. They don’t really hire screeners any more, and while we’re still hiring grocers and stockers and operators in this world, know we’re hiring less and less of them and your focus should be more on skills than anything else because with skills come a higher paycheck.