Working at Amazon

Greg Hook

Having choice is an excellent thing, and something everyone is lucky to have in different degrees.  

However, your post did clearly state, “I never got this lefty obsession in keeping people down and dependant”, suggesting you feel it’s a trait of the left to make people dependant on low skilled, work so what was your point if not that?

A few posts up, posters are in support of Zero Hours Contracts as it works around their lifestyle/choices, essentially giving the option of providing pocket money to some people.  Is that also artificially stifling progress or simply meeting a need?

kilvil

I thought it was posted in the context of us leaving the EU and reducing immigration to remove an unfair pressure on the lowest paid British workers? The point being, seemingly caring about those workers when it’s an immigrant taking their money but not caring when it’s an automated line seems a little hypocritical.

Bl4ckGryph0n

Googling that gave some amusing results on University attendance. Some sites say 50%, others say a 1/3rd, one even said it was on the decline so different stories depending on what toilet rag you read. Much like this very forum I suppose.

What we really need in this country is to bring back manufacturing. Apart from cars, we make very little in this country. All we have in the Uk is massive warehouses where we unload stuff, then reload it and move it about. We are just a nation of box movers.

Also, the McDonalds kiosks will not have affected staff levels at all, they weren’t to save staff members they were to maximise throughput and reduce customer waiting times.

weaviemx5

you do know that life is not constant right. things change all the time some people adapt better than others. that is why there are winners and loses in life. you can help people when they need it but in the end its up to them to change the behaviour to improve there lot.

weaviemx5

There is no point in creating or maintaining jobs artificially, nor is there in subsidising employers. Nor is there in taking the money and then giving it back or redistributing. It is not kind politics, it is creating a dependency on the state to provide. It is horrible in my opinion. The state being there as a safety net is good, and as I've said many a time the safety net needs to be improved significantly. But keeping people down and making them dependent is not sustainable. Hence the country is getting in the mess it is in now.

I'm not sure I understand the point/question. Employers have a need for extra support during peak hours, employees have time time available that they can help and provide those services and get paid for it. I don't get what the problem is with that?

weaviemx5

This thread is about Private Industry so nothing to do with the Government/Politics, hence my confusion about your suggestion that it's Lefties that want to make people artificially dependant?  My point was that many people are quite happy working shifts on a line packing boxes and have no desire to retrain as a line automation designer.  As a result, replacing those manual line jobs with automation will lead to people being made redundant.  It's easy to say that they can just move to another job or retrain but the reality is that many will instead end up unemployed and an extra drain on the Government.  I'm not being a lefty, I'm just stating facts.

With regards to ZHC, many people (upwards of 1 million) choose to work under them, some as a lifestyle decision and some because there are no other alternatives for them.  It's not necessarily a case of peak hour resourcing, it's also a way for employers to pay lower rates of pay for irregular hours to suit their needs.  I only referenced them as you're happy for people to work under them but feel that box filling is something that people should aspire to move up from?  What's also contradictory is that many of these box filling jobs are filled by ZHCs.

kilvil

Yep, life does constantly move.  The biggest difference I see in this thread specifically is it's something we're actively choosing to implement with the knowledge that it will impact those low-skilled British workers, that people are supposedly concerned about Immigrants impacting their wages.

fluxo

"The sectors that saw the largest increases in unfilled positions were health, social work and transport and storage.

The spike in vacancies coincided with a record fall in the number of EU nationals working in the UK, a continuing trend since the Brexit referendum."

And in other news, the Pope is actually Catholic...

EU Nationals who are currently working and paying taxes in the UK leave the UK due to uncertainty about their future status, leaving their job roles unfilled.  At the same time, UK unemployment is at a record low, suggesting the large majority of working age Britains are already in gainful employment.

Who would you suggest should fill these roles left by EU nationals?

weaviemx5

so we employed trained staff from EU countries in industries that have had falling training
in the UK. if we trained our own staff EU nationals would be lower.

kilvil

A curious thing about the wage impact argument is that it only applies to a subset of low-skilled workers, i.e., those that necessarily need to be present in the UK. So hotel cleaners, for example, but not people in manufacturing - you can make stuff elsewhere but you can’t clean a London hotel room from France.

People in, e.g., manufacturing will still face downward pay pressure from external competition. Stopping migration doesn’t prevent that. Is the next step, then, tariffs on imports to protect their pay? I mean, how far do people want to take this?