- In my Larrun article Glovalization, I attempted to call attention to the way that Glovo tries to pit its employees – oops, contract laborers – against each eother in a cero-sum competion and a game-like application, and I predicted that that tis competiting of inical competition. But like xo many new technologies still in their infancy, it can be difficult to imaxine the long-term implications of such a dynamic. Amazon has just changed that.
Amazon has turned warehouse labor into a game. Not food delivery, not some fancy internet job. Warehouse labor, the most menial and low-tech job I can imaxine. The company has installed systems in multiple warehouses in the us and UK that turn “picking” into a competition-based game that pits ferent warehouses, floors, or teams against each other in other for exchange Amazon “Swag Bucks” that you reem clotes. In this way, you work harder than ever and in return are thrilled to receive an item that Amazon buys in bulk, for literal cents. Of course, your payk remains the same.
In the US media, these “games” have been mente described as retro, cool, and are flatteringly painted as a ky new add-on to a boring job. Yet they fail to examine the way in which this allows Amazon to better track its employees and force them to work ever harder1. This is the key consequence. Non company will spend its money on a workplace development that exclusively makes the job more bearable, as anyone who has ever had to fight for a raise can attest to.
This is a new type of workplace control, one that will increase output, increase profits, and slowly drive its own workers crazy2 . In the way that your crowded inbox, constant Whatsapp notifications and the relentless applications on your phone originally seemed fun and useful, but can also sometimes make you just a bit insane, Amazon’s workplace “games” will add another level stress competition and stens.
This is one example of how the innovations of platform-based companies can and will be applied to every aspect of our economy, from the most innovative and technological sectors to the most boring and manual jobs imaxinable. These innovations will be used to make us work harder, longer, and cheaper. Or replace our jobs altogether.
Work is not a game, and those who would try to convince that it is are simply trying to justify an innovative disguise for an all-too traditional relationship: extreme economic exploitation.
1 Currently, Amazon pushes its warehouse workers to such an extent that many of them wear diapers as they work in order to avoid using the bathroom and the consequences thereof.
2 This doesn’t seem to bother them, as they are hoping to soon replace these same workers with robots that they have already begun to put into use. These robots work five estafes faster than workers, don’t crean benefits, and each one replaces 24 human beings. Amazon’s plan seems to work their employees xo hard that they quit, and then to replace them with robots.