Amazon Is the New Factory: Warehouse Labour and Worker Resistance

• In Event: Disrupting Algorithms: Innovating Work and Life in the Digital Economy - II

Abstract

Amazon fulfillment centers store the commodities that are sorted and shipped when consumers order them online. Each employs thousands of workers. Through interviews with workers and union organizers and participant observation I analyse workers’ interaction with automation and their strategies of resistance. Workers experience digital technology as an agent used to control and speed up human labour. Algorithms allocate tasks, for example guiding workers through the shelves. Robots select and move shelves to bring them closer to workers. Under these conditions of production, workers face pressure to work faster and under flexible schedules. A recent wave of mobilization and unionization has brought these issues to the public fore.
To make sense of Amazon I refer to theories of technical and class composition in industrial capitalism. Deskilling processes made possible by automation allow Amazon to tap into a mass of unskilled workers. As a result, the company can deal with a high worker turnover and increase its ability to quickly respond to peaks in online orders. In turn, labour unions struggle to communicate with the new subjects that compose the workforce. Finally, Amazon imports cultural elements from the American digital corporation model, yet the internal division of labour seems to be aimed at making employees accept irrational hierarchies and workplace discipline. Management incentivizes obedience and faith in Amazon’s culture. Analysing Amazon in the light of the continuation of processes that have long characterized industrial capitalism is key to imagine a future more just digital economy.

Author

• Alessandro Delfanti, University of Toronto