Peer2Politics

Adam Smith never talked about scaling per se. But he did say this: When the division of labour has been once thoroughly established, it is but a very small part of a man's wants which the produce o...

“Labor is different from other factors of production in one regard. Owners of land and capital will dispose of their full supply, guided only by one consideration: Revenue maximization. If labor were governed by the same law, workers would work as much as they were physically able to on a sustainable basis. But in fact there’s a backward-bending supply curve of labor because, unlike using land and capital, expending labor — at least after a certain point — is unpleasant. Labor, unlike a piece of land or a lump of coal, has to be persuaded to supply its own productive services — to crawl out of bed in the morning and go into a place it would rather not be.

“It is often argued that ‘digital labour’ or ‘virtual work’ is fundamentally different from traditional forms of labour carried out offline, with ‘work’ and ‘play’ collapsed together to become ‘playbour’ and new forms of value creation that do not fit traditional economic models. But however ‘immaterial’ their labour processes, workers still have bodies that become exhausted and require feeding and housing in the ‘real’ economy. Drawing on both theoretical and empirical research, this collection takes a critical look at how online work can be theorised and categorised (including revisiting concepts of ‘deskilling’ developed in the 1970s). It also analyses how the development of online work has meshed with broader trends in organisational restructuring to erode traditional employment norms, time structures and models of behaviour at work, placing new stresses on offline daily life.”

With Amazon’s business model on the rise, it is important to seek out an inside view of life as an Amazon worker. These curious retail-warehouse hybrid jobs are becoming a staple of many middle American communities. For that reason, we would like to collect stories from Amazon workers, just as we have done with workers of Wal-Mart, Target, Whole Foods, and other important companies. If you are a current or former worker at an Amazon fulfillment center and you’d like to share your story, you can send it to Hamilton@Gawker.com.