Internal documents have revealed that Amazon wants to avoid the costly human experience if it can.
A scathing report by the New York Times that compiled interviews, along with what was described as a cache of internal documents, showed that Amazon executives have aspirations of replacing approximately 600,000 U.S. jobs with robots.
‘Leaked documents often paint an incomplete and misleading picture of our plans.’
The corporate decisions would allegedly pass on savings to the customer of upwards of 30 cents per item, while at the same time avoiding the hiring of about 160,000 new employees in the United States that would be needed by 2027.
In the internal documents, Amazon executives told their board members it was their hope to avoid making new hires by ramping up robotic automation, which would negate the need for more than 600,000 human jobs. This would come at the same time that Amazon expected to double its sales by 2033.
The alleged stated goal in the documents was to automate 75% of facility operations, while simultaneously executing good faith initiatives to avoid angering communities that are disparaged by the job losses. This included hosting parades and Toys for Tots programs that built upon an image of Amazon being a “good corporate citizen.”
Disturbingly, the documents reportedly discussed the idea of avoiding words that remind people of robots, an approach that Amazon strictly denied adopting.
A robot prepares to pick up a tote containing product during the first public tour of the newest Amazon Robotics fulfillment center on April 12, 2019, in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The New York Times reported that Amazon contemplated avoiding terms such as “automation” and “A.I.” in reference to robotics and would have rather used terms like “advanced technology.”
Instead of “robot,” the word “cobot” was discussed being used because it implies collaboration with humans.
Amazon told the NYT, however, that executives are not being told to avoid certain terms when referring to robotics and that its community relations plans had nothing to do with its automation plans. It said the documents were incomplete and did not represent Amazon’s overall hiring strategy.
The Verge, which received a statement, quoted Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel to the effect that “leaked documents often paint an incomplete and misleading picture of our plans, and that’s the case here. In our written narrative culture,” Nantel continued, “thousands of documents circulate throughout the company at any given time, each with varying degrees of accuracy and timeliness. We’re actively hiring at operations facilities across the country and recently announced plans to fill 250,000 positions for the holiday season.”
Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Reporter Lewis Brackpool from Restore Britain told Return that while the numbers were troubling, the push for robotics could stand as a solution for the mass import of foreign workers.
“While in a perfect world citizens could thrive in their employment without the worry of being replaced by overseas workers, ditching foreign labor in exchange for robotics seems more preferable than our current situation,” Brackpool theorized.
“A socialist-communist journalist by the name of Aaron Bastani once wrote a book called ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism,’” the commentator continued. “The book outlines a vision of a post-scarcity, post-capitalist society driven by technological advances such as automation, artificial intelligence, and synthetic biology. Even that is more preferable than to be replaced by the third world.”
Amazon employs approximately 1.1 million in the United States, representing about 70% of its global workforce, according to Red Stag Fulfillment.
The company peaked at 1.61 million employees in 2021 and has a minimum wage of $18 per hour for all seasonable employees.
Average pay reportedly increases by 15% for those employed for over three years.
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