ABSTRACT
Although Amazon has a huge R&D budget and is certainly using it to explore ways to automate warehouses, the most labor-intensive task, picking, continues to resist automation. This chapter argues that Amazon’s major technology is the algorithmic management system that surveils and disciplines workers, not its Kiva robots or delivery drones. Capitalism’s technological progress is typified by automation that helps management make control of the human workforce more automatic, more opaque to workers, and more destructive of their skills and general wellbeing. Automation does so not by expelling workers from their jobs and creating a pristinely posthuman and rationalized workplace. The rise of online shopping led to a 37% growth in warehouse employment between 2014 and 2017, and further growth is expected. Automation is transforming what these growing jobs entail, how an enlarged pool of workers accomplishes tasks, and the exact amount of time they are allotted to do so. The most plausible outcome of automation in the warehouse industry is not the disappearance of jobs but their further material and moral degradation.
