This isn’t quite the way you’d expect a robot to take someone’s job, but here we are.
New documents revealed this week show that Amazon has a system for automatically firing warehouse workers based on minute-by-minute figures measuring each worker’s personal productivity and their “TOT”, or “time off task.”
Hundreds of workers in dozens of Amazon locations have lost their jobs through this highly automated process. The termination paperwork is even printed “without human intervention.”
They do still make a human actually deliver the pink slip though.
(For now at least.)
And sure, there’s not a really a good way to get fired, but the whole idea of Alexa running HR seems pretty messed up.
Then again… we’ve all had bad human bosses, maybe sometimes a robot would be an improvement?
- I think a robot boss would be better than most human bosses.
- I think a human boss would be better than any robot boss.
- I have something else to say…
Let us know what you think! And then help us keep on building towards a world where our rights at work are realities in every workplace — regardless of whether you won the boss lottery, or if you got a well-tuned robot making the decisions.
— Working Washington
Source: Amazon’s warehouse-worker tracking system can automatically pick people to fire without a human supervisor’s involvement Business Insider, 4/25/2019
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