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Comment by losvedir | Hacker News Reader

Ha, I had a completely opposite connotation to the headline and was briefly confused when I read the body. In the couple of large factories I know of operators, mechanics, and others generally are thrilled with overtime, so I thought this was supposed to be a good thing. But the article body spun it very negatively. I wonder what the sentiment is in the factories there. Maybe it's different in the UK.

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Had the same reaction. Its forced overtime so maybe they'll complain? But with the virus hitting, if correct safety precautions are taken the extra cash seems like a good thing? We'd need to actually talk to Amazon workers for their opinions. Also important how Amazon responds if a worker doesn't want the overtime.

As it currently stands the UK still has the EU 48hr working week so you can opt out of working more than 48hrs and in theory not be punished for it, in practice enforcing that has been hit and miss over the years with punitive measures been hard to prove at times.

Voluntary overtime in a well unionized job that pays adequately for the extra effort seems a long way to me from being forced to work more at an exploitative amazon warehouse.

I highly encourage you to talk to people who have worked in unions for 20, 30 years. The unions set a lot of rules, those rules can be confusing, and unions tend to take hours from newer people so that older people can have them. Unions can also force people into overtime (as much as any other employer). That's not to say that all unions are bad, but unions are not wholesale good nor evil, they're simply a different mechanism.

Amazon likewise is it's own mechanism, and it seems to vary heavily depending on the warehouse. From the workers I've talked with in our local warehouses, they typically like it - but our warehouses are also open for tours so they probably get treated a bit better than others.

I would like to see some kind of survey of Amazon workers to find out what they're thinking. All we ever get are news articles reporting a simple fact (good I guess) and surrounding it with either positive or negative language choices (not as useful).

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