Narkina 5 sucks ... but so does life?

October 28, 2022 1:13 PM

The latest episode of Andor depicts the protagonist slaving away in a dystopian prison labor camp. Got me wondering: other than the brutal consequences for subpar performance, is the depicted experience any worse than that faced by employees of Amazon, Walmart, etc.? I have a cushy white collar job, so I cannot directly relate.
posted by wutangclan to Society & Culture (9 answers total)

Coincidentally enough I am reading (MetaFilter's own) Adrian Hon's book You've Been Played right now and Adrian goes into great detail on just these things. Writes about how companies and governments use rewards and punishments.
posted by terrapin at 1:20 PM on October 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Warehouse work is physically taxing, and very mentally unrewarding. The survival skills are to either shut off your brain and get through the day, or talk as much as possible to kill time. You are a cog in an uncaring machine, and it is fully capable of grinding you to dust quickly. Good coworkers and managers can help, but there isn't a lot of growth opportunities and the pay is often rather poor for what they expect. There is always more work than hands, and the people who work hardest are often expected to carry the slack for the people who are lazy/ and or smart enough to not drink the flavor aid.

There is a lot of micromanaging from machines, performance monitoring that discusses rate and how much you have to do per hour to keep the job. Sometimes that number is fine, sometimes grueling. Sometimes the physical environment is terrible... I've talked to people who worked in 100F+ buildings. Sometimes the breaks are completely insufficient. Stories about fighting for basic restroom breaks are real.

Injuries are easy to have happen, especially if training and safety precautions is poor. And or there's a pressure for speed over everything. Multiply that significantly per heavy machine around. Shifts are often ten or twelve hours. Try walking that long four times a week to get an idea. Oh, and mandatory overtime is a thing, so maybe add another day.


But, uh, you get to pick your own food and have government mandated days off (probably, probably) and yelling at employees is frowned at, usually. And you get to go home at the end of the day... So I've heard warehouse workers describe the job as slave labor, and it can feel that way. It often feels abusive.
posted by Jacen at 1:54 PM on October 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

There's a detailed account of working in an Amazon warehouse in the book Nomadland that you might find interesting. There's also a lot of employees and former employees talking about their experiences online, especially with the recent push for organizing Amazon warehouses.
posted by momus_window at 2:09 PM on October 28, 2022

Amazon does some gamification shit, but they don’t, as yet, administer electric shocks.
posted by rodlymight at 2:47 PM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

You can theoretically quit and get a better job. For many that's a myth (get a better job where exactly?) but I think it's a pretty fundamental difference
posted by potrzebie at 3:07 PM on October 28, 2022

I have not seen Andor and thus cannot comment on specifics, but: you are asking how similar the prison labor is in the show to regular capitalist exploitation in the US. Consider refining your question to how prison labor in the show compares to prison labor experiences in the US.
posted by mismatched at 7:09 PM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Unlike a prison camp, you do get paid for working in a warehouse. It’s not enough to live on, but it’s significantly more than what you would make doing the same job in prison. Unlike a prison camp you can quit whenever you want. (In theory. Living paycheck to paycheck locks folks into some horrible things.)
posted by Ookseer at 9:29 AM on October 29, 2022

Setting aside the prison aspect, it reminds me of some automotive or aerospace parts manufacturing where a circle of workers finish or integrate parts into bigger systems. I’ve seen similar setups where a circle of workers finishes and assembles parts into a larger system, which is then moved downline as a new set of unfinished parts arrives.

In the US, someone would be watching a machine do more of those steps. For the manual steps, there would be more PPE, lockouts for the hand-crushing steps, and lift assistance.

The room would have been optimized long ago. Neat symmetrical patterns of workers all doing the same job don’t survive productivity targets long. There would be more types of machines, the manufacturing path would be more complicated, and there would be equipment for longer-running jobs for weekends and during smaller night shifts or while closed at night.
posted by michaelh at 7:39 PM on October 29, 2022

My husband used to work for an auto parts manufacturer and he literally commented that Andor showed pretty much what it was like to work on the line. Yelling at the slow guys, competition with other lines, etc. Obviously they wore shoes and didn't get physically punished like in Andor, but there were incredibly tough supervisors yelling for small reasons and people getting written up or fired for small infractions. It was a very desired job in an economically depressed area and there were always people to replace those that were fired, just like I imagine the Empire always had more prisoners to round out their numbers.
posted by little king trashmouth at 7:06 AM on October 30, 2022 [1 favorite]