Will Amazon's workers be lifted by company's investment in robots?

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By John Tamny
Real Clear Wire

As the valuation of Amazon has risen, so has investment in the company’s most crucial assets: the people who arrive for work each day. Since Amazon must answer to shareholders for whom it’s happily all about the money (or returns), it’s routinely investing in technological advances meant to increase the productivity (and health) of its workers.

A recent Wall Street Journal article vivified the above truth. Writing about Amazon’s growing use of robotics in its factories, reporter Christopher Mims noted that in the company’s always evolving packaging and delivery system, “instead of being stored in shelves, items are stored in plastic bins that ride atop drive units. These bins can then be automatically placed in front of humans, at an ergonomic height, making picking items from them less taxing.” Translated for those who need it, expensive advances paid for by Amazon will boost worker productivity alongside fewer workplace injuries. Would it that all companies were this way.

Why is Amazon different? Why is it so pro worker? One obvious answer is that Amazon has the money to invest heavily in those showing up for work each day.

What’s odd is that Mims ties Amazon’s investment in worker productivity to something seemingly dastardly. He writes that the company’s long-term “goal is to make machines as dexterous, quick and adaptable as a human arm and hand.” Translated for those who need it, Amazon’s allegedly unstated long-term goal is to render the warehouse workers in its employ redundant. No, such a view isn’t serious.

It presumes that Amazon would invest copious sums in the very human capital that it hopes to have no future use for. More realistically, Amazon seeks dexterous machines to enhance the output of its existing workers. Figure that productivity is a logical consequence of work divided, so imagine what increasingly specialized humans will be capable of assuming the multiplication of automated hands to work with them. The possibilities are staggering. We know this truth from history.

When he reported on capitalism in The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith began his essential book with a visit to a pin factory. One man working alone could maybe produce one pin per day, but several men working together in specialized fashion could produce tens of thousands. What Smith reported on is what Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard has modernly referred to as the “cheap revolution.” The more hands that work can be divided up among, the greater the productivity of those hands. Everything we enjoy today at prices that continue to fall is physical evidence of divided labor’s genius.

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Bringing it back to Amazon, reliable and productive workers are always and everywhere difficult to come by, not to mention that the best are routinely poached by competitors. In other words, a failure to maintain one’s work force is incredibly expensive. Amazon won’t make that mistake as heavy investment in its workers indicates.

To which some will ask the question again about robots that can mimic humans, and that Amazon is in hot pursuit of. Isn’t its secret goal one of replacing workers with robots in its warehouses? The question misses the point about progress. In commerce the nature of work changes all the time simply because the technology improves. In that case dexterous hands won’t replace Amazon’s human employees as much as they’ll free them from more physically taxing labor in favor of work that is more of a reflection of their individual productive potential.

Figure that tractors, fertilizer and computers are all robots of a different, job-destroying kind. One could argue that the aforementioned are the greatest job destroyers in the history of mankind. But far from pushing us all into breadlines, that which replaces human effort propels humans to work that better associates with their skills. Amazon will be no different. More realistically, its relentless investment in robotics will in time be seen as the best thing that ever happened to its human work force.

Which, when you think about it, is a statement of the obvious. Really, where is it true anywhere in the world that workers are best compensated and most taken care of despite a lack of work-saving technological advance born of investment? The answer is nowhere, and Amazon will be no different. Owned by shareholders for whom it’s thankfully all about the money, Amazon will lift its workers by relentlessly replacing their former toil.

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