As Amazon Pushes Forward With Robots, Workers Find New Roles
“It’s certainly true that Amazon would not be able to operate at the costs they have
and the costs they provide customers without this automation,” said Martin Ford, a futurist and author of “Rise of the Robots,” a book about automation.
No people were laid off when the robots were installed, and Amazon found new roles for the displaced workers, Mr. Clark said.
For now, there are warehouse tasks — for example, picking individual items off shelves,
with all their various shapes and sizes — where people outperform robots.
When Amazon installed the robots, some people who had stacked bins before, like Ms. Scott, took courses at the company to become robot operators.
Unlike the warehouse robots in Kent, which were based on the machines Amazon
got through its Kiva acquisition, these arms come from an outside company.
Amazon has added 80,000 warehouse employees in the United States since adding the Kiva robots, for a total of more than 125,000 warehouse employees.
Maybe the first indication is they don’t get rid of those people but the pace of job creation slows down.”
Amazon’s Mr. Clark said history showed that automation increases productivity and,
in some cases, demand from consumers, which ultimately creates more jobs.
In 2014, the company began rolling out robots to its warehouses using machines originally developed by
Kiva Systems, a company Amazon bought for $775 million two years earlier and renamed Amazon Robotics.