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They will spend money on literally anything else except wage increases.
by dave_sullivan 4y ago
They will spend money on literally anything else except wage increases.
- charcircuit 4y agoJust a few months ago Amazon raised the maximum base salary from $160k to $350k
- missedthecue 4y agoThey were the first to $15, literally leading a nationwide wage increase for low skill labor, and now they pay closer to $18 by me. For people trying to hate Amazon at any cost, the goalposts keep shifting. If Amazon announced $20 minimum tomorrow, there is no doubt in my mind that people would still be griping. And even when people concede that Amazon pays industry leading wages, it's "whatabout" the urine bottles as if the heavily unionized UPS drivers don't also do this. https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/what-do-you-do-with-your-bottle-at-the-end-of-the-day.373670/ https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/what-do-you-do-w... https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles.360713/ https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles.36... https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles-in-package-cars.356807/ https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles-in... Turns out public bathrooms aren't always available around suburbia, and leaving a truck unattended is a bad idea. I'm not trying to lick boots here or anything, but the constant shitting on Amazon's non-tech business gets really uninteresting. As if it's all generated by a GPT-3 bot.
- jacksnipe 4y agoThe goalposts are “good working conditions”. You can track this with retention, which is notably terrible at Amazon.
- hwers 4y agoThat’s because $20 is still humiliatingly low for the workload
- leetcrew 4y ago$20/hr is increasingly difficult to live on in higher COL areas of the US, but annualized at 40 hours per week, it's pretty close to the US median individual income. a household with two adults making that much would be well above the median household income. "humiliatingly low" is an exaggeration.
- bequanna 4y agoThey do actually require that you work, yes. There are plenty of lower paid jobs for those only interested in being a chair filler. But the pay is quite good for the required skillset.
- rr808 4y agoI'm not sure which planet you are on, but warehouse workers earn way less than $20/hr in most of the US, Europe or anywhere else.
- Retric 4y agoMany warehouses pay well over 20$/hour and others significantly less. What’s rarely mentioned is while Amazon’s compensation is roughly in line with industry norms, the workload is however much worse.
- kolbe 4y agoCare to give some support for this intangible and unverifiable complaint?
- colinmhayes 4y agoJust take a look at amazon warehouse worker turnover rate. No other company in the industry comes anywhere close. Amazon's strategy is to gamify work and force the workers to put the pedal to the metal until they burn out and quit.
- 4y ago
- suby 4y agoI'm sure people would still be griping, but nothing is static. The cost of everything keeps increasing and honestly, depending on where you live even at 20 dollars an hour it will be hard to make ends meet. There will always be a struggle between labor and employer where each will seek to maximize their share, it's the system we have set up. I really don't think people should be faulted for pushing for more when it's literally a companies goal to pay people as little as is functionally possible. Amazon is the target because they are the largest. If you increase the wage Amazon pays, you increase the wage their competitors pay.
- oarsinsync 4y ago> when it's literally a companies goal to pay people as little as is functionally possible The meme that “fiduciary duty” means “maximise revenue at all costs” needs to die. This is a falsehood that has been debunked repeatedly.
- suby 4y agoYour two sentences in this thread is hardly debunking anything. What is Amazon maximizing if not profit? It certainly is not employee share of revenue or employee well being.
- macintux 4y agoThe point is that there’s no law that says companies must maximize profit at the expense of everything else. The fiduciary duty is to be responsible with shareholder’s money, not to maximize return on investment.
- verall 4y agoIt doesn't matter if it is the law or not if Amazon is made up of a large group of managers with competing interests that all boil to maximizing profit in order to meet their individual key goals. The GP said nothing about it being the law, simply that it is how Amazon, as a giant megacorporation, acts in practice.
- Retric 4y agoAmazon is far from the first company bumping to 15$/hour. Even when they finally joined the 15$ club they where still underpaying people at the time as shown by their retention statistics. That’s the thing about free markets, workers get to say no. They can trade lower pay for a vastly less crappy job, or get better treatment for similar pay elsewhere etc. What’s less obvious is Amazon benefited from building out their infrastructure more recently than other companies which let them target sweet spots with large untrained workforces which made their jobs more appealing locally. But eventually they needed to pay market rates.
- parineum 4y ago> as shown by their retention statistics. >That’s the thing about free markets, workers get to say no. I like how these sentences are consecutive.
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoIf the workers want unions… why not just let them have unions? Amazon is hell bent on suppressing worker power. Acting like Amazon isn’t doing anything wrong here is wishful thinking. We can keep pretending like the needs of the workers are immaterial to the functioning of society or we can let workers have some modicum of control over their workplace conditions. But right now Amazon is trying to crush workers rights and that’s deplorable even if you’re tired of hearing about it.
- Dracophoenix 4y agoIn theory, a union is merely an organization of like-minded people much like the workmans' guilds of the medieval era. In practice, a union is a country club operating as an extension of state power. It is highly liable to create perverse incentives. There is no such thing as worker power in and of itself so long as the government dictates the terms of unionization. > Amazon is trying to crush workers rights What workers' rights are being violated when Amazon decides who may or may not be a future employee at an Amazon warehouse? That's what an employer should do. Amazon is not obligated to hire union-friendly workers.
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoThere have been a lot of things done in the USA to make unions worse. Such as the Taft-Hartley act which placed significant restrictions on union power. This isn’t the fault of unions but of state power meant to weaken unions as a concept. Whatever flaws there may be with unions in practice in this country, I believe they still do offer an opportunity for workers to directly advocate for their needs in a way that has real consequences for an employer who tries to trample them. This is what Amazon is opposing. If you have an issue with how unions are implemented in this country, complain about that. But don’t misunderstand the value in workers rights. > What workers' rights are being violated when Amazon decides who may or may not be a future employee at an Amazon warehouse? You can try to distill the action in to its parts to rob it of its meaning. I could say “I’m merely holding this pointy object and moving my hand forward? Surely I should have a say over how I move my body?” But you would know you’re being stabbed all the same. I don’t know why you want to pretend like Amazon’s efforts to crush unions are valueless. Workers are human beings who deserve some control over their workplace. Amazon is trying to prevent that. That’s what I and many are calling out as wrong and worth opposing. EDIT: By the way the issue is not just about amazon’s hiring practices. I am referring to the wide variety of anti-union tactics Amazon is using to interfere with labor power. Take the point of this article. Amazon will try to make donations to sway political power in their favor so they can continue to get tax breaks without unions. These individual actions can be imagined as devoid of context and valueless, but the point of this action is clear: Amazon does not want its workers to have a say in their workplace.
- aldebran 4y agoThat’s because the higher pay comes at the cost of peeing in bottles aka losing human dignity. It feels like there’s no shortage of people out to defend Amazon either.
- rowanG077 4y agoDid you read the comment? It claimed that amazon is not the outlier here.
- shepherdjerred 4y agoIf someone is willing to sell their dignity (which I guess is now defined by whether or not you urinate in a bottle) then why should we stop them? We’re not talking about safety or child labor where there’s a moral duty to put up guard rails.
- rtpg 4y agoBecause what happens is every single company will start doing this in practice. Not to mention that overworking people to the point that they do not believe they can even take a real rest break is a safety issue.
- shepherdjerred 4y agoThis already happens at other companies, check the grandparent comment. I have found a few articles which claim Amazon's contracted delivery drivers (which is a pretty sketchy practice tbh) work 14 hour days. 14 hour days aren't great, but I don't think it's particularly stunning. Nurses regularly work 12 hours shifts and often pick up more hours for overtime pay. Truck drivers drive a maximum of 11 hours a day, which is probably pretty close to what Amazon delivery drivers do once you consider time picking up packages and getting up to deliver them. If delivery drivers work ~40 hours a week (~3 days a week on, 4 days off) that sounds like a pretty okay arrangement. If they're working 14 hours a day, 5 days a week, then that's rough. Based on some quick Googling it seems like they target a 40 hour work week, but maybe there are some articles of them being pressured/forced to do more.
- WheatM 4y ago
- pwdisswordfish0 4y ago> They were the first to $15[...] now they pay closer to $18 by me This is bullshit. I'm sure there's some Hollywood accounting justification for this claim, but over 10 years ago close to $18/hr is what you could expect to make as associate working in the distribution center of another big corporate behemoth: Walmart. We're talking low-skill grindwork smack dab in the post-economic collapse, and that $18/hr figure does not account for the "veteran" workers on the receiving end of the more-or-less guaranteed annual pay bumps that come with just continuing to work there. (They were making $20+/hr.) Again, not now in the current post-COVID era (because otherwise who cares), but over 10 years ago. It blew me away when a few years ago I learned that Amazon was only paying something like $13. So Amazon is $15 today? Who cares. Almost every fast food place around is paying close to that now, I'm told. $15 is so low that no one was getting paid that low at the Walmart DC that I'm familiar with, which (again, since it bears repeating) was over 10 years ago.
- hkt 4y agoRelating to those pay bumps: Amazon has targets for staff turnover, which will potentially purge anyone who gets incremental pay increases even if they start doing that (which AIUI they don't really)
- SoftTalker 4y ago> "whatabout" the urine bottles as if the heavily unionized UPS drivers don't also do this. Anecdotal I guess, but every time I see either an Amazon or UPS driver at my house they seem pretty relaxed. They pull into the drive, walk to the door with the package, and walk back to the truck. They don't seem rushed. Maybe they pee in a bottle in their truck but based on my observations that's probably just the easiest thing for them to do, at least for the males. When I delivered pizza in the late 1980s I ran back and forth from my car to the customer's door. 30 seconds saved could mean being ahead of the next driver getting back to the store, where it was FIFO.
- therealdkz 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wahern 4y agoJust to play Devil's Advocate: a company can cut donations or most other expenditures anytime it wants. An increase in wages is effectively a permanent commitment, and the only way to reduce wage expenditures is to cut the workforce. This is why companies tend to prefer bonuses, etc, rather than pay bumps, even for individual employees.
- echelon 4y agoCompanies also want to retain the ability to fire at will, with simple HR processes, and to reward based on performance instead of seniority.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago> and to reward based on performance instead of seniority Or reward based on bootlicking, office politics and sexual favours. If you think companies are efficient and promote based on merit, I have a casting couch to sell you.
- pwdisswordfish0 4y ago> and to reward based on performance instead of seniority You say that like it's a bad thing. (Also, generally unheard of in the types of places we're discussing; you don't get paid more for being good. You get paid more for be good enough for longer.)
- otikik 4y agoIf I ever become a Devil, remind me not to choose you as my advocate. Your comment makes them look worse.
- baskethead 4y agoMost people that work for Amazon in the warehouse like working there. All you're hearing are from the union plants that are coordinating with media that both want to see Amazon fail. Meanwhile the fact that unions are having such a hard time gaining traction show that most of the members feel like they don't need it. The idea that you can intimidate hundreds of thousands of workers across the US is ludicrous.
- nvrspyx 4y ago> Most people that work for Amazon in the warehouse like working there. Isn't the retention rate at Amazon warehouses abysmal?
- qbasic_forever 4y agoCould it not also be that unions are having a hard time gaining traction because Amazon is taking illegal anti-union measures in their warehouses? The NLRB gave merit to complaints of illegal activities like threatening workers who were voting to unionize: https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgdejj/amazon-repeatedly-violated-union-busting-labor-laws-historic-nlrb-complaint-says https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgdejj/amazon-repeatedly-vio...
- colinmhayes 4y agoBecause everyone else quits after a month?
- dionidium 4y agoObviously, companies don't want to spend more on labor than they have to. But I doubt that's any company's major concern with unions. The issue, as I see it, is the lack of flexibility once unions take hold. Now you have a large democratic body with a lot of control over hiring and firing and with undue input about who in the company does what and according to which rules, which means, ultimately, over the company's ability to address novel challenges. Just to take one silly example, when I worked at the phone company we weren't allowed to move our phones ourselves any time we moved desks. That was a task that by contract had to be performed by a union lineman. So a guy would show up, eventually, and unplug your phone from one desk and then plug it into another. That kind of nonsense was in place all throughout the company. All kinds of ridiculous details were written down and enforced. The phone company barely even tries to be competitive, so whatever, I guess. You probably pay for that in your cellphone bill, but it's not the end of the world. But if you're actually trying to be nimble and efficient, then that kind of stuff makes it a lot harder.
- jungturk 4y agoCan't companies negotiate contract terms with unions that preserve the flexibility they desire while addressing the concerns the workers had?
- shepherdjerred 4y agoThis is very interesting. I’ve heard that warehouses have poor conditions, but not poor pay. Anecdotally a friend of mine said that the warehouses pay very well, especially in smaller towns where there are less opportunities for young people who need short term work or flexible working hours. Do competing warehouses pay better?