Why is it disgusting? In a lot of job people are expected to rush to get things done. I know a lawyer who was fired because she didn't get a payment executed by 5pm (it ended up costing someone a lot of money)
It's not as if Amazon can't afford to provide decent working conditions.
Or they can close down the shop if they can't find the money to do the right /required thing.
They would have said margins are too thin, that it's impossible to pay more, that menial labor doesn't deserve more, that paying more would result in immediate widespread layoffs, that warehouse employees have little recourse but to accept their lot or quit because that's just how the market works.
But that argument assumes Amazon, or any business, pays some objective measure of what a job is "worth", or as much as the market will allow. They don't, they often pay as little as they can get away with.
So yes, Amazon could close down the shop, but Amazon could always close down the shop. They could also afford to pay their warehouse employees more. They don't, not because they can't, but because they prefer not to.
It's not Amazon that creates this situation. It's the market system itself and it will always exist, because if Amazon doesn't do it some other employer will -- in some jurisdiction or scenario in which they can get away with it -- and gain a competitive advantage. Unless there's a labour shortage, or government action, it's a race to the lowest common denominator or worse. And that's why the formation of a union across the whole sector is imperative.
Clearly, if you accept a job, you believe the compensation to be fair. If it wasn’t fair, you wouldn’t take the job. It’s as simple as that.
Or it's your only choice. We're not talking about skilled labour with lots of options.
Picking between running madly around an amazon warehouse for 15 dollars an hour or taking some other low skill job for less seems fine, until Amazon realizes that the workers are all interchangeable and the company benefits more by burning through them quickly and replacing them with fresh bodies than it does by continued support for its staff with long term plans of employment. The second they decide to exploit their labor for their sole benefit, rather than something that can be seen as mutually beneficial for both in the long term, that's when people start to feel you should be doing better.
Also, just to address a theme that gets thrown around a lot. >>Working at Amazon is literally no one's "only choice" in the US.
What does this mean? The US is a massive country with huge differences from one region to the next, never mind the difference between the urban and rural areas within a region. To try and pretend its a unified country with unified value systems and a unified equally distributed economic system is asinine. On top of that, who the fuck knows what's going on in "Joe Random-US-Citizen"'s life. Maybe it is his only option because he also has to take care of his dying father and is racked with student debt from a failed attempt at getting his BA. IDK what anyone's value choices represent, but this whole "you can always just do better if you really wanted" is a lie I'm sick of being peddled. The US is economically more advanced than many countries. There's still people living in relative poverty. There's still massive social problems.
Any time someone says any broad group (Americans, Gays, Engineers) all face the same situations, I have to roll my eyes because it's never true.
Sorry if this came across as a personal attack on your views (it isn't, I don't really know them from your 2 sentences), it's just something I see get brought up and this was me finally responding.
These are not exclusive options. Workers can make a decent wage and be incentivized by bonus programs.
I’m not sure how this is undignified or how to have enough dignity in such a program.
It’s a challenge to try to maximize productivity and having elective programs where individuals can choose to put in extra effort than they normally would could certainly be structured in a way that isn’t compulsory and reduces the risk of someone harming themself.
It certainly would award workers who work harder and produce more than others. And there could be valid reasons for lower productivity (ie, poor health) that are outside of worker control. But I think the aim is not to evenly distribute wages across all workers, but to allocate wages to the most productive workers.
Manual labor is a challenge to manage.
They are essentially pitting employees against each other, because if i sabotage someone else, i have a better shot at winning.
If they did it by saying "everyone that meets this specific standard gets a bonus of X" then i don't think anyone would really complain. But because they are overworking themselves to have a chance to maybe get a prize, it seems unnecessarily exploitative.
That's not how a raffle works. You earn tickets which increase your chances of winning. The highest performer isn't necessarily the winner. That also limits how much effort people are going to put into it.
I agree that getting rewarded for actual work performed is strictly better, but in the end the workers get to decide if they want to play that game or not.
> They are essentially pitting employees against each other, because if i sabotage someone else, i have a better shot at winning.
I guess the possibility that warehouse workers are going to sabotage each other and risk getting fired over raffle tickets wasn't considered in the planning. I'm not saying it won't happen, but it sounds far-fetched.
This is a rather short sighted view. In many cases, they either play or they lose out big (either financially or even up to losing their job). For many of those outside tech (and some in tech), losing your job isn’t a risk they are able to take.
Imagine the olympics where there is no gold, silver, bronze. Is it undignified to award the highest performers?
A method that awarded everyone would not lead to productivity gains desired since it skips the competition and motivation. This only applies to manual labor and not to many other careers.
Competition is not undignified or wrong if it is fair and structured properly.
Overworking is optional. It’s something I used to be into when I was young, but not now.
It’s tyrannical if all weee forced to work harder, even if age prevented it.
The Olympics is a competition, not a group of people working towards the same goal. It would be MORE like giving one member or a relay team a gold medal instead of giving it to an entire team when they win.
Software developers don't have any trade union at all, and we're paid well.
The reason you can't buy legal services from Walmart is the same reason you can't buy software development from Walmart. It's just not their business.
Well, actually...
"The Law Store offers fast, face-to-face legal services in convenient Walmart locations."
You're not paying for legal representation. You're paying for all the time and effort the lawyer spend establishing their professional reputation.
You or I would get laughed out of court. A professional lawyer could show up, say the same things and get taken seriously.
They're being treated like dogs, pressured to perform tricks in exchange of a treat.
I mean, move fast to receive raffle tickets? Seriously?
The context of this practice matters quite a bit, but it’s hard to say that work incentive programs are undignified because dogs get treats for tasks.
And a raffle is literally a form of income since it has value and is taxed as income. Perhaps you mean getting a raffle ticket and losing isn’t income.
You've just described my whole life...
Relatively mundane work doesn't get any more interesting the faster you do it.
I'm not saying that Bezos and the people packing goods in a warehouse should be paid equally but the absolutely obvious unfairness of the modern capitalist economy is simply unbearable for more and more people. The fact that many people still don't seem to have any issue with having somebody earn effectively a thousand times more money than their employees is absolutely baffling. And then they go around shopping for tax rebates for their new headquarters. Everything is fine people, the system is working.
IMO this (and global warming) are going to be the downfall of capitalism. There's too much greed. Too many rich people complaining about taxes while people sleep in the streets. As a result people will turn more and more towards populists as they feel betrayed by the elites. That's how you end up with Trump, Bolsonaro, the populist government in Italy and the current protests in France. People know that they are getting shafted.