Amazon raises overtime pay for warehouse workers
reuters.com
reuters.com
Edit: We need to provide enough masks so that people don't feel like they are depriving the hospital system. Also, we need more corporations in America to step up and set an example, protecting their workers and customers. People should stay home, but when they have to venture out (or are needed for work), they should be wearing masks!
Professional and Home-Made Face Masks Reduce Exposure to Respiratory Infections among the General Population
Also if you are protecting others from your ilness, a sinpler home made mask is enough to greetly limit possible spread.
This goes against the current WHO recommendation
> If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCoV infection.
From their site:
If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCoV infection.
Wear a mask if you are coughing or sneezing.
Masks are effective only when used in combination with frequent hand-cleaning with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water.
If you wear a mask, then you must know how to use it and dispose of it properly.
It is now proven that people with no symptoms spread the virus. Breathing virus into a cotton sheet is obviously safer than breathing on other people, despite being far from perfect.
Based on what evidence exactly?
> Considering that under certain conditions the virus can stay in the air for up to 3 hours, masks definitely are helpful.
Those conditions being using a Goldberg Drum designed to keep aerosols that can't stay airborne for as long as possible? If yes then yeah sure this virus can survive in the air for 3 hours, but that isn't normal reality. It can't stay aloft that long, it will hit a surface.
Goldberg Drum: https://academic.oup.com/aje/article-abstract/68/1/85/188529...
You really only need the mask if you're going out and symptomatic. Even then, as noted, leave the masks for the people that are encountering sick people daily. They need them way more than you do walking around buying groceries.
This isn't my position, its from virologists. And I'll thank you to not presume I don't already know of those sources. Those aren't relating to aerosols in the air for 3 hours.
Listen to practicing virologists on the matter not me: http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-592/
And as a note, I'm really resisting not getting pissed off at your comment which seems to presume I'm too dumb to know about asymptomatic transmission.
Perhaps you could, I don't know link to some bioarxiv sources or actual information rather than alluding to things. My comment was exclusively in regards to the virus surviving in aerosol form for 3 hours. Its a contrived environment where that can happen. Transmission in the air isn't what I am discounting. Capiche?
Actually forget about it. I'm just going to stop commenting entirely on this matter.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe-strategy/f...
Sort of like those cones we put on the necks of dogs to control some of their behavior when they have medical stuff happening.
it actively interferes with people casually, constantly and mindlessly touching their face
WTF are we spending all this money for military, which has their own suppliers, logistics etc if they can't help us.
Additionally our intelligence agencies should have been "blowing the whistle" when Trump downplayed the issue for 2 months.
EDIT: Maybe the more likely answer is politician(s) didn't listen.
When looking at Wuhan news, everyone is wearing a mask. How did they make that happen for millions of people. Singapore mailed 4 masks per household. South Korea nearly tested every citizen.
Sure China is an authoritarian government but we can’t deny it can do manufacturing and logistical wonders.
The corporate greed and govt incompetence clearly shows when COVID-19 hit us (usa). It will dip our economy way harder than it will hit China.
Could someone share if China is also doing massive stimulus and billions of dollar bailouts?
Will this philosophy survive a pandemic?
1. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/16/these-91-fortune-500-compani...
IMOH Jeff Bezos should really consider this and put something amazing together for these foundational people.
(I say amazing because I think they should be rewarded in a big way - Amazon stock maybe?)
One of the best parts about Netflix's compensation program when I worked there was that you could choose your ratio of stock to cash. You could do 100% stock if you wanted to, or 0%.
Despite this freedom, almost no one chose to get any stock at all. Even people making $200K+ decided the cash was better than the stock.
To be clear, it was a stock option, and the option price was 20% of the stock price. So it had to go up 20% to break even. But if it went up 40% you doubled your money.
This is basically what happens behind the scenes at other companies that offer you stock compensation in the form of options. It's just all hidden from you.
20% off the stock price?
If the stock was at $100 that month, we paid $20.
and
> So it had to go up 20% to break even. But if it went up 40% you doubled your money.
Are contradictory. If you paid 20% of the stock prices you made money instantly, you made a TON of money actually.
In the future, when the stock is at $120, I exercise the option and buy the stock for $100 with money borrowed from ETrade, and then sell it for $120. I've spent a total of $20, and gained $20 from the sale after paying back the loan, and am thus even.
In the farther future, when the stock is at $140, I exercise my option and pay $100 for the share with borrowed money. I've paid a total of $20 and I get $40 after paying back the loan. I'm $20 ahead.
Since I paid $20 out of my salary for the option, when it went up 20% I broke even, when it went up 40% I doubled my money.
This https://benefits.netflix.com/united-states/financial says the options currently cost 40% of the stock price, which seems very high to me.
The Fed just expanded repo to $1 trillion per day: https://m.theepochtimes.com/fed-expands-repo-to-1-trillion-p...
Checkout currency trading right now - the USD is surging compared to every other world currency. That's because demand for USD is extremely high world wide.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/03091...
What has all this coronavirus action made me feel?
The virus effects everybody equally (generally there are age things in there)
We're all about austerity of social benefits, "I get mine". How did the wonders of the free market help when we were in trouble?
We don't share nearly enough. We criticize each other too much. We miss opportunities to improve the social system democratically because we fall for the intoxicating allure of being sidetracked by narrow groups pushing to get more, just for them. Enough to break up the vote to give us multi-pronged, layered, comprehensive, and fair social security. The nod to only help one group to spite everyone else draws ire, to keep the cycle repeating as an emotional back and forth. Every time. We don't fix the statutes.
I hope anything that doles out benefits universally sticks around and becomes normal in life, after this.
I hope after this labor and health policies get more generous. Way more generous. And value people for being human beings, without preferential treatment based on who is most this or that. Raise the bar for all natural persons.
With all this war rhetoric thrown around, it seems a reasonable jump to declare essential workers troops on the frontline deserving of what we give other troops (free health care, pension, heavily subsidized secondary education)
There is a long history of the government using the military to break strikes and fill the labor gap for things deemed necessary for national security. I'm not sure Amazon warehouses are in the same class as coal mines though...
I'd love to see them try.
But I think we're a bunch of disassociated internet people talking about how a bunch of people who just got double time should be unhappy.
Under emergency there isn't really rights for individual, not much.
These are both covered in the popular APUSH American History courses.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billi...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike#The_strike's_...
[1] https://www.britannica.com/event/Pullman-Strike
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1877
Essential for food security and biosafety? I'd say the same class.
I think around 3X current levels. USPS mail carriers and handlers are being given no guidance or support right now either.
I don't disagree that the support for, say, airlines, are bailouts, but the connotation that word has from 2008-2009 mischaracterizes what's going on right now. When this all blows over, you absolutely want airlines ready for business. Letting heavily impacted businesses fail is a recipe for a depression.
The same excuse was used for banks during the recession. We need banks when the economy recovers, and we need people who know the system to unwind the major screw ups they did. What happened is most of the people who were responsible for the recession remained in power making a lot of money. Lessons were not really learned, other than that being too big to fail is a good position to be in.
Did they? Airline stock prices have collapsed, so unless insiders sold everything in January, "enrich themselves" really means standard executive pay...which might be high, but that's another issue. Airlines, as businesses, didn't behave especially irresponsibly for the past decade. It's nothing like the banking excesses in 2007 that causes 2008.
Air travel in the US was significantly more expensive when it was heavily regulated. By your logic, you very quickly get to a Chinese level of state ownership of businesses. Practically every large cap company would be on that list.
Does your discounted unregulated fare rate include the cost of the all the bailouts over the decades? Are you fine with letting the airlines fail this time?
It's not. It shouldn't be "another issue" every single time we discuss a company having financial trouble, just because it's widespread.
> By your logic, you very quickly get to a Chinese level of state ownership of businesses. Practically every large cap company would be on that list.
Not really. Any company that's not a natural monopoly can go ahead and go bankrupt. Utilities and transit would be on the list. Banks could be on or off the list depending on how you handle them. Not much else would be on the list.
Great call. Every time I watch a presidential press conference, my first thought is "Wow, when this all blows over, I hope these people are running the airlines."
Maybe it's not such a bad thing to ask the question of who do we want running these huge ventures, which seem so entangled to the health of the economy and citizens. That applies to the government and private sector.
Also interesting: The farm subsidies over the last two years, supposed to compensate them for their business losses due to Trump’s trade war, cost a multiple of the 2008 bailout (2x or 3x IIRC). None of that will be recovered.
Now when times are tough they have no cash reserves and are seeking government bailouts.
Just appalling.
But I'm against airlines getting bailed out. It's a huge moral hazard imo to just remove the risks of investing in... a risky sector. Bankruptcy courts should deal with this and lenders should take the hit too. Still, blaming this on share buybacks doesn't make a lot of sense... A corporation hoarding money is bad.
Wait, like a real war? Who's talking about a war? Between what parties? I have heard nothing about a war, please explain.
That's not really right, because that implies that other people are using the word wrong. It's more that it's a word with a lot of uses, and you got stuck on one of them.
Merriam-Webster, definition 2:
2a: a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism
b: a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a
particular end
a class war
a war against disease
Some further contemplation on it: https://newrepublic.com/article/156949/casualties-war-corona...
Giving people a raise to incentivize them to voluntarily work to supply resources people desperately need is pretty difficult to spin into exploitation. Many people are out there volunteering to do such things for free because they understand how badly it's needed. I suspect those likely to be sympathetic to that line made up their minds about such things long before this event. I do agree with you that some folks will definitely try that angle though.
Negative consequences of Internet supply chain worker organization right now are a certainty due to intense delivery demand (the IKEA cart is barely functional today), and those optics are an element of the gig/delivery economic equation which I don’t think anyone has thought about until now. That economic model promised to somewhat free the worker and, quite predictably given its proponents, instead seems to have done the opposite.
More than ever before, workers are essential to survival. Striking isn’t just the UAW setting back 2022 Fords a bit, these days. Organizational actions have very, very real potential to collapse parts of the intertwined economy under these circumstances. We will need to consider that reality on the other side of the pandemic but you do not want to so much as blow on the world economy right now. There is a mountain of latent panic waiting for the excuse you’d hand it to organize and manifest.
Important: I’m not saying it’s “right,” just illustrating political and economic realities which make selecting the next move carefully all that more crucial. The entire planet is on a razor’s edge, and if you’re keen to dismiss my position as irrational, organize an Amazon walkout.
I'm not sure it's understood yet what kind of devastation is unfolding with small businesses, which make up ~50% of the workforce.
The wealthy have the capital to take advantage of the stock market, but are also insulated from the effects of downturns due to diversified financial investments and cash on hand. Recessions are also when the wealthy expand their property holdings.
Yeah, they did, while losing money during the crash, which is why there was a crash.
The problem is not so much that some rich people are now somewhat less rich. Boo hoo. Let's rephrase that another way though.
A lot of people that previously had the wealth and assets to invest in new businesses, grow existing businesses, create jobs and fund the development of new technology now don't. These are the primary ways wealth is actually used, and now there is less of it around to do those things. So a lot less of those things are going to happen now. If you either work for a company that pays you, or have customers that buy your stuff, this is a bad thing to happen. Companies will have less to pay you with, and customers will have less money to buy stuff with because the same applies to them too.
Japan still hasn't recovered from the 80s. At some point the economy is going to stop growing. A lot of growth is driven by debt which needs to be repaid. A lot of growth is driven by an increasing population which will eventually plateau, and what's worse you have to support those people (healthcare, education, housing) if you don't want them to cost even more money.
At some point the economy isn't going to just keep growing. I have no idea when that will be, but the market doesn't just go up over time as if it's some law of nature.
> The wealthy have the capital to take advantage of the stock market, but are also insulated from the effects of downturns due to diversified financial investments and cash on hand. Recessions are also when the wealthy expand their property holdings.
None of this negates the fact that the crash wiped a significant chunk of their net worth out. Either they were invested in the market (real estate, stocks, bonds, etc) and they were accumulating wealth in a Picketty fashion until they got slammed by the crash or they missed the crash because they weren’t accumulating. You can’t have it both ways.
In the short term, the middle to the bottom lose as well. But since they can't buy back in their piece of the pie falls into the hands of those that can. Like 2007/2008 this will ultimately result in a massive transfer from the Have-less to the Have-more.
For example, small businesses will close and Amazon will pick up that slack. Easily.
So when the market recovers, which it will. They can see greater gains.
with fed interest rate at 0%. I’m sure the 0.01% can get incredibly favorable loans against their assets to double down.
That aside, you're missing the point. The public stock market best enriches those with the most reserves. Everyone else gets trickled on.
From a time horizon, US stock markets have only regressed 3 years, and both the S&P and DJIA are about double where they were 10 years ago, while NASDAQ is still higher than triple its early 2010 value. Market leaders like FB, MSFT, GOOGL, NFLX, AAPL have only fallen to levels they were at in 2019.
You simply can't just focus on the decline without taking a hard look at how markets reached those heights in the first place and evaluating whether they were sustainable. Well you can, as you did, but it would be disingenuous.
No, because there's currently/there will soon be an army of unemployed retail/service workers who will happily take their jobs.
It again sounds like you only want to volunteer your time to this crisis if it involves the unlikely circumstance of strike busting. Very noble. I hope you gave yourself a big pat on the back.
If a new factory opened up in my town making ventilators and there was a critical labor shortage with no available workers, I would show up for that too. In this hypothetical there's no striking workers to "spite".
Imagining you understand my motivations is a critical thinking error. Attributing bad motivations to me unjustly doesn't just make you wrong, it makes you a bad person.
How do you know this? Did you apply, and they said your help was not needed at this time? Is your name on file, will they call you back if there is an opening?
Have you called all local charities in your area and offered to volunteer your time for free?
You're waiting for magical strikes and magical ventilator companies to show up, yet you are eager to volunteer other's time, while coming up empty on actually volunteering your own.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/politics/trump-coronav...
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E.g. you have people still trying to come into work to get paid and spreading the sickness.
People, please get real. You all are running (or dreaming of) your own small business.
How much of payrise are you willing to give your workforce now?
This news is pure win for workers, consumers and amazon.
I guess a good question would be "How much of a profit can Amazon make now?". The answer is as much as the market is willing to give, and that's the same for the workers' salary.
I don't think you should be looking for legal precedent, just practical one.
Depending on the severity of the impact, governments would (and did several times):
1 - Declare the strike illegal and order people back to work, fine and at the worst case arrest the organizers if they don't comply.
2 - Declare the involved unions illegal, free companies to hire whoever they want and disobey agreements.
3 - Conscript people into doing the work, either by using the company as middle-men or by literally enrolling them on the military and absorbing the work.
But I don't think any government will have to do any of that. A strike does not fit this crisis very well, no party would gain anything.
Performing a strike to achieve a goal for public safety, such as, when the government of a city decided, against public opinion, not to close the border even when bordering a large country with lots of infected patients, some essential workers decided to go on strike to demand the close of the border?
Even more interestingly, if the essential workers are themselves public safety workers, hence their strike would put some people in risks, while hoping for saving more people when the demands are met---real life Trolley problem.
Not hypothetical, I have an actual case in mind.
Many would have no sympathy for workers exploiting a crisis like this.
I also think it was pretty horrible to prevent shipments of non-essential items from 3rd-party sellers (we can still purchase these items now, but sellers can no longer ship these items to amazon FBA warehouses).
Many of these sellers will now have to layoff their own staff, because they will be unable to make payroll/ship out products.
Not sure why anyone still buys things from there. Or anywhere online really, all the other retailers failed as well.
A combination of convenience and a monopoly. They have made purchasing as frictionless as possible.
This is a manufacturer issue. This has nothing to do with Amazon.
> Not sure why anyone still buys things from there. Or anywhere online really, all the other retailers failed as well.
This is just a blanket statement that is completely wrong. Amazon sells all sorts of reputable supplies and toys for babies. Name a reputable company. I'm sure they have an online store.
Edit: This whole situation is going to drive even more shopping online and especially to Amazon. The elderly are getting on board.
Amazon is the company selling the product. Every brick and mortar store is expected to not sell defective goods, why should Amazon be exempt?
(I admit that I haven't tried buying no-name brand smoke alarms, baby toys that weren't designed with Denmark's choking hazard standards in mind, or any other category cherry-picked by a consumer NGO trying to do an exposé. Maybe that's the secret to my success?)
You can keep blaming others like I used to do, but someday it might happen to you just like it happened to me. There is a very obvious problem at Amazon and you literally cannot be careful enough to avoid it. At some point, it will happen to you. I hope it's not something where safety is critical, like a smoke alarm. You might not get a chance to leave a negative review.
I've bought multiple name-brand ones off Amazon, sold by Amazon. The one by my bathroom absolutely works. I can't count how often a steamy shower set it off. Were they buying knockoffs from third-party sellers?
> photoelectric smoke alarms should not be placed near bathrooms or similar locations that create steam. Even though location recommendations are already common on alarm packaging, nuisance alarms persist in homes due to inappropriate alarm placement
Which I suppose is on me, but it is a known issue with some smoke detectors.
People seem to forget the very meaning of a state. Spoiler: it is about power, and physical power.
I bet they could.
Paying workers double pay does not make COVID-19 cases go down, if anything, you're encouraging it to go up by having more employees working together for longer hours, and as those cases go up, the higher the chances of a legal mandate to shutdown becomes.
The UAW was pushing for factories to shutdown out of concern for worker safety in Michigan before they decided to, they were applauded for doing so by the governor, and none of my family there thinks they were in the wrong.
What do you think your family's opinion of UAW would be if they represented workers in Toilet Paper, Clorox, and Food manufacturing and got those plants to shut down and they could no longer get those products? Autos are a way different thing than the essentials.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/610070/amazon-prime-reac...
I dunno where you live, but if a lot of your customer base in in this income range, you’re a good deal outside the median in the US.
> What do you think family's opinion of UAW would be if they represented workers in Toilet Paper, Clorox, and Food manufacturing and got those plants to shut down and they could no longer get those products?
I grew up knowing a fair amount of farmers and people manufacturing the exact kind of stuff you’re describing. Very few of them would side with the bosses. Most of these people in the Midwest are going to local grocery chains (there are huge regional players in the Midwest) to buy this stuff, not buying off Amazon. Going to Target or Trader Joe’s instead of these stores is seen as status signaling.
I'm from the mid-west. Where do you think Meijer, Schnucks, and Jewl Osco get their toilet paper from? If the union insists the TP plant shut down there is no TP whether you buy that from the grocery store or Amazon.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/04/the-stor...