Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave

From the press release:

“If any team members are unable or unwilling to work a scheduled shift, they can use unlimited unpaid time off through the month of April without penalty, and we are supportive if someone chooses to stay home.”

Many are outright exploitative.

Fast food comes immediately to mind: I once got disciplinary action one summer, because I came in to work too much, and crossed over 80 hours in a two-week pay period, thus earning overtime.

Coworkers had called out, so I got called in. Did my job, then got punished and unscheduled because I worked "too much".

All so a mega-franchiser (who owns most of one particular national chain's stores across a large region) could ultimately avoid supporting (no one was scheduled more than 39.5 hours a week to avoid them becoming "full-time" and requiring benefits, scheduling wasn't handled in a timely manner, etc.) the people who do the essential work for their survival, day in and day out, keeping massive profits for themselves.

It really pisses me off, and these are just a few of the reasons it's shitty.

The first number is so laughably far away from reality. Do you have any idea how many hours a week you would have to work to make $60k at $15/hr? Does the average warehouse worker make double the starting rate or work 70 hour weeks?

As someone who works in the industry I do agree however that they do an okay job taking care of their people compared to others. But nobody is going to write an article about how shit it is to work at a warehouse owned by a company no one has ever heard of. Amazon has actually done a lot for people at those places too though, if there is an amazon warehouse nearby starting at $15 an hour nobody is going to come work for you for barely above minimum wage anymore, it has definitely put some out competitive wage pressure.

The safety net is by far the better way to address this, it's a drop in the bucket relative to the total cost of the safety net.

> It's in everyone's best interest for Amazon to offer paid leave until their workplaces have been proven to be safe, which is going to take a bit even after all the appropriate measures are in place.

Amazon appears to think that your "until" condition is here now, per the safety measures they purport to be taking.

This probably won't be too far off, if the current level of unemployment benefits holds. Just the $600 a week on top of state benefits comes out to $15/hr.

It's always interesting seeing a comment go up as high as a three and as low as -1, back and forth.

Oh no! He said something not negative about Trump... downvote now!

In what way am I in the wrong? I did not claim and do not believe that there is only one level of 'forced'. No one here is making it out to be that way.

Edit: Just because there is a range of accepted meanings for the word 'forced' doesn't mean that all uses of the word 'forced' are correct. Even with the most low key interpretations of the word 'forced', I don't think that this is in any way the correct word for this situation.

My understanding is the end game for that is still a vaccine or herd immunity. It just slows the process down enough that you don’t have more people dying because of a lack of equipment.

Gotcha, thanks. That matches the data I originally linked, i.e. new deaths per day has been flat for greater than a month and total deaths are at 21.

Ok so deaths per day is actually not increasing

The European Union also has a federal government and federal bodies which pass policies. It has a directly elected lower house that represents the People with proportional representation[1], and an upper house that represents the Member States with equal representation[2], and an executive branch with a Chief Executive that signs bills into law[3].

People can travel freely within Member States without passports, visas, or checkpoints.

Of course, Member States have their own rules, and this is good, and yes, some Member States are doing better than others, but why the fear of revealing the incompetence of one Union?

This is how Unions work in 2020 on planet Earth.

I think we both agree that looking at the EU as a whole is totally meaningless in the context of the current discussion about Amazon workers. We are simply arguing the same about the United States. This isn’t some pro-US propaganda, the only agenda here is an insistence on ensuring that we are comparing apples to apples.

P.S. Speaking of "Nation-States", hilariously enough, Gavin Newsom recently referred to California as a "Nation State"[4].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_European_Union

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_European_Coun...

[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/04/coronav...

> It has a federal government and federal bodies which are responsible for preventing spread of disease.

The response is handled at the state level, not the federal level. The federal level can provide advice and help coordinate actions between states / provide backup resources, but isn't meant to take direct action.

Few people think it's perfect, but most Americans do agree that capitalism and representative democracy are good ideas that are working okay.

oh I'm certainly not saying that the system in the US is good by any means, what I'm saying is that it currently is the way I describe it.

People (normal people, anyway) generally have a lot less say in that system than you seem to think. I don't get to vote on whether or not a major employer offers better pay for physical labor. I don't get to vote on whether or not for-profit schools exist. I don't get to vote on whether or not employers will (consciously or not) discriminate against job applicants who look poor or don't speak eloquently as a result of low-quality education.

Hell, I don't even, really, get to write to my congressperson and tell them they should propose a law that would achieve any of that, because I don't have the money and connections to shepherd that bill through congress (i.e., pay bribes).

Voting for candidates who will work for change is important, but it's not magic, and it's also not something that people who care about this weren't already doing every time we get the chance.

The US did have many candidates with different takes on social security, just that people didn't vote for them. One of those candidates even raised more money than the winner. Now you can say people are brain washed. But people didn't vote for alternative takes on social security in US, or else they could have voted otherwise.

But what do all the comments on my reply have to do with Amazon then?

Yeah, I get it, HN doesn’t like them but you say yourself the problem is something else. So why the company bashing?

Yes, fair comment on my downvote rant.

I should have put it differently: for those who disagree: please tell me how I’m wrong - so at least I can learn something from it

(And for context: the Catholic Church is the biggest employer in Germany - I am not talking about priests and nuns, but all the organisations and companies they run here)

I actually never used the term "for-profit" to describe the issues, for good reason. Money is useful only insofar as it helps you gain and maintain power -- it is power and the ability to influence reality to your benefit that is the fundamental quantity being optimized in this system. Framing the power grab as fundamentally about power (is obvious, and) makes it apparent that the Catholic church in your example wanted to maintain a public reputation positive enough to continue to earn donations and devoted followers, which is why they made sure to avoid prosecution since that's usually a huge hit to one's public reputation. So your comment about "The Catholic Church in Germany had it written into LAW" aligns with my point perfectly because again they are wielding influence to improve their circumstances, independent of considerations of the consequences for others.

So to get to your question: I am not being comparative here. I am attempting to study the fundamental drives that sustain and grow corporations. I am interested in contrasting what are generally considered "human rights" (in both positive and negative senses[1]) with what ends up being encouraged and perpetuated by the actions of those corporations as singular entities. My baseline to compare the actions of corporations is versus what I would imagine a compassionate superintelligence might do. Obviously this is biased toward my own ethics/morals but I think that's ok because I generally try to reduce suffering and make things more equitable.

My baseline is basically 1) what is "affordable" for the actors which are wielding their power vs the benefits for the people whom are subject to the consequences of the decisions of those actors, and 2) what those actors actually do with the money and power at their disposal vs what they could have done to improve the material conditions of a large number of people.

Using precedent as a baseline seems stupid to me... only consider the fact that the tradition of "law" is quite young and has been continuously shaped by those in power since its inception, and so shall not be a basis for moral or ethical understanding.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights