Amazon is handing out 'Thank you' t-shirts to warehouse workers as it cuts pay
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
In the case of Amazon this seems much more sinister and cult like. I struggle to believe that any of the warehouse workers buy into it.
Healthcare professionals are paid much more compared to the average UK citizen. Especially doctors, the average pay (100k pounds) is in the 2% of the earners. Emigrant doctors couldn't even dream of finding comparable wages in free market scenarios in their own countries and come to the UK.
I think the best we could do collectively is to pay out generous bonuses to frontline nurses for the duration of the pandemic.
But both deserve bonus crisis.
underpaid:
orderlies cleaning services kitchen staff
not sure if underpaid:
Midwife Physiotherapist
Definitely underpaid in germany.
orderlies cleaning (services) kitchen staff
that's definitely underpaid as well.
This is just utter nonsense. The average UK salary is around £30,000. Nurses can expect to earn anywhere between £22,000 and £30,000.
Junior doctors (which a new doctor can expect to be for somewhere around 5 years) starts at £23,000 increasing to somewhere between £30,000 to £45,000. GP's earn around £75,000.
[0]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/29/average-gp-now-e...
https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/doctors/pay-d...
In fact, even in the black swan book, they are explicitly given as an example of rare but NOT black swan-style events.
Point being, governments and corporations should have epidemic plans. It should never come as a surprise. Sure, a small mom-an-pop place or a start-up can't really prepare, but a corporation the size of Amazon should have an epidemic plan and reserves for that. Not having one would simply be irresponsible, both to shareholders and to employees.
Edit to add: airlines, restaurant, and hotel chains should have been the most aware of this. If they do not have plans for resisting a 2-6 month epidemic when business is shut down, then they are simply gambling on government intervention. There is almost 0% probability of operating one of these companies for 50 years and not having to battle at least a local epidemic in a large country.
Or the conclusions of the government's own Exercise Cygnus in 2016 which stated clearly that this should never be allowed to happen because the consequences would be beyond horrific.
Step 1: cause panic Step 2: profit
Top 2% of income is no great shakes when you look at the full distribution. The 0.1 and 0.01% make several orders of magnitude more.
Oh please. Have you read "This is going to hurt" by Adam Kay?
Wages are only a small part of a products price, and there also is enough evidence that for example raising the minimum wage does actually help people.
For why it works, its simple: non-rich people spend any extra money, rich people don't do anything useful with their extra money. Which is also why trickle-down economics is a scam when its being presented as a way to help poor or average people. It does work of course as a way to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich.
Also, rich people don't do anything with their extra money? The exact opposite is true. Most of rich people's wealth is not in cash, it's in investments - while the average folk's extra money is "invested" in products that they can't afford, like the latest iPhone or a fancy house/car. No rich person that didn't just inherit their wealth lets their money sit in a bank except for a small percentage of their wealth, because they know it's a bad deal. How does trickle down economics transfer wealth from the poor to the rich? The poor should have wealth to begin with, in order for it to be transferred.
Really get the feeling they don’t appreciate immigrants like us
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/gkbcee/a_sevent...
Quoted in full: "I automatically get angry when I hear the word hero now lol.
It's propaganda. It's not for us, it's to help the customers and society not feel bad about shopping. We're not wage slaves stuck in our shitty dangerous jobs for shit pay, because if that were the case people would have to feel guilty about coming to the store to shop. People might even feel so guilty that they boycott and cut into profits and we can't have that.
So instead we're heroes! We're loyal dedicated members of the Retail Family, we're choosing to work to help society get through this tough time. If we're heroes, customers don't have to feel guilty about coming to the store. If we get sick or die, they can throw a parade in honour of our selfless heroism instead of doing the hard work of actually improving our situation. Calling us heroes is like. A warm and fuzzy way to dehumanize us."
I feel ashamed owning shares in a company that thinks 20 hours unpaid time off a quarter is reasonable.
A lot of that history seems to have been suppressed to the point that hardly anyone knows about it. It's certainly not something you'll see being mentioned on any mainstream media channel.
I remember going to a huge meeting and strike in the 80's, things were a lot more civilised then. I was a young apprentice, there was an older guy who was 'blackballed' - he had turned on a switch against the slowdown rules (a partial strike) - no other worker would talk to him. There were strike funds for people who couldn't afford it, it was a very exciting thing for a young kid, I don't know if it happens any more. People dying on the job so the owners can make more money is nothing new.
Amazon is not handing out ‘Thank you’ T-shirts to its warehouse workers.
It is handing out “Thanks to you, we will deliver” T-shirts to its fulfillment associates.
It is a societal statement on their power dynamics, not a hypocritical act.
Amazon wants to be seen as exploitative today, because it will morally justify the layoffs tomorrow once all this is automated away.
Is it too hard to say "warehouse workers" instead of convoluted and misleading terms like "fulfillment associates"?
> It is a societal statement on their power dynamics, not a hypocritical act.
There is no societal statement. It's self-serving PR. And if Amazon is so hell-bent on announcing pay hikes and toot their own horn on how great they are for increasing wages then it should also be ok when they are called out for backpedalling on their actions.
> Amazon wants to be seen as exploitative today, because it will morally justify the layoffs tomorrow once all this is automated away.
Since when does Amazon have a plan to cease to be exploitative? Last time I've checked, Amazon was firing warehouse workers for complaining about unsafe working conditions, and then mobilizing VPs to put on smear campaigns targeting their own workers to avoid having to do anything about the problem.
I try to objectively characterize their reasoning.
I see comments about how it is awful of me to call them “fulfillment associates”—but this is the term Amazon picked[0]. And they chose it to represent how they see it fit in their worldview.
My personal feelings? I am saddened by the lack of compassion. But the only way for people to optimize for the fulfillment of all lives instead of the minimization of all costs requires, at this point, a far teleportation of the Overton window in the political discourse.
[0]: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/versandmitarbeiter
In other words, they're handing out "thank you" t-shirts to warehouse workers. Why would you call this title misleading?
»Gut, das ist der Pfennig! Und wo ist die Mark?«
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ihb2XqEsa4g
The same bullshit is happening everywhere. In the German Bundestag MPs gave standing ovations for care workers. Meanwhile those continue to slave away for pennies, now more precariously than ever, while the next items on the MPs agenda are bailouts for airlines and fucking car manufacturers.
We can’t live without the care people and we don’t want to live without the fulfillment slaves. »Sie schulden euch Glück und Leben.« They should have huge leverage, especially in these times, why will they not organize?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HUGc7R8hw
At one point it almost seems like he is suggesting to this poor guy that it is unreasonable for him to protest for better working conditions because "people like me" need to be able to place orders on Amazon while in lockdown. Imagine the difference in salary between the guy working for CNBC and the guy working in the Amazon warehouse. Feels as if we are watching some dystopian fantasy film like Hunger Games.
> slave
No.
> away for pennies
No.
> We can’t live without the care people
What are you suggesting? Literally destroy all of civilisation to do what? Hire infinite care workers?
> bailouts for airlines and fucking car manufacturers.
So you don't want anything of society to remain? You want all efforts of existence to be focused on care workers?
>I'm sorry but this is emotive gibberish.
Are you saying all emotion is gibberish? So you want people to have no emotions whatsoever? You're literally in favour of killing people who display emotions?
Care to explain which bit you have an issue with?
> people to have no emotions whatsoever? You're literally in favour of killing people who display emotions
I'm saying this person is using an emotionally assumed moral highground to justify arbitrary and unspecified ends. I want to know more about what they are insinuating.
It's a bit odd that the one retailer than meets the most aggressively demanded Progressive goal, seems to be the target of near-daily attack articles.
It's almost as if there's something else going on with all this anti-Amazon news... isn't there?
Edit: And it's mentioned in the article as well:
> The token comes as Amazon announced it would be cutting the $2 per hour wage hike it brought in for staff in mid-March as hazard pay for coming in during the pandemic.
The "Hazard Pay" was a pay rise for coming in during the pandemic, which as far as I can see hasn't ended yet. Cutting hazard pay right now, in real terms, is cutting pay.
Not really. Not all jobs are risky. I fail to see how being in a well ventilated warehouse is risky. It's not like they're interacting with customers.
Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't happening.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/03/24/amazon-...
2 million people have tested positive - most of them probably did not contract it at work.
> In the past few days, workers tested positive for covid-19 at Amazon warehouses and shipping facilities across the country.
> workers complain Amazon hasn’t provided them with enough information about the spread of virus in their facilities
> [a worker] only found out there was an infected co-worker after confronting a human resources staffer in the break room
> Some workers complained that Amazon pushes them to meet the per-hour rate at which it wants orders fulfilled, a practice that they worry discourages safe sanitary practices such as washing hands after a cough or sneeze. Others have complained about “stand-up” meetings, where workers stand shoulder-to-shoulder at the start of each shift.
All of these support the notion that working in a warehouse is risky during the pandemic.
In any case, how does the proportion of people who contracted the coronavirus at work to total number of positive cases so far have to do with anything? If your hypothesis is true (and you've given no evidence for that), it could very likely be because of the lockdowns we've had so far, which have prevented people from going to work in situations where they could've gotten it. Regardless, the proportion has nothing to do with how risky working in a warehouse is in the first place!
The problem is that someone who didnt know hazard pay was in place could see the headline and infer that a reduction in pay from the normal rate happened. You could say that's unscrupulous on the reader's part, but it's equally unscrupulous of the publication to use a potentially misleading title.
And just because he's a human
a man would like a little bite to eat
he wants no bull and a lot of talk,
that gives no bread or meat.Our situation with the virus is not dystopian, but our handling of it from the world leaders, business leaders certainly is.
A notebook.
While certainly not as spiffy it has the added advantage of being completely vendor agnostic.
I'm sure those workers would probably prefer and deserve a bonus and a heartfelt individual thank you though.
It hardly ever makes a profit. Any profit it makes is from AWS usually.
It is popular because it’s so cheap, which is why people buy there. So really the solutions can only be:
1. Raise prices and consumers suffer 2. Keep wages low and workers suffer 3. Stop existing.
I wonder how many people who complain about amazons working conditions don’t shop there and buy the same product for a higher price elsewhere. I’d guess not many.
How can you buy into that narrative.
The no profit book keeping is just a way to avoid paying tax.
As a shareholder I would rather see them pay fairer wages, be taxed appropriately and have a slower rate of growth.
If the cost of scaling at the speed they scale comes from unethical business practices then the answer is to scale slower, not exploit the worlds poorest and most vulnerable so that Jeff, myself and a load of other privileged capitalists can get even wealthier.
Invest less in growth and more in the human capital that is essential to running the business.
Playing by a different set of rules guided by Jeff's meglomania has driven them to the top and that is laudable.
Once you've conquered the world do you still need to keep squashing the people you lead? What is it serving at that point other than pure egotism ?
This isn’t how the world works. If you don’t develop others will take your place. Amazon is simply the best at this right now.
Even so, as consumers everyone has every right not to buy from amazon. But they do.
From my POV the most productive growth amazon can make as a company would be engaging in better ESG practices There are forms of capital outside of material assets and intellectual property.
Amazon is losing human capital (tbray as a high profile example, but I am sure he's the tip of an invisible and silent iceberg) Amazon is losing brand capital which will hit the bottom line (ethical consumption is an ever increasing trend) Amazon will continue to irk Governments with its lack of respect for sovereignty laws (tax in particular, but also labour and monopoly).
that still should not stop you to pay a livable wage and provide fair conditions to your employees
amazon is far to close a monopoly anyway :/
The problem is that any company as big as Amazon is a billion pound train moving at high speed, it can't make turns that fast. So while I would like for them to try harder I don't expect it to happen.
Otherwise amazon (or Walmart) wouldn’t exist, because everyone would support their local store. But they don’t. Prices matter.
That wouldn't necessarily affect consumer behavior but it would affect what strategies corporations are able to use to service that behavior.
Is that what you want? If you do, that’s fine, that’s a fair enough perspective, but understand that you are probably making it harder for people with less money. Same goes for Walmart.
I also think that we need more progressive taxation and social benefits which would offset some of the price increases.
We are able to provide both good working conditions and a living wage to all people. We can afford it.
Yes they will be higher. Other companies that don't treat employes that badly, whether out of goodwill or due to being in places with more regulations, will be more competitive.
But like someone else mentioned, there are countries where Amazon has to pay minimum wage and it works just fine. I think we as consumers have the responsibility to vote with our wallet but we as society have responsibility to put boundaries into laws to prevent abuse. So in my view consumers, suppliers and legislators are at fault.
Doing this WOULD make it more difficult for Amazon to crush and destroy every possible local store and national chain store that could ever exist, thus making it more possible for other choices to exist out there in the world (or even in our own communities where we live!) so from a stock market point of view, from a 'Jeff Bezos First Trillionaire' point of view, I can see why they feel compelled to go as hard as they can. Their purpose is not really to serve people, but to destroy everything else that serves a similar function as them, in order to be completely dominant and allow for, effectively, NO MARKET but just only them.
That's called a unicorn.
I'd rather pay 25% more and have… a market, I guess. I'd rather have different options. I see the motivations here, but I don't mind saying there's no benefit to ME in them. I'd be better off with Amazon only one of many supply chains I could draw on.
They have to be shockingly extreme in order to stifle the whole market, otherwise stuff will survive as a 'less good option' and remain accessible in spite of not being as 'good'.
And amazon makes profit on non-AWS products as well, don't be silly. I can literally google their financial statements to prove this.
I suppose you are naive enough believe the world is a true meritocracy
Amazon has around 570000 employees, and 22 executives. One of those executives actually earns a lot more than 1 billion dollars. Nevertheless, with just 2 billion dollars you can give a decent pay raise to every single one of those employees. Some don't need it as much as others, but whatever.
I usually buy stuff from Chinese e-commerce websites where you can find things much cheaper.
Amazon India usually has same product listed for 2-3x the price.
I've limited money and I choose to spend so that I get maximum spending least within the legal framework.
And most of the Amazon basics item come from china too.
So doesn't matter who you choose, china is benefits either way.
Reinvesting retail profits is a tax avoidance strategy.