What a miserable existence that must be. Bezos has always struck me as a man who cares about nothing else only his own personal wealth and success.
There is no joy in his life.
On the contrary, he is probably very happy with the way things are. You may be buying into the "Just World fallacy"; there are plenty of people you may find despicable who are leading happy, fulfilling lives, by their standards.
I think the antipathy towards workers a combination of 2 things: it takes a fair amount of conceit/self-belief to dare think you can change the world (statistically speaking). The second thing is, even if you didn't start of with that mindset, success usually brings a certain post-hoc justification in the vein of "Clearly, I have been successful, therefore I'm better than most", which easily morphs into "My needs are more important; the little people are too focused on short-term goals and yet I have to compete with them for the same resources to achieve even more important goals I have planned". As someone from a low-income background, I have noticed that the more successful I have been, the less empathy I have, and I'm only middle-class. I don't know if it's because of my increasing income, increasing age, or combination of both.
Of course, I (and you) say this from the position of people who don't know the man in person. It's all baseless backbiting.
Obviously this isn't dispositive to say he's happy, but I don't think it proves he's unhappy either. Not wanting your workers to unionize hardly seems like proof of an unhappy life.
Most ultra rich buy news companies. It's part of your portfolio to ensure you have maximum say in the political decision process.
See "Manufactured Consent", there's a cool animated video explaining it on YT.
> Not wanting your workers to unionize hardly seems like proof of an unhappy life.
Indeed. It just shows you are above the law, and a authoritarian/oppressive.
I would not be nearly as measured in my response. no sir, I am not the one
And if my employees said I was treating them unfairly, I would try to understand their perspective and make changes to improve working conditions. But maybe that's why I'll never be a CEO.
If the Amazon job is so bad then there must be plenty of better options?
Bezos' employees have created nearly 200 billion dollars of wealth for Bezos
How much wealth would Bezos have created without his employees? I sort of imagine one guy with a computer running an online bookstore running fulfillment out of his garage.
I bet he could make an okay living if he's smart and hardworking and lucky but it's a pretty inconsequential fraction of 200 billion.
I worked at Amazon for 6 years. I don’t think that’s true at all. Nearly any other professional manager would have been too tempted to turn the mighty river of free cash flow into profit rather than reinvesting in the business.
If Bezos didn't need those workers - if he genuinely created every cent of value in his empire on his own, picked and boxed and delivered every book himself - why did he ever hire anybody?
And with your line of reasoning I should be mad when my doctor spends 30 seconds checking me and makes a diagnosis and then receives the lions share of the pay. He couldn't do his job with his nurses, office workers, and other employees. But I'm not mad, because he's doing something they can't.
Just like Bezos did something no one else could do at the time.
If they were working somewhere else, they wouldn't be generating 200 billion dollars of wealth at all
Not sure how "richest man in the world" version of myself would react. Certainly I wouldn't use my corporate Twitter account to attack (badly) US politicians.
Hopefully anyone with that level of wealth would look into fixing the actual problem instead of trying to cover it up with fake testimony. The point is, he has the money to build a working culture where people can feel like they are treated fairly, he just chooses not to
I'd cry myself to sleep every night on my pile of billions of dollars. Poor Jeff.
A union will not break Amazon, many companies with unions still are plenty profitable.
Easy:
"I have $185 billion less than Bezos to spend on treating my employees better, but I've also spent $0 on propaganda against my employees interests."
In corporate America, responsibility is on senior leadership, and the CEO is at the top of that chain. If they want to have the W's of that system, they get to take the L's too.
Here is the summary of the issue.
Firstly, pre-pandemic, unemployment was at an alltime low (and its trending that way to as places are reopening), very close to frictional unemployment rates, while Amazon was still able to roll out things like 2 day deliver and same day delivery. This means that it was able to staff accordingly. This in turn means that the pay that people recieve is worth whatever the working conditions are, and people can quit and go find easier job at any time. This is also true of people that are able to work overtime, for double the pay $30 an hour. Not to mention that benefits are also included, which as far as health insurance is a big plus for people.
Secondly, the number of reports of poor working conditions are far and few in between. For the scale of amazon, its expected that some warehouses are going to be run poorly. There isn't a single shred of credible evidence that this is a widespread problem. Also, with unskilled manual labor, there are people that are going to have a harder time than others. Taller pickers for example, have an advantage over shorter pickers that don't have to use the step stool. But again, 3% unemployment rate.
As far as unionization goes, this is the general gist of it. If the workers unionize, the service capability will undoutably go down. When workers realize they can take it easy and keep their jobs, productivity will go down. While its true that worker conditions will improve, the problem is along will come Walmart thats not as much in the spotlight, and offer better service and shipping while having shit working conditions, and people will just switch over because thats more beneficial to them. In no way shape or form the will continue supporting Amazon just because their workers unionized, out of the "good of their heart".
So Bezos is doing the correct thing by being anti union. Unionization is messing with the free market, which never leads to good outcomes historically.
If you care about the lower income people, then go out and vote for politicains that support higher taxation for the rich, social programs for the poor, so that ones living condition does not depend on ones job.
Also, for your brain health, get of the domapine fix that is the outrage of the internet lefism.
It’s really sad how many people get super invested in defending mega corporations. I hope it’s just employees trying to move up but you never know.
https://labor411.org/411-blog/warehouse-worker-turnover-rate...
It’s a gestalt, you can see it two ways and I have no clue why someone would want to see it as a “good practice” unless that view was beneficial to their job and career advancement.
True
>probably because the conditions are so cruel.
Ugh, thats the crap I am talking about in the last sentence of my original post.
There is nothing wrong with high turnover at a minimum wage manual labor job. Amazon hires seasonal workers that happily work overtime for $30 and then quit. Nobody is making a career out of being a warehouse associate.
Um.
I worked a warehouse one summer in college.
A whole lot of my coworkers were, in fact, making a career out of it.
It was a crappy career compared to the easy, high-income gig I was working towards in software development, but it was a career, nonetheless.
I currently work with someone who was career warehouse until he caught a lucky break and was able to move into white collar work.
(Interestingly, his last warehouse job before going white collar was with Amazon, after several others, and he said it was by far the best warehouse to work in.)
The majority of people on Hacker News, yourself included (I can tell from your comments) have privilege that means we never had to consider something like making a career out of working in a warehouse. But this is absolutely a reality for alot of smart, hard working people, because they didn't have the opportunities you and me had.
If unionization didn't lead to better outcomes for workers, Bezos wouldn't care about it. If it was going to be so bad for workers, he would just let them do it and let them fail. The fact that Amazon is doing anything about it is proof that it will benefit workers.
There are definitely some true, fair, and pertinent points in your comment (though, to be clear, they're not strong enough to actually make a compelling point, and I still disagree with your conclusion and position), but this is just nonsense. Every single social welfare program is "messing with the free market", and while I do concede that some of them have been failures and some have been inefficient, they are overall a net positive to _human quality of life_, even while they may reduce a business' productivity.
If you modified your statement to "which never leads to good outcomes for a particular company", or even "for the economy", then it would be a truer statement - but it is possible for a company or for the overall economy to take a small hit, while actual real humans (who are, after all, the ones that we should care about) enjoy a far greater quality of life.
I mean, saying that a human life is worth something so you can't just treat people as expendable labor is "messing with the free market" technically, but thats a very low boundary. Social welfare addresses the lower tiers of income, specifically to aid people in basic needs of housing, food, healthcare and education. Those people aren't putting any significant money into the economy.
Unionization on the other hand is selective inflation of labor value in certain areas. Thats definitely messing with the free market. Didn't work for France very well, not going to work for US.
EDIT to be more clear-and-explicit and less snarky - taxes are an interference with the free market. I am making the claim that a high-functioning society that cares for its citizens and ensures a good quality of life must necessarily a) impose taxes, in order to b) provide social welfare programs. In particular, I claim that no purely-free-market motivated company will address social welfare needs as comprehensively as public programs would (though I do concede that, for some subsets of society, some companies will often do so more efficiently than public programs would, at the cost of non-universal coverage).
Right. Living in France sucks! /s
You can make a good argument without devolving into "us-vs-them" tribalism.
For example, Im big into mountain biking, and here is a recent example of this (read the comments)
https://www.pinkbike.com/u/jamessmurthwaite/blog/slack-rando...
2) Turning "woke" into an insult for everything progressive completely removes all nuance from a bunch of political positions that while frequently shared between similar people are completely unrelated. "Woke" was a term that came about with regards to social and specifically RACIAL justice.
The fact that the internet left is full of people so far extreme as to be actually Stalinist (and by that i mean would support guillotining the rich or sending them to gulags), does not negate the value of discussion of unions, or social inequalities between the races.
I would urge any sensible-minded individual to dismiss using "woke" from their lexicon as an insult because it immediately devalues your opinion (see also: SJW, Feminist, etc)
3) "For example, Im big into mountain biking, and here is a recent example of this (read the comments)"
I'm super not clear about your point here. Amazon ripped off an independent seller's design. Is that not a problem? Do people not have the right to be upset?
Wait so, should the unionize too? Or were they not fully staffed during the record low employment before?
One of these must be true, or you are making incompatible claims.
Just selling cheap shit with no regard for those who produce and deliver your products doesn't equate to "produce a lot of value to people"...
Tell that to Sweden, with its 80% unionization rate and productivity (GDP per hour worked) at 97% of that of the United States.
And since you said "historically" - it's not a recent change of affairs. In the 1970s Sweden's productivity (GDP per hour) was 90% of that of the United States.
Feel free to compare other European nations:
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Labor/Trade-... https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm
Sweeden also has more homeless people per capita than US, and higher unemployment, and lower GDP/capita, and different labor laws.
Its also not really a good excersize to compare against other countries. With full analysis, you quickly get into weeds of things like cultural values, homogeneity, hysteresis in policy, all of which affect the economy.
Saying that an economic policy works in one country has no relation to whether it works in another. For example (albeit a dumb one, but it illustrates the point) - in most of EU, there aren't really 24 hour grocery stores or food places, unlike in US. Is it better to enact a policy stop economic trade in late hours, with the assumption that people are more productive if they have time with their families, or would you rather have a free market that allows the night owls to make money if they want to?
The answer is that it solely depends on the population. General labor class with more traditional values would probably prefer the former. Younger techies that aren't concerned with families and love what they do and willingly work into later hours would prefer the latter. E.t.c and so on.
By what definition of "free market" is unionization fairly characterized as "messing with" said market? Isn't the idea of the free market that actors within that market have the opportunity to use resources and organize resources the way they see fit? It seems your definition of "free market" only permits corporations latitude in making meaningful choices, but employees and consumers none whatsoever.
[1] https://www.nlrb.gov/search/case/AMAZON.COM%20SERVICES%20LLC
If you are going to post any proof, at least read the stuff that you posted. 16 cases of complaints with extremely vague information in them is hardly proof.
Don't bother looking for actual evidence though, because you won't find it.
>A National Labor Review Board (NLRB) investigation has now found that Amazon illegally interrogated and threatened Jonathan Bailey, a lead organizer of the Queens Amazon walkouts, and has issued a federal complaint against Amazon, according to official NLRB documents...
>The case was settled before it went to trial, but the issuing of the complaint means that an NLRB investigation found Amazon broke the law.[1]
Perhaps we could look at another:
>Last month, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint in Bowden’s case, meaning the agency found merit in her allegations that Amazon threatened, suspended, and ultimately terminated her because she had been talking with coworkers at an Amazon warehouse in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, about pay and other workplace issues, which is a legally protected activity.[2]
Then of course, there is the article that is the subject of this post. Call it speculation, but a corporate astroturfing campaign is not a convincing indication Amazon is on the right side of morality, law, or the facts here.
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8ngk/amazon-interrogated-w...
[2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/amazon...
Sounds easy but I assume it isn't so much. Applying regular market rules to the job market is misguided. First, people need a job to live. If all available offers are starvation wages, people can't just say "well I won't work for this". Second, changing job is a big risk regarding healthcare and job security. Some people might prefer lower pay but higher stability rather than slightly higher pay but with a high risk of being fired. Third, different people have different jobs available. For unskilled labor there will always be more people than jobs, and there will always be people that need a job now doing whatever so they don't lose their home. That will push wages down even in an environment of low unemployment.
> Secondly, the number of reports of poor working conditions are far and few in between.
There are quite a lot of reports in multiple countries and outlets. Taking into account that it's not easy for workers to put their story out there and that they take a risk by doing so, I wouldn't dismiss the evidence so quickly.
> When workers realize they can take it easy and keep their jobs, productivity will go down.
Or go up. Evidence is mixed and depends on the setting. It's not "undoubtely".
> While its true that worker conditions will improve, the problem is along will come Walmart thats not as much in the spotlight, and offer better service and shipping while having shit working conditions,
Walmart employees could make an union too.
> Unionization is messing with the free market, which never leads to good outcomes historically.
Things unions have historically done (some of them haven't reached yet the US precisely because of the lack of unionization):
- Limit weekly working hours. - Weekends - Paid vacations. - Protect workers in bad situations (pregnancy, disability, injuries).
That's just in general. Go into actual unions and see what things they do.
Also, they're not messing with the free market. The job market is not a free market, there's an extreme asymmetry of power and information between a worker and a company. Most workers can't afford to lose their jobs, most companies can afford to lose a worker. By splitting workers they can apply individual pressure to gain an advantage that they couldn't get if workers actually coordinated. Unions restore the power balance and give workers the power to negotiate the conditions in an equal setting.
Free market efficiency + redistribution via taxes+coupons is the way to go.
Milton Friedman approves.
Edit: It's an interesting admission when you basically say that Amazon's worker productivity depends on coercion.
Nope. Injecting money into lower end income levels, through things like raising the minimum wage to $10-11, or social welfare programs, causes every company paying minimum wage to slightly bump up their salaries - thats a market correction.
Unionization is economically equivalent to rent control, which is not a market correction.
The reason why rent control doesn't work is you basically people who cannot otherwise afford to live in an area, and artificially increase their net worth. Of course they want to stay in the area, which decreases availalbe housing supply, prevents building of new housing supply, e.t.c and so on with cascading effects.
With unions is the same thing. People who are not worth $15 an hour because are slow are artificially inflated, and now they get put into a job that is hard to fire from, which then in turn leads to companies less likely to hire people, which decreases labor supply, and has other cascading effects.
>It's an interesting admission when you basically say that Amazon's worker productivity depends on coercion.
As is the case for any non-protected unskilled labor position, of which there are plenty. Amazon perhaps does more metric collection and expects a higher throughput, but they also pay accordingly. And people don't have to work at Amazon if they don't want to.
Its interesting though that people chose to focus on Amazon when talking about this, instead of all the companies that share similar working conditions. Kinda shows you where your priorities are, which is not in discussion of things that could benefit the lower income class.
You're right that Walmart should be in the overall discussion, but they aren't the ones in a unionization vote happening at this very moment.
And it's weird to conveniently act like the discussion of issues that benefit low income workers haven't been core political topics, like the $15 minimum wage you keep bringing up.
To be fair, plenty of huge companies hire all kinds of people that provide zero or negative value to the bottom line. Most of these positions are white collar, well paid and non-unionised: purchasing officers, university administrators (with the exception of that one person who actually does everything), sprawling HR departments, "Agile" project managers that can't code, the "management class" as a whole etc. Interestingly, the more "dead weight" employees a company has, the faster they will hire more.
Using your own brand of "individual actors maximising value" economic theory, it's pretty easy to see how this is the case. The people making these hiring decisions don't actually have any rational incentive to increase the profitability of the organisation, but will receive both increased job security and political power through appointing dead weight hires. So that's what they do.
Your conception of what "free market" means is wrong, and the thing you're imagining has never existed.
Anyway, here's a few other things that mess with "the free market" as much as unionization:
- Workplace safety laws
- Environmental protection laws
- Minimum wage laws
- Accounting regulations
It's like saying "people are boycotting product x because they disagree with company policy" isn't allowed because "cancel culture is messing with the free market".
Unions have things like the ability to force someone to join a union and pay dues. From the point of view of the union, you ofcourse want that in order to stop the union from loosing power to non union members.
And also, if you think that unions are market forces because they represent the interest of workesrs, so are anti union measures because they represet the interests of companies, so by definition you should be ok with what Amazon is doing.
Only if we're on the side of definitions, I guess.
Not in the US, not since 1947. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 banned closed shops:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop#United_States
It's literally the first line of that section.
Where are all the comments about Walmart unionization?
You would probably see more of these in regular times, when there isnt an absolutely massive push for Amazon unionization at this very moment.
I think the 8 hour week, and ending child labour are good outcomes.
> people can quit and go find easier job at any time
There's no basis for this, by your own observation. Offering bottles of water in the desert is not a fair trade of value. You have a hostage negotiation.
> There isn't a single shred of credible evidence that this is a widespread problem
Except for all the evidence you want to ignore or have laid before you to dismiss.
It's tiring at how poorly this rhetoric is thought out. I'll skip to my favorite part.
> Unionization is messing with the free market,
What does free market mean in this context? Oh right, whatever you think works because it makes sense in a closed system with immediate feedback. Reality does not match this. Major Airlines don't hire less people because they have unions (white collar and blue collar, typically).
Most of the post is some strange worldview using open language that has no weight or typical strawman theorycrafting.