Except now, I’m working myself to the bone trying to fulfill my package counts, peeing in bottles, shitting in bags, constantly stressed about if I can not only meet my quotas, but beat everyone else on the floor with me so that I can get more hours next time. I get back from work miserable, stressed, and probably angry from the constant competition needed to just survive. But this is a valuable opportunity, surely, except for the fact that I’m constantly stressed about work, and now I can’t even complain about how I’m stressed about work because Amazon won’t allow me to have my phone on the floor or say the word “restroom” in their internal chat app.
Oh but right, as you say, it’s a worker-favorable economy! Let me go to packing warehouse and try and get even fifty cents closer to Amazon with the leverage I obviously have. I’m sure the guy there is gonna say no problem, here’s a raise.
This is the lesson that we already learned in the 1800s with monopolies; they distort reality. It’s useless to argue “if you don’t want to work for them, don’t” because they often pay just better than your local alternatives, but by virtue of their economy bending power, they will exert an insane amount of control and influence until they are either regulated or there is no competition left and I don’t even have the fruit packing warehouse anymore, but the Amazon Oranges Fulfillment Center.
Amazon is 10% of retail and retail is only a slice of the economy. If you can't find an alternative to amazon, you aren't looking.
Rates of deaths of despair suggest that people have broken, they just don't have the leverage to significantly change things.
There are also plenty of ideologues in Washington who bristle at the mention of regulation, unions, and anything they don't deem as being "pro business".
This is beyond splitting profits; it's driving back to Victorian era, and that did not end well for businesses. Increase in unemployment is just a sign.
But that's a trade off no one should have to make: it's messed up that we as a society allow this state of affairs to exist in the first place.
And yet here I am, not canceling my Prime membership, because I suck. But hell, if Prime cost 2x what it currently does, and that got the workers involved good working conditions, I would still pay it. Not sure how many people would, though.
I genuinely don’t understand. You have already argued that despite shitty conditions at Amazon, some people are desperate enough for money that the alternative (making less with better working conditions) is even worse. So if enough people cancelled their Amazon subscriptions that they had to scale back operations, wouldn’t those people be worse off than they are now?
Amazon is nowhere near a monopoly (or monopsony), at least when it comes to employers.
So when are we letting children back in the coalmines?
We aren't going to make children work in mines, because (as I'm sure you know), adult workers and children are not the same thing. There is a huge chasm between "adult workers making more than a lot of their other opportunities is slightly more cannot unionize as easily using Amazon services" and "put children back in coal mines".
once upon a time, this was not obvious. this modern moral axiom is a result of of hard-won labor organizing over the 19th century. all kinds of exploitative practices were justified with the exact same "the workers are being given an opportunity so they shouldn't complain" argument. it's not an analogy.
taking advantage of people because they don't have any other options is the definition of exploitation.
Also, do you know what stopped children in coal mines? Labor unions.
They or you have not outlined where does this slippery slope stop, or ankowledged nessesity of employee protections.
I think you are still not seeing it, because the only protest from your 'but they are children!' - so if we exploit adults with a down's syndome, that's okay? Oh, so disabilities are protected, what if we spesifically target people who need money to pay for cancer treatment, and make them sign a waiver on safety equipment? I mean, they aren't gonna live long either way, it's a win-win!
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/nov/02/child-labor-laws...
Are you sure about that? Absolutely certain?
Also, as long as it's not a literal coalmine you see no risks to children? If it's a factory instead, then we are in the clear?
I do not advocate for children's labor, but I also do not advocate for taking things to extremes in order to make a point. If you feel it's problematic for children to be allowed (not forced - allowed) to work in fast food, we can have that discussion. But talking about it as the missing link for returning to 19th century slave labor conditions, or the conditions currently in China is misleading and not worthy of a conversation.
I say this as someone who started working at age 14: Children should not be allowed to work most jobs until they are much older than that.
Yes, the risk is higher than for a 25 y.o., but as someone who started working at age 15 - there are also rewards in experience, money, and figuring your own shit out. Nothing taught me about life like working.
This was in the US. Most of the time I did my homework in school, cramming in assignments for second period during first period, then 3rd period hw during second period, etc. Child labor isn't dead, and if you truly think that everyone has the economic opportunities to avoid these circumstance then you don't have the scope of experience needed to accurately assess the state of society.
(And no, it wasn't a case of "well if you can't support children you shouldn't have them" The circumstances of the above situation came about long after I was born, though before I was 13)
I will say if you engaged in some unethical labor practices to help your family while earning those $6, I personally could look past them to some extent. I assume you did this to help your family survive so anything unethical you did was out of necessity. Personally I withhold judgement.
So, I answered as best I can. But even if, under yours or anyone's definition, we were better off, what does that say? An economic system or society (can't really full disentangle the two) where a family is either unable to survive or do more than barely survive unless their kids work in this way... That does not seem like a society optimized for for its own best outcomes as a whole or for many individuals either. I also don't have any magic answer that would fix things either, but acknowledging the problem is a necessary step along the way. Asking if my family was better off is just asking if a shitty situation would have been any shittier otherwise. I prefer to think we should work towards less shitty circumstances overall, and the entrenched systems aren't it.
>Is "better off [economically]" you're guide on ethical labor practices?
No. But live in reality. I know people have to make hard decisions. If the choice is "Family starves to death" or "Child labor results in survival of family", I would never try to stop this family from having that opportunity to survive. Whether it is better to ban the job so the family starves to death? My inclination is to say no. Clearly some better alternatives would be superior, but in the end you work with the options you have available and not the ones you wish you had. If superior alternative exists, we don't even need to ban child labor because the hand of free will will go towards the superior option.
I've also seen a number of circumstances where child labor is just genuinely what works for a family. Our neighborhood chinese restaraunt, even the 6 and 7 y/o or so work EVERY NIGHT for HOURS, basically when they get home from school until bed. These children are so young, they can barely enunciate clearly most of the time. They do their homework while taking phone orders and even ring you up at the cash register. I'm not even sure they get weekends off. Is it ethical? I don't know, but that family made the calculus it's right for their family and indeed I think it would be unethical for me to stop them. Who knows, their family may be better off for it and it may even be saving them from bankruptcy and losing health insurance and eventually even their lives (especially depending on their immigration status). Maybe the children will end up successful businesspeople as a result of their child labor and donate billions so 1000 other children DON'T have to work.
At the end of the day your situation may have been more iffy (you don't know whether it was actually beneficial). That indicates to me you weren't going to starve to death or anything if you didn't work, because if you were you'd have said right away you were better off than not earning any money. You may have a different outlook if it wasn't so iffy, like if the alternative was much worse.
I live there, grew up with a strong dose of it, but I take your point and understand. I'm not ideological on the issue except that I think we can do better, so a viewpoint rooted in (for me, cynical) practicality is easy for me to relate to. It's different than an ideological one, which is what was the question I was trying to understand from your statement. It's harder to have productive conversation on matters of ideology.
At the end of the day your situation may have been more iffy (you don't know whether it was actually beneficial). That indicates to me you weren't going to starve to death
Eh, yes and no. Again, personal details involved. But, mostly, not about extreme food security problems. A parent worked in food service as a second job, which helped. (No theft, just generous owners)
In general I find child labor laws to be deeply ironic in a Kafka-esque way for the reasons you touch on. Out socioeconomic system produces situations that all but require such labor, but then it is outlawed. Like so many other laws, it doesn't solve the problem that leads to the bad thing in the first place.
Better to have an extremely strong safety net w/ a strong job training & job placement system. It's often a catch 22 though. In my state unemployed people can go to community college for free, and there are even 1-year full time programs for in-demand jobs that have okay pay. The problem is, how do you love during that the new period? That's one gap. Another one are people who are employed but don't make enough money-- no free college for them, so they're stuck in their economic niche. And if they lost the job they'd still face the first issue of living while they learn. Another gap is the job market: fix the above issues and the college programs I referenced would be flooded beyond their capacity and wages in the job market kept low by a higher labor supply.
I think we could chip away at some of these issues, but the most common political solution, probably because it seems quick and easy, is to raise the floor on minimum wage. There's a little elasticity there, but I don't think it can be raised enough to solve these problems. Low-margin businesses (supermarkets!) especially will have to raise prices, which will then eat into the cost of living. The idea that minimum wage can be doubled without inflation always strikes me as wishful thinking.
turn it around: why doesn't amazon just respect its worker's basic human dignity?
Because that directly conflicts with making the highest profit possible (still legally).
What’s sad in these discussions is that it’s both true that Amazon is a terrible employer and that it often pays more than alternatives for many workers. This seems like a failure of policy (ex. Enforcing living wage standards) and American business well-being at least as much as a failure of Amazon to “do the right thing.”
Edit: Cracks me up that I got downvoted for telling the truth about capitalism.
Let's assume that Amazon did end up making things way better for their workers. That means higher costs and hence higher prices. This will allow other retailers to win markets by setting the best prices.
I think we need regulation that applies to all retailers in this case or all industries that hire manual labor vs constantly targeting Amazon for being the bad guy.
Now, you're probably thinking that's chump change compared to Amazon's profits, but fun fact: Amazon's online sales segment doesn't make much profit. In fact, it lost $200M in Q4 [1]. So you basically want Amazon to either go deeply in the red, or else they have to raise prices on products to also raise worker wages.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/04/amazons-profit-engines-are-h...
And then there are the counterexamples, like Costco, that manage to pay well and be wildly competitive.
Eat the rich.
I've never been presented with an employment agreement where any of the terms could be negotiated. Salary and benefits? Yes, sometimes. But other terms? No way. I always try, but in every case, you get a stern message from corporate legal basically saying "Sign it unmodified or GTFO." I don't know who these HN Captains of Industry are who negotiate the terms of their employment, but that's the exception, not the rule. Maybe at the VP+ level, these things are negotiable (parties are more equal in power), but at the "5th grunt from the left" level, no way.