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.