Comment by bobwell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bobwell | Hacker News Reader

For example, Amazon caught lowering delivery driver pay with the tips making up the difference and then lying about it: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/amazon_flex...

> At the outset of the Amazon Flex program, from 2015 through late 2016, Amazon paid drivers at least $18 per hour plus 100% of customer tips

> Beginning in late 2016 ... Amazon secretly reduced its own contribution to drivers’ pay to an algorithmically set, internal “base rate” using data it collected about average tips in the area ...

> For example, for a one-hour block offering $18-$25, if Amazon’s base rate in the particular location was $12, and the customer left a $6 tip for the driver, then Amazon paid the driver only $12 and used the full customer tip of $6 to reach its minimum payment of $18 to the driver.

And their punishment was just to pay back what had been taken: I can't imagine there are many other opportunities to steal $61m with the only punishment when you're caught is having to pay it back.

The largest type theft done in the United States, by far, for decades, is wage theft. In terms of dollars stolen.

All other forms of serious crime have dramatically fallen since the 90's per Capita. Some are at 1/3 the rate they were then. (FBI UCR)

remember that next time you see a headline or politician speak about crime.

We are safer, doing less crime to each other, and seeing more prison population than ever before.

While corporations crush us illegally and face no consequences.

The US prison population has been declining since 2010: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_...

Yes. Also, it’s still far too many people per capita. Too little is done to prevent the circumstances that make crime more likely. The sentences are often ridiculously long for the offense. The conditions are generally poor and often torturous. Too little is done to reincorporate the formerly incarcerated into society.

In this case[0] the CEO (Chris Kirchner) stole ~20M$ from the company causing employees to go unpaid for months, and outside of California all they got was owed wages (no interest or anything). While mentioned in the article, what he was mainly convicted of was defrauding investors rather than stealing from employees.

> Apparently, projecting personal prosperity was more important to him than making payroll

He actually had the temerity early on in the debacle when he was still pretending there was money to tell us that they had decided to not pay us that week because it would be bad for the companies investments to withdraw funds then.

[0] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/slync-founder-sentenced...

> I can't imagine there are many other opportunities to steal $61m with the only punishment when you're caught is having to pay it back.

There was a very famous viral video of a woman stealing offering to just pay for the goods when she was caught, but we all understood why that was a ridiculous idea. Maybe she was just an Amazon VP, so she didn't know any better

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