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Comment by CurtHagenlocher | Hacker News Reader

I love Costco not just because of their good prices but also because they have a reputation for paying and treating their employees reasonably well. Amazon does not share this reputation (at least for their warehouse workers).

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Agreed. I'd been reading about Amazon's treatment of their warehouse workers over the years and an article in The Guardian [1] finally pushed me over the edge. I stopped shopping at Amazon (I shopped a huge amount there) and cancelled my prime account. I hope they can get their act together and offer their warehouse workers better wages and better treatment, if Costco can do it then I believe they can too.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week-amazo...

Amazon has the second-highest turnover of all the Fortune 500 companies [1]. That data combined with conversations I've had with several Amazon developers makes me wary of Amazon's long-term prospects for retaining talent. More here: http://mynorthwest.com/646/2378309/Bezos-rules-Amazon-employ...

[1] http://mynorthwest.com/646/2378309/Bezos-rules-Amazon-employ...

Bad jobs play an important role in an economy. They provide a high turn-over, relatively easy to acquire job that you can get when you have trouble finding proper work. So you can provide for yourself while looking for a good job. If the job didn't suck it wouldn't have the turn-over and availability.

Once we eliminate the need for employment to provide the basics then shitty jobs will go away. Until then they have a place.

True, but there will always be tons of "inherently bad" jobs (smelly, sweaty, monotonous).

It is unnecessary to make these jobs MORE shitty by bad management.

For example, the worst thing IMO that Walmart does (IDK about Amazon), is to mandate that employees be on call 24x7 to be ready to come in for a shift on short notice (3 hours). This cripples the worker from taking on a 2nd job, school, or anything else. This traps them into the Walmart job & makes this not an entry level job.

Sure, however in the US there are already huge number of terrible low paid jobs. The balance of jobs is not right as it stands. I believe that Amazon has the resources to provide better jobs and should do so.

Question: everyone keeps talking about low pay amazon workers, but do the lowest paid warehouse employees of Costco get paid the same comparable low wage or not?

There are many tiers of employment at amazon and the same for costco, I'm wondering if the great costco benefits also apply to their hourly warehouse employees or their equiv on the amazon side.

I'm pretty sure the costco benefits are fairly good for hourly warehouse employees. Here's the first reference I found:

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/12/08/costco-whol...

> I hope they can get their act together and offer their warehouse workers better wages and better treatment

If their wages and treatment aren't enough to drive them to quit their jobs, they are sufficient.

I am glad Prime costs what it does and not more.

And you'll see a lot of people won't care when they're paying less. See Walmart for reference.

Do you also boycott wood and paper products? Jobs in the logging industry have comparable pay to amazon warehouse jobs, but are far more dangerous.

Exactly: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...

Mm, I was just pondering that both Costco and Sam's have good labour reputations, and that it's _not_ saying "takes on Walmart".

Sam's Club has a good labour reputation? I find that surprising because they're owned by Walmart.

It competes with Costco, has traditionally targeted business customers heavily, has a different business model and margins than Walmart, and competes for a slightly different pool of labor.

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