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I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

theguardian.com

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Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#61

Post by merpnderp »

andrewla wrote: post #38
dragonwriter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other is the issue of Amazon employees receiving food stamps (now called SNAP, apparently). This one seems particularly odd to me, because I'm not sure how to interpret it. You should interpret it as sign that even among much of what passes for the left in America, corporate feudalism is deeply entrenched in consciousness. Instead of meeting basic needs being seen as a responsibility of public authority, to be…

> corporate feudalism is deeply entrenched in consciousness Is there anything about Amazon being a corporation that really touches on this, as opposed to their simply being an employer? I feel like an analogy like this is of limited utility anyway. It's too easy to point out all the myriad ways that the existing system is different from feudalism, and it's unclear whether the negative aspects of feudalism continue to…

I'm not exactly sure what you're saying, but it sounds like you're saying the modern welfare state is feudalism.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#62

Post by rando444 »

sokoloff wrote: post #36

IMO, it is never proper for the legislature to target an individual or individual company. It's perfectly fine for enforcement agencies (OSHA, FDA, IRS, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc) to enforce policy/law on individuals/companies who have been found in violation, but to originally target individuals with the force of government lawmaking is a dramatic overreach of power, IMO. If Senator Sanders et al want to target all compani…

Your point is valid, but other than the acronym used to get people talking about the bill, Amazon is not targeted directly.

Wal-mart would actually be impacted much more than Amazon as they employ 5x the workforce, and has arguably been the larger target of such legislation considering the majority of their workforce relies on government subsides to make ends meet.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#63

Post by 0xmohit » 

    Illness was punished as a misdemeanour by the company. I took
    a day off sick and was given a point for it – despite
    notifying Amazon several hours before the start of my shift
    that I was ill and offering to provide a note from the
    doctor. When I returned to work I asked an Amazon manager how
    they could justify such a policy, which effectively punished
    people for being ill. “It’s what Amazon have always done,” he
    replied blandly.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#64

Post by camtarn »

paulus_magnus2 wrote: post #16

FAPP, a company is a bunch of people (mostly a bunch of managers who make the decissions) so at some point some manager decided to squeeze his workers beyond reason - this would be bottom up opression. Or perhaps a higher manager wrote the inhumane procedure and a lower level manager implemented it - top down opression.

From all the stories I've heard, it seems to be a combination of the two: most of the really inhumane stuff comes from local managers rather than global policy. However, those managers are just acting to meet unrealistic targets of their own, and when they're reported, nobody above them in the hierarchy seems to care.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#65

Post by jpindar »

barry-cotter wrote: post #53
swarnie_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure why people work there. The warehouses are universally known to be shitty places but people sign up anyway. Surely if its terrible and no one will work there they will have to improve or pay more? Or am i misunderstanding basic economics?

They will hire anyone. That’s why. If you need a job and you will show up on time all the time and perform to the standard they ask you’ll keep the job too. It’s a crap job but for a lot of people it beats being unemployed.

But I was told we have zero percent unemployment. /s

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#66

Post by newshorts »

llamataboot wrote: post #28

You get the society that your systems incentivize. There may very well be a perfect version of capitalism and a free market that allows for free movement of employees between firms and a virtuous circle. Instead, we see a vicious spiral of incentivizing externalities (including treating workers like a never-ending powerless resource you can run into the ground and break and then find new ones) and a person with more…

Ordoliberalism seems to work pretty well

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#67

Post by prolikewh0a »

tengbretson wrote: post #50
prolikewh0a wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So the question we have to ask is do we want to live in a society where this treatment is legal? Because we live in this fantasy land of the [dead] 'American Dream', where if you work hard, absolutely bust your ass and kill yourself for 70 years, you'll get to be Jeff Bezos too. If you're complaining about your job, just get a new one , or pull your boot straps up and accept it, it's that easy. We're constantly told…

> Because we live in this fantasy land of the [dead] 'American Dream', where if you work hard, absolutely bust your ass and kill yourself for 70 years, you'll get to be Jeff Bezos too. This never has and never will be the American Dream. The American Dream isn't a rags to riches fairy tale. The American Dream is about inter-generational class mobility. If you bust your tail all your life, you can raise your children'…

>The American Dream is about inter-generational class mobility. If you bust your tail all your life, you can raise your children's quality of life to a higher standard than your own.

Nope. You're just proving my point too. Thanks.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/american...

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#68

Post by 394549 »

sokoloff wrote: post #36

IMO, it is never proper for the legislature to target an individual or individual company. It's perfectly fine for enforcement agencies (OSHA, FDA, IRS, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc) to enforce policy/law on individuals/companies who have been found in violation, but to originally target individuals with the force of government lawmaking is a dramatic overreach of power, IMO. If Senator Sanders et al want to target all compani…

> If Senator Sanders et al want to target all companies who pay below a certain wage or offer/don't offer a certain benefit or whatever broad category of social/economic ill that the legislature wants to end, have at it. Just so long as you don't torture a combination of such factors that, low and behold, it happens to only apply to the individual / company that you have it in for.

Sorry, but what you're advocating for a is a barrier towards fixing these problems.

If the legislature only talks in terms of abstract situations, all of it will feel theoretical and will be far less likely to spur real action. On the other hand, if you have concrete examples of problems, that makes the problems feel real. Real problems motivate real action.

Rest assured, whatever bill Sanders writes will target the broad problem at all companies, because he's forbidden from writing a law that would only target Amazon explicitly.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#69

Post by vezycash »

LitFan wrote: post #29
grecy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If all of those subsidies were to vanish, the standard of living for most lower to middle class people would drop substantially I see so many discussions in US politics that go around and around and bend over backwards to never, ever propose the extremely simple and obvious solution.... (...drum roll...) Companies simply lower profits. Conditions for the workers go up with better conditions & higher pay. The prices…

Lowering profits means reduced shareholder value and a lower market capitalization. Every company is interested in providing as much value to shareholders as possible. I don't know all the ins and outs, but I believe public trading and shareholders are to blame here. And again - the middle to upper middle class people who rely on returns from their investments in companies to support their standard of living think th…

>Every company is interested in providing as much value to shareholders as possible.

To short sellers of Tesla stock, maximum value would be?

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#70

Post by gagege »

Why does everyone ignore the fact that employment at Amazon is voluntary? When the employee was hired, they made an agreement that the payment was a fair trade for the work to be done. If it turns out that the pay was not fair after all, which it sounds like it isn't, then the employee should simply stop working there, because Amazon isn't holding up their end of the bargain.

The reason this continues to be an issue is that the government is stepping in and saying "$7.25 per hour is what's fair, plus we'll provide food stamps, etc."

Amazon says, "this work isn't actually worth $7.25 to us, so we'll have to cut corners to keep growing since we're a publicly traded company."

So Amazon cuts out lunch breaks and whatever else to try to make the $7.25 back, and the employee is able to just barely scrape by with this crappy job because they're making $7.25 plus food stamps.

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