A shout out to Organise[1], who have been creating lots of pressure on Amazon in the UK.
Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
121–130 of 1001 posts
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#122Got to give it to the guy. I bet that having his peers in court might have helped the decision (regardless).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you pay your employees $7.25 you deserve to be made fun off at least. Jeff Bezos recently also said Amazon deserved being scrutinised. I'm not saying this is what triggered them, but sometimes you have to take a strong position in order to be listened to.
> you deserve to be made fun of I don't think anyone deserves to be made fun of, full stop. Grown-up criticism is fine.
I don't agree. I think satire, which this can be perceived as, is a means to achieve people to get to change their mind. Making fun of people on terms of race, age, gender, anything they cannot do anything about, is not something I agree with doing. But come on, this guy was squeezing out people who ended up in the situation where they had to work in warehouse packing boxes.
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked in a call center and I used to always wonder why they'd accept such extreme turnover, given that there were a few weeks of training before they could put you on (the fact that there was a course in touch-typing as part of that training probably gives you an idea where the bar was for hiring). But I'd read some analysis that suggested that in some ways the employers running these systems found that desirable,…
it makes sense, because unionisation will decrease the company's competitiveness, leading to their clients shifting to another (non-unionised) call centre and everyone getting fired. Thus companies in sectors like this end up trying to squeeze every drop out of their employees before they quit, because they are expendable.
We were directly employed by the company for whom we were providing service rather than being a third-party call center.
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you pay your employees $7.25 you deserve to be made fun off at least. Jeff Bezos recently also said Amazon deserved being scrutinised. I'm not saying this is what triggered them, but sometimes you have to take a strong position in order to be listened to.
It hasn't crossed a threshold into being a big deal, but singling out an individual does look like bullying and bullying isn't funny. Jeff Bezos has to respect the law or face a series of consequences up to imprisonment. We all know he is going to respect the law like we all do. It is mean spirited to write a (potential) law that disrespects him directly. He can't really respond to that. Sanders should have stuck to…
When the individual is worth more than many nation states, I have no problem with singling them out.
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#126Opponents of the minimum wage argue that it reduces employment by creating an artificial floor on wages, that jobs are lost because employers can't afford to pay the minimum. But if you can't pay the minimum, then you didn't really have a job to offer in the first place! By extension of this logic, employers could argue that they are losing jobs because they can only afford to pay someone who will work 12 hours a day…
The point about minimum wage is to prevent labor abuse in crappy week conditions by making sure people are just expensive enough to take their safety seriously.
Do you prefer people out of jobs without being able to sustain their self rather than people taking jobs that you judge yourself are bad for them ?
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#127The blog post says "employees". No reporter I've seen has bothered to ask if it applies to contractors.
Wouldn't contractors set their own rates?
Most contractors to Amazon get paid set amounts for work. i.e 30p per parcel delivered.
Will this increase push Amazon to make more people contractors? Time will tell
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#128Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, recently introduced legislation to end what he calls “corporate welfare” — and it’s pretty clear who he had in mind, since the bill was titled Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (BEZOS). Bernie out-marketing AMZN is pretty funny.
As someone who lives in a country which gives its laws sensible titles, I've never understood why Americans have such convoluted names for their legislation. It seems almost ridiculously childish, especially given how serious many of the acts are.
You might appreciate this one: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6985668
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked in a call center and I used to always wonder why they'd accept such extreme turnover, given that there were a few weeks of training before they could put you on (the fact that there was a course in touch-typing as part of that training probably gives you an idea where the bar was for hiring). But I'd read some analysis that suggested that in some ways the employers running these systems found that desirable,…
You have to imagine that the quality of service people are providing isn't that high either if they're miserable. I think about peoples' quality of life in a call center whenever I'm stuck on hold with Verizon or some other faceless corporation.
People pretty regularly just told customers whatever they wanted to hear to get them off the phone. The more scrupulous among us wouldn't say anything false or break any rules but would deliberately upset customers to get them to ask for a supervisor (call length was a major metric which affected your pay substantially, so if you couldn't really do anything for them this was the best strategy).
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#130I think this is a big step in the right direction. It'll help keep workers happy and reduce stress. It doesn't solve all of Amazon's problems, but it's an easy fix to something they often receive criticism about.